Category: Hour summaries

Hour 1-3.5

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

The Lobbying Ordinance

Guys. Guys. This was such a shitshow. I’m going to do my best to tease apart the good faith arguments and discussion from the bad faith spaghetti-slinging.

Background:

The Ethics Review Commission first submitted a draft of this in 2017. That means it’s spanned many different compositions of councils, and many different election cycles. It has been postponed more times than …some clever San Marcos reference that I can’t put my finger on. (More times than trains are stopped on tracks? Than sights & sounds has sights, and sounds? nope and nope.)

Since I’ve been blogging, it came up on June 1st and July 6th (back when I was a wee baby blogger, still getting my sea legs. Take those entries with a grain of salt.)

Then tonight:

This meeting’s discussion had two main parts:

Part 1: A motion to deny, which failed after about an hour. This is the shouty part.

Part 2: A motion to approve, which was postponed after another two hours. This was shouting mixed with policy discussion.

That’s right: this was a 3 hour discussion. Eeek.

Part 1: The motion to deny.

Shane Scott moved to deny, and Mark Gleason seconded it.

Shane Scott says very little in the entire three hour meeting. When he does talk, it’s in broad platitudes about government overreach and how he won’t be kept from listening to his constituents.

Mark Gleason, on the other hand, gives fervent monologues throughout the whole three hours. Often what he says is word soup. This is what makes it so hard to blog – do I dive into word soup and try to string it together into a coherent garland, and point out the inconsistencies? Or do I just let it wash over me and then cautiously back away, so that I don’t inadvertently unleash more soup? Max Baker dives in, and hard.

Which brings us to our third problem: Max Baker diving in. He swings erratically between making excellent points and ad hominem attacks.

Occasionally it is important to attack someone’s character. Shane Scott and Mark Gleason are fundamentally arguing in bad faith. One tell of bad faith is the motion to deny: you can’t discuss amendments and fixes to improve the quality of a policy under parliamentary rules. You can only discuss denial. They want this whole topic to die, full stop.

But in practice, you should only attack someone’s character judiciously and sparingly. It’s a bomb, and if you toss bombs continuously, then you’re just leaving carnage everywhere. Which Max does.

At his worst, Max Baker is arguing back and forth with Mayor Hughson. She is cutting in to tell him to stop with the ad hominem attacks, and he is saying that her constant interruptions are what makes the meetings last so long, and that she is being hypocritical, and then he goes back to the ad hominem attacks.

Mayor Hughson was operating in good faith on this topic. She came prepared with amendments that would lead to an ordinance that she could support. When Max turned his anger on Mayor Hughson, it felt frankly like the most obnoxious kid from high school who is going to “well, actually…” their underpaid, harried teacher to death. Once or twice, it veered awfully close to gendered bullying, which makes my skin prickle.

Max Baker can string together eloquent sentences. Mayor Hughson is not necessarily as eloquent, but her words are chosen to convey a real meaning. If you nitpick her word choice instead of listening for her meaning, then you are being a jerk. And you can provoke Jane into being a jerk right back. This is part of why the evening was a mess.

Back to Mark. Here is the most generous reading of Mark Gleason’s word soup:

  • Average citizens will be caught up in this lobbying ordinance because it’s too broad. I believe this is what he means by “unintended consequences”.
  • People operating in bad faith will lob flimsy accusations under this ordinance, in order to score points during election season. He uses the term “weaponization” a lot.

Here is Mark Gleason’s most asinine argument: Suppose a nonprofit lobbies for a policy and the policy passes. Later, the nonprofit fundraises by touting their success to private donors. They successfully raise money. Wouldn’t that count as “economic benefit” and make them lobbyists?

He makes this point many, many times, and it’s dumb every single time. He seems to be making two opposite points:

  • Non-profits will be getting off scott-free, and it’s not fair that their economic benefit of fundraising doesn’t obligate them to report as lobbyists under the ordinance.
  • Non-profits won’t get off scott-free, and their noble desire to improve the world will be stamped out as collateral damage, because they’ll have to register as lobbyists under this lobbying ordinance.

This is what I mean by word soup. He is very often making two contradictory points, and then invoking emotional touchstones about the Supreme Court, and constitutionality, and PACs, Big Government, and the IRS. It’s a total and complete mess.

Let’s spend a moment on Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzalez, Jude Prather, and Mayor Hughson. In my opinion, these councilmembers operated in good faith for the evening.

Alyssa Garza: She has a substantially larger breadth of knowledge on this topic than the rest of the council. Several times she says some version of, “Would you mind if I introduced some vocabulary and organizational concepts to help you through the rough patch you’re bumbling around in?”

During the first hour, her main point is that many, many cities have had well-designed anti-lobbyist policies for many years. We are not inventing the wheel. In fact, we can cherry-pick the most well-written policies, since these other cities have had 15-20 years to iron out all the wrinkles.

This is exactly right! San Marcos is always about 15-20 years behind the curve. We are never breaking new territory, and other cities have already worked out all the kinks. We just have to read what they’ve done.

Alyssa’s other point: Has anyone else on this council actually read the literature? Have you all looked up lobbying ordinances in other cities and states? (And I quote, “Y’all are acting like this is brand new.”)

(Nope. No one else has read outside of what they’ve been given in their packet and from the Ethics Review Committee.)

Saul Gonzalez is 100% consistent the entire evening: we need this legislation in order to know who is getting bribed by out-of-town developers who want to wreck downtown by filling it with student apartment complexes. While I think his focus is a little narrow, I appreciate his honesty and directness.

Jude Prather: He keeps invoking Lady Justice and Scales of Justice. What he means is that he feels weird about having different entities mentioned by name. (SMPOA and the Fire-fighters Union both get special shout-outs.) He generally seems unfamiliar with the ordinance and it’s history. However, this was specifically postponed until February to allow a new council to vote on it, and to give the new council time to get up to speed. And it’s already a second reading. Sometimes you just have to catch up.

The answer to the carve-outs is that this is considered best-practices, many cities do it, and it was the result of hours and hours of deliberation and discussion.

Finally, as I mentioned above, Mayor Hughson came to the table in good faith, and stayed there. She brought 13 amendments to discuss and was ready to have specific conversations about policy content.

At the end of Part 1, they voted on the denial:

Yes, deny: Shane Scott and Mark Gleason
No, do not deny: Mayor Hughson, Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzalez, Jude Prather, Max Baker

Part 2: The motion to approve

Mayor Hughson came equipped with something like 18 different amendments, which had been consolidated down to 13. The first amendment was the most substantial:

  1. The ordinance should only apply to councilmembers, not to government officials or members of other boards and commissions.

Max Baker asserted that government officials can certainly be prejudiced in certain directions by lobbyists, and ought to report. Jane Hughson asserted that we can trust government officials to be professional, and that we should start small.

The fighting came here: Max Baker wanted to know if Mayor Hughson’s consideration of the entire bill hinged on the outcome of this amendment. She said “It’s quite probable”. Then he was like a dog with a bone – he just kept hammering her on this point. I got annoyed with Max.

Alyssa Garza made the point that there is a generational memory throughout the Hispanic community of city officials being quite prejudiced against them. Even if the current employees behave professionally, there is a lack of trust due to the historical context. Saul Gonzalez spoke up to agree with this. Now, Saul is the quietest council member. If he speaks up to support Alyssa on this point, we should act as though he’s sounding bugles and banging on cymbals to get our attention.

In the end, this passes.

In favor: Mayor Hughson, Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, Jude Prather
Against: Saul Gonzalez, Max Baker, Alyssa Garza

(I briefly wondered if Shane Scott and Mark Gleason would vote against this, in order to undermine Mayor Hughson’s support of the entire ordinance. But they did not play 11-dimensional chess.)

There is some discussion of methodology by the Ethics Review Commission, and which comparison cities have policies most closely resembling this proposal. There is discussion of direct campaign contributions versus indirect campaign contributions. The council seems mystified on how to quantify indirect campaign contributions until Alyssa Garza reminds everyone that organizations have to report these to the IRS, and there are clear categories with useful examples on the IRS website.

There are several technical amendments. Listen: this post is ridiculously long.

Finally we have the constellation of issues that leads to the postponement. The definition of lobbyist in this proposal requires either compensation or economic benefit. For example, if you argue that city council should rezone an area, and your business will benefit from the rezoning, then you’ve received an economic benefit.

Mark Gleason is in a fever pitch at this point, bringing in the Oxford English Dictionary and constitutionality and PACs. Alyssa Garza helps him out by suggesting that he’s trying to distinguish between grassroots lobbying and direct lobbying?

Mark Gleason says that lobbying is lobbying, and Alyssa redirects him that these are different things. It’s an incredibly patient display of self-control. Gleason does appear to hear what she said. (I am not saying that he retained it.)

Finally Alyssa concedes that if these distinctions are this difficult for the committee, the public probably doesn’t have that good a grasp on them, and it’s worth taking the time to write the policy correctly.

This opens the door for Shane Scott to immediately move to postpone.

Max is furious, of course, as are Alyssa and Saul. Shane Scott has absolutely no interest in discussing the ordinance in three months. He just loves postponing things.

Jude, Scott, Jane, Mark, vote to postpone until April.

Saul, Max, Alyssa vote against.

So there you have it. Postponed for two more months.

I feel uneasy about this write-up – so many parts were omitted.

Hour 4, 2/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Here was the big puppy mill conversation. Spoiler: it was anti-climactic.

First, Shane Scott moved to deny, right out of the gate. If I were making Council Bingo, one square would be “Shane Scott moves to postpone or deny a good ordinance.” He did not get a second, so that died.

Once they were discussing the issue: it was very frustrating to listen to.

  • “We could be sued by Pick-a-pet!” (Shane Scott)
  • “Pick-a-pet creates jobs!” (Also Shane Scott)
  • “Pick-a-pet tried to collaborate with our animal shelter, who refused to talk to them. AND many people say our animal shelter is the Gestapo!” (Also Shane Scott, and yes he literally said “Gestapo”.)

Rebuttals:

  • “Our animal shelter was very nice to me when I adopted my cat.” (Mayor Hughson)
  • On the topic of partnering with the animal shelter, city staffer Greg Carr kind of made a mess of this answer. First he said that Pick-a-Pet would cherry-pick the best, most adoptable animals, and leave the shelter with the difficult pets.

    Jane Hughson basically said, “Huh? Come again?” and Carr backpedaled and conceded that the shelter would be happy to collaborate with Pick-a-Pet.

Then there was Mark Gleason. Oh Mark. In the Council Bingo, your square is “Mark Says ‘Verbiage’.”

  • Why don’t we add in that pet stores can source from any licensed breeder? Just that one word – licensed – would solve all my concerns!
  • What about the mom & pop breeders? This bill would mean that they could get in trouble!

The problem with Gleason is that both of these arguments are manifestly terrible. I believe he believes them. Fortunately, the rebuttals are made:

  • Puppy mills are all licensed. The USDA criterion for licensing allows for operations with thousands of dogs in cages. Stop it with your license fetish, Mark. (Both Greg Carr and Alyssa Garza make this point.)
  • Mom & pop breeders are breeders, not pet stores. Different legal definitions. (Chase Stapp sort of explains this point. It’s muddled.)

Max Baker was mostly right, but also frustrating. He made the correct points about puppy mills and rescue animals, but can’t resist saying, “There is nothing more bougie that owning a pure bred dog. Put your ego to the side and get a rescue dog. The whole industry should not exist.”

This lets Mark Gleason focus on that, the bourgieness of owning a pure bred. He can then talk about hunting dogs, and why you might want a specific breed for hunting water fowl, or what have you.

Max. You are just throwing red meat to people like Shane Scott and Mark Gleason, who can then clutch their pearls over their fear that you want to outlaw water fowl hunting dogs. (And for the record: it’s okay for pure bred dogs to exist and it’s not unethical to own one. Government should promote adoption of rescues and make it as easy and widespread as possible, but there’s not a strict need to eliminate pure bred dogs, provided they’re raised humanely. )

Finally: Alyssa Garza is the big winner in this discussion. She focused on the underlying issue: puppy mills are atrociously inhumane, and existing licensing allows them to operate. She is clear spoken and focuses on the most-correct argument.

Jane Hughson never did state her position, but suggests that the issue be referred to the newly form Animal Rights Commission, consisting of herself, Alyssa Garza, Shane Scott, and city staff. In the end, that’s what happens. I told you it was anticlimactic.

Hours 2-3, 2/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

A bunch of zoning cases.

  • One near the outlet malls, on the other side of 35, got postponed.
  • One near the high school got approved. Not sure what it is. Light industrial?
  • A low income housing complex for seniors in the Whisper tract PDD. Everyone hates the location, but it will bring in a ton of money to the San Marcos Housing Authority.

And then…we have the curious case of the narrow house on Lockhart St. This is inconsequential but symbolic. And so weird.

A year ago, the owner asked to build a little house on the lot and split it into two lots. P&Z approved, Council denied. (I did not see that meeting.) From what I gather, Saul Gonzalez rallied against it, saying he used to live in that neighborhood and could speak on behalf of the residents, who did not want it. Fine.

So now it comes back. It was a super feisty P&Z meeting, with Zach Sambrano speaking particularly forcefully in favor of the little house, squeezed onto a tiny plot. Namely, what exactly is the problem with this? But they voted it down 6-3.

To overturn P&Z, Council would need a supermajority of 6 votes. And Shane Scott recused himself, because he lives near there. So there was no way this was ever going to pass. But the discussion was bizarre.

Saul moved to deny. There were the usual points about changing the character of a neighborhood, and traffic.

After a couple comments, Alyssa Garza spoke up and said, “You all are speaking to different residents than I speak to. The neighborhood residents that I spoke to all said that they didn’t mind the house being built.”

This is where the conversation got so very weird. I’m looking at Saul Gonzalez, Mark Gleason, and Jane Hughson.

Saul basically said, “I know a lot of the residents. Unfortunately, they’ve passed away, and their children now live there. Their children said they don’t mind. But still, it’s a slippery slope.”

Mark Gleason and Jane Hughson both said some version of this: “I talked to some residents! They said they don’t care if it’s built. But they said it with cynicism and resignation in their voice. Therefore I’m discounting their words.”

This is just an amazing bit of NIMBY-projection where it doesn’t even exist! “There’s no way they meant what they said, so instead I’ll have to trust the deep longing I imagined in their voice, for heavy-handed NIMBY protectionist measures.” I was genuinely dumb-founded to hear this verbal fancy hot-stepping.

In the end, “Preserving the Uniformity of the Neighborhood” ended up being the holy grail to which we sacrificed this little house. Does one house really affect affordable housing? Not in the grand scheme of things, but it’s symbolic AF.

Voting to deny: Saul Gonzalez, Mayor Hughson, Mark Gleason, and Max Baker.
Voting to approve: Alyssa Garza and Jude Prather.

Hour 1, 2/1/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

There was a full hour of citizen comments, mostly on two topics:

  1. The proposed puppy mill ban. A lot of speakers both against and for the ban.

This is Item 17: Pet stores may only sell animals sourced from shelters and rescue operations.

Here are some basic implications of the ban:

  • If residents want a pure bred animal, they are supposed to buy directly from in-state breeders.
  • Pet stores can coordinate with shelters to have adoptable animals on site, but pet stores have to run their business model off of pet supplies.

It quickly turned into a referendum on Pick-a-Pet, a new pet store in the outlet mall. It sounds like their animals come straight from 1000+ puppy mill operations. Also: neither side – those in favor nor those opposed – was making the strongest arguments.

Speakers who want the ban mostly argued that these laws are widespread. All the major cities in Texas either have them, or are on their way to adopting them. There are state-wide laws in California and other states regulating the sourcing of pets in pet stores.

Pick-A-Pet was under existential threat. So they trotted out speaker after speaker, talking about their darling new pet. They love animals so much! They love their darling new purebred who has no health problems. (Actually, this is the strongest argument they could have made – an appeal to emotions and snuggles.)

The other argument the pro-Pick-a-Pet People made was that this ban would create a black market for pets. Listen: this argument applies to every single law. You’ll create a black market for stealing VCRs unless you legalize stealing VCRs! If the thing is bad, then the black market is a law enforcement problem. If the thing is good, keep it legal. (Nevertheless, the argument might have been persuasive to Council.)

The best arguments in favor of the ban are:

  • why puppy mills are awful. This is the best argument, and they should have dwelled here.
  • that people can buy pure bred animals directly from Texas breeders. All the animal lovers can still have happy households.

I did like the part where the Pick-a-Pet guy said that they follow all Texas laws and regulations, and then a non-profit person said “There are no Texas laws and regulations. There was one being considered, but it died in session.”

One other thought: all the organizations have sympathetic names, regardless of which side they were on. Kennel Club? Humane Society? It made the debate sound much more balanced than it is.

Stay tuned for the anticlimactic non-resolution in Hour 3.

2. There were maybe five speakers in favor of the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan, and why we should continue our partnership. This is really important for the health of the river. The speakers focused on bank erosion down river from the falls at Cheatham Street, and how bad that is for species and the river. Hopefully this is a slam dunk.

Hours 1-2, 1/18/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

What made this meeting so short is the lack of public presentations. Mayor Hughson implied that the next meeting may be grueling, though.

First up, Citizen Comment:

  • Richard Amaya slams SMPD. Biden Bus, Ryan Hartman, other issues that have come up. (The very next day, actually, it was announced that Ryan Hartmann has been terminated. Activism making a difference.)
  • Darlene Starr speaks about the Animal Shelter and how dismally it’s being run, and how admin is driving away volunteers. This is the latest in a steady stream of speakers painting a totally dysfunctional picture of the Animal Shelter. It sounds demoralizing. I gather that we’re finally trying to hire a director, although the position has been vacant for over a year.

Non-consent Agenda

  • they tweaked the homestead exemption for disabled people and people 65 and over.
  • They created the Animal Services Committee, with Mayor Hughson, Shane Scott, and Alyssa Garza joining whichever community members are on it.
  • Packet meetings have a Do Not Resuscitate order placed on them. (No one but me can possibly be following this deathly dull story line.)

And then: Body Cameras. This was brought by Alyssa Garza, asking about the city policy around body cameras. Namely, what is it?

First, Chief Dandridge says there are state laws governing release of footage, and that SMPD follows those policies. It wasn’t clear to me if San Marcos has other, additional policies, or if the state code is the sum total.

Next, Chief Dandridge makes his main point: Police bodycam footage can’t be automatically released because it would taint all legal proceedings. It would make it very hard to seat a grand jury to get an indictment. To me, this didn’t land as quite as big a bombshell as he seemed to think it would land, because I immediately wanted to know, “Okay fine. What about after the trial is over?”

Dandridge answers that all footage is available, under FOIA, after all adjudication has ended. Fair enough.

Apparently Texas Municipal League is a resource everyone respects. Commissioner Garza has gone and found best practices for body camera footage release according to TML. She begins to go through it with Chief Dandridge, and then suggests that he just send the SMPD body camera footage policy over to council and she can read it for herself.

(Why couldn’t the policy have been included in the packet? Your guess is as good as mine.)

So that’s about where it wrapped up. Everyone professed themselves a little more informed and enlightened on body camera footage release policies. I’m interested to see if anything comes of the review of the official policy.

Post-Script: In Q&A from the press and public, LMC asked if the public has access to the body camera footage policy. Chief Dandridge says that it’s not up on their website, but that it can be FOIA’d.

Hour 2-3, 1/4/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 7 – Animal Advisory Committee

First off is this Animal Advisory Committee. For some background, there has been a steady drip of speakers over the past six months who have expressed grave concern over the vacuum of leadership at the Animal Shelter. The director position has been open for over a year. This item expands the committee’s scope. The committee just makes recommendations to City Council, though.

Immediately, Shane Scott moves to postpone this agenda item until March. It’s a weird move. He feels that this should wait until a director is hired, so that the new director can come in and forge a path.

If there was a new director starting in a week or two? Then sure. For a position which has been unfilled since October 2020? This makes no sense.

Anyway, postponement failed 6-1, and the expansion of the committee passed.

Item 22 – Setting the Agenda

The last 90 minutes of the meeting is occupied with this question of who sets the agenda for meetings. This gets into the weeds a bit. Basically, council meetings have a habit of going 6+ hours lately. They sometimes run until 2 or 3 am. It’s completely insane. (Frankly, I don’t understand why they don’t just meet weekly.)

I had a long, detailed post, and I deleted it for being ungodly boring. Setting the agenda is complicated and political. I am happy to share details if any of you want a long, boring read.

Hour 1+, 1/4/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Some of the citizen comments:
– In favor of a committee for animal services. (Which is on the agenda tonight. Spoiler: it passes.)
– Problems with SMPD: Namely, Chief Stapp’s complicity in the negligence during the Biden Bus emergency calls, and how we continue to employ him. We need SMPD oversight by external community members, instead of recycling the same individuals to guard the henhouse, so to speak.

Public Hearings:

1. There’s going to be a gas station at the corner of 123 and Clovis Barker. Eventually. This is just before you get to the McCarty overpass, heading south.

2. Renewing some low income tax credits for a housing complex (Champion’s Crossing), right at the entrance to Blanco Vista, at Yarrington Road. It’s been there for a long time, 156 apartments.


Max Baker points out that the income percentiles are based on Austin median income, not San Marcos median income. According to this, Austin median income for a family of 4 is $99K. And hooboy, those are not San Marcos numbers at all. Having apartments priced to be affordable at 40% of the median Austin income is just a regular San Marcos market rate, and yet the city is subsidizing this.

It passes unanimously. Baker basically holds his nose and votes to grandfather it in, but points out that new projects need to clear a higher bar.

3. Transportation Master Plan
Mostly they hashed these details out at the last meeting; see here. Mayor Hughson raised one last issue for discussion: reduction of driving lanes on Sessom and Craddock.

Shane Scott and Mark Gleason come out against this. Scott is pro-speed bumps in order to calm traffic, although the engineer says that Craddock and Sessom are busier thoroughfares than what you’d normally stick a speedbump on. Gleason points out that there already is a crushed granite path on Craddock, from Bishop to Old RR 12.

(Does it really extend all the way to Bishop? In my memory, the crushed granite path starts out strong on the Old 12, and then dribbles to extinction somewhere along the way. Google maps agrees with me! I win. The existing path appears to end at Ramona street, and then turn into a sidewalk till Archie, and then it peters out.)

Gleason also makes an impassioned plea to future growth. Won’t the ghost residents of tomorrow resent our bike lanes? Max Baker points out that they might also prefer the bike lanes.

Mayor Hughson asks the engineer, Richard Reynosa, some of the key questions: how much does it cost to put the bike lanes in? how reversible is the decision? what are the traffic studies showing?

Reynosa says: It’s just the cost of striping. It can easily be un-striped. The traffic studies show that these streets can handle being reduced to one lane. He points out that Sessom already has been reduced to one lane for the past year, due to construction, and will continue to be reduced for the next year.

Gleason makes another semi-nonsensical plea – what will we do in the case of natural disasters? If there is a tornado or a fire, aren’t we courting danger by reducing these roads to one lane? (Nobody responded with the obvious response: Bro, we’re just re-striping the lanes. Cars can drive over stripes, especially to flee a forest fire.) Whenever Gleason stops making sense, I start to wonder who is whispering in his ear.

Gleason makes a motion to keep Sessom and Craddock as they are.

Max Baker makes the appropriate arguments in favor: bike lanes can actually reduce the number of cars on the road. Traffic congestion is often due to speeding, and not the sheer quantity of cars on the road. Craddock in particular is like a 1950’s drag-racing avenue, just yearning to be sped down, with its wide unfettered lanes. It needs to be calmed.

Jane Hughson is persuaded mostly because this is such a cheap, easily reversible investment. Why not try it out and see how it does?

In the end, Gleason’s amendment fails:
Yes: Gleason, Scott, Gonzalez
No: Garza, Baker, Prather, Hughson

The vote on the entire transportation plan passes.
Yes: Everyone besides Shane Scott and Saul Gonzalez.
No: Those two.

Honestly, Saul Gonzalez plays his cards so close to the vest that it’s impossible to know what his game is. What didn’t he like? I have no idea!

Hours 2-3, 12/15/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

A couple small items here:

  • Eminent domain for two properties (or two parts of the same property?) involved in the Blanco Riverine Flood Mitigation project.

This is tricky. Eminent domain can be so exploitative, but once in a great while, it is needed for actual public safety. If public safety is truly on the line, then voting for it is more responsible. If there is another way to accomplish the goal, then voting against it is more responsible. Here we’re talking about flooding, so maybe this is a legitimate public safety issue. Eminent domain is obviously toxic in Texas, and it seemed like everyone was very uncomfortable with the idea. (Or at least performing discomfort.)

Mayor Hughson was clear that the city is still negotiating, and eminent domain may not ever be needed. My take: the city must feel that the property owner won’t ever negotiate until eminent domain is on the table. And then, once the threat of eminent domain is available, you’ve removed the property owner’s ability to freely enter or decline the contract.

In the end, everyone except for Max Baker and Alyssa Garza voted in favor of it. I just don’t know enough details to know if the city has worked hard enough to locate a workaround or not.

  • This one is kind of funny. Apparently the city owns the land under the Chamber of Commerce building to the Chamber, and charges them $1/year in rent. The Chamber built and owns the building on this land.

Then city’s Main Street office rents some space inside the Chamber building. The Chamber of Commerce turns around and charges the city $28,760/year in rent.

Max and Alyssa felt this was bullshit, or at least needed to be called out. I tend to agree. I don’t remember exactly how much money that we give to the Chamber, but my memory is that it’s on the order of 250K/year? They probably do help the business community, especially during Covid, but it’s hard not to suspect that business-types running a nonprofit may run it more like a business than a nonprofit.

The upshot: Max & Alyssa voted against it, and everyone else voted for it.

  • A number of items that received basically no discussion, and I don’t have enough context to evaluate: more Whisper tract things, a final vote on School Resource Officers, some Animal Advisory Committee details, and some Ethics Review Board disclosure details, and trying to locate some money for First Baptist NBC to compensate for the money that had gotten redirected PALS.

The Ethics Review Board one was regarding the financial disclosure forms that City Council and P&Z members have to fill out each year. The ERB wants more specificity. (Shane Scott balked, but it wasn’t clear that he was necessarily hiding anything. He’s generally contrarian when it comes to the ERB.)

Hour 1, 12/15/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Let’s discuss the Transportation Master Plan. The main issue here is bikes, and whether their lanes should be protected, shared, buffered, or sharrows. Here’s a nice graphic from here:

If I were to name them, I’d call them Safe, Scary, Pleasant, and Terrifying.

There was significant discussion on whether or not sharrows are terrifying. On the one side, it appears that many studies focus on the perceived safety of sharrows and not the actual safety of sharrows. It took me about two seconds of googling to find a study that clarified this point, though. So I’m calling shenanigans on the sharrows-advocates here.

Another point of contention: Barnes Drive and Monterrey Oaks. Both have the potential to be great biking places. Barnes Drive runs parallel to I-35 and can get bikers to their jobs at the outlet mall. Monterrey Oaks connects the neighborhood to Bouie elementary and the high school. The planning department pled that neither spot can handle a bike lane, and thus both of them have to be sharrows. The city council was pretty united in their polite skepticism.

Here’s my not-so-polite skepticism: wtf, planners? Neither of those roads are high speed thoroughfares, and both are plenty wide. The planners seemed tragically dedicated to the sanctity of turn lanes. It did not seem to occur to them that Bouie elementary might want a bike lane, and might even turn over some easement without a fight to make it happen. And Barnes Drive? The road that separates giant parking lots that are never full? This seems like the least difficult needle to thread. I’M ROLLING MY EYES.

City Council was great. Max Baker was the most outspoken proponent, but Shane Scott and Mayor Hughson also advocated forcefully for traffic calming measures and general bike safety improvements. Baker amended the plan to include both Barnes and Monterrey Oaks, and the city staff acknowledged that it wasn’t impossible. It would just take time and money. The amendments passed unanimously.

Anyway, this is not the final vote. This all comes up one more time. There was reasonably good turnout among the cycling community – maybe four or five speakers? Hopefully they keep mobilizing and advocating for Less Terrifying options.

Hour 4, 12/7/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 2: Shane Scott had pulled Item 2 from the consent agenda, on an interlocal agreement between the university and city on Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan.

Now, I clearly missed some workshop and they did not explain what was going on, so I’m using my context clues here. First Scott proposed postponing the agenda item until December, 2022. How is this not a jerk move? If it walks, talks, and quacks like a jerk move, then I mean…

Anyhow, nobody seconded his motion, and so he changed it to February 2022. At this point they had a meaningful conversation about some fence somewhere and some details, and it sounded like other councilmembers also had questions. So the postponement passed 5-1, with only Baker dissenting.

Item 24: A resolution against anti-semitism and hate crimes.

There really has been a disturbing amount of anti-semitism in these parts lately, as well as the chronic background static of anti-Black and anti-Hispanic racism, in different ways. This resolution is… nice? There’s nothing wrong with it? The councilmembers sort of had the giggles with how enthusiastically they were supporting this measure, which did not help it seem very substantial.

Item 28: Banning the sale of cats and dogs at pet stores.

This item was a discussion item, not a voting item. It sounds like the most promising outcome is to require that private venues source their cats and dogs from animal rescue shelters and humane societies.

Gleason was worried about the mom and pop breeders. That kind of drives me crazy – I suspect mom and pop breeders are quite capable of keeping animals in sadistic living standards. Not universally, but it’s not a group that I want to give a wholesale pass to, either.