Category: Hour summaries

Hours 0:00 – 2:39, 12/3/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen comment

Comments are a hodge-podge this week:

  • Salvation Army was denied some grant funding, they’d like it restored.
  • Demolition notices on Valley Street
  • Rio Vista incident with SMPD that we heard about last time
  • One person in favor of the Purgatory Creek rezoning, and one person opposed.
  • Ok, this last one is fun. This guy wants to build a Glidescape in town, which is a solar powered roller rink, with vertical farms that grow fresh food, immersive STEM workshops, virtual reality tournaments, and planetarium, which can transform into a disaster-resistant facility when the community needs a shelter. He wants a Chapter 380 agreement and maybe some tax breaks to bring this vision to San Marcos.

I honestly assumed the speaker was maybe someone on a manic phase. But he seems to be an active person with a lot going on on this website and also this one? I still am not sure if San Marcos can support a planetarium-vertical-farm-roller rink, but we can’t know for sure until we try.

…

Item 1: San Marcos got a bunch of federal money after the 2015 floods, to help with recovery.

As of December 2024, the grants are all done. We’re officially done with flood recovery funds, and hopefully the community feels restored.

…

Items 2-3: Fiscal reports for April-May-June 2024 and July-August-September 2024.

We had ample warning that sales tax was coming in low, and we adjusted and pulled things back.

This is April-June:

The striped green and blue is what we thought we’d have. But then the solid green and blue are what we ended up having. But the solid blue is still less than the solid green, so our budget stayed balanced.

Then July-September looks even more back to normal:

Our sales tax was down because one specific business had their revenue way down. That’s supposed to go back to normal next year.

…

Items 19-21: The Hays Government Center is off Wonderworld, on Stagecoach:

All around it is a big chunk of undeveloped natural land:

It separates the Dunbar neighborhood from Wonderworld.

It’s never been developed, mostly because Purgatory Creek and Willow Springs Creek both run through it:

So it can get very wet and marshy in there.

Way back in the 1980s, this land was all zoned Light Industrial and General Commercial:

Here’s what General Commercial and Light Industrial mean:

So the owner, currently, is allowed to build anything in that chart, without getting permission from the city.

Honestly, back in the 1980s, this area was basically outside of town. And the people in charge did not worry about Dunbar neighborhood flooding.  

Fastforward to 2024

Now we do care about Dunbar flooding! How we’ve grown.

The city is working on the Purgatory Creek Mitigation Project, stretching from the river out to Purgatory:

(That’s my kludged-together map, joining Phase 1 and Phase 2.)

It’s going to be a big trench to help with flooding, with a big hike-and-bike trail running through it:

and the trail will connect the the river, through Dunbar, and over to Purgatory Creek Natural Area on Hunter and Wonderworld.

This trail cuts across the land that we’re talking about:

They’re calling this part of the trail “Hun-Dun” because it connects Hunter Road and Dunbar. Very cute, you all.

So the city approached the owner and asked about acquiring this land for that part of the trail: 

The owner of the land said, “Well, as long as we’re looking at this land, what if we change it all around?” He is proposing the following zonings:

The green part will contain the Hun-Dun trail.

So what about the pink and blue parts?

First off, both are down-zoning. They are less intensive than Light Industrial and General Commercial. So that’s good, but it’s also pretty weak, because the old zonings were kind of ridiculous.

Blue will be CD-5. Mostly this means large apartment complexes.   Pink will be CD-4, which usually means slightly smaller complexes, or things like townhomes.  

What did Council say?

There are two main themes to the conversation: flooding and new roads.

  1. Flooding.  If all this housing is built, will it increase flooding in Dunbar? After all, it’s going to displace a bunch of water. That’s basically why this area hasn’t been built out yet.

Answer:  According to our Land Development Code, you aren’t allowed to build something that makes flooding worse for people downstream.

Jane Hughson kind of laughs darkly, saying “We know how well that works.”

Amanda Rodriguez asks exactly how this gets enforced?

Answer: It’s prepared and checked by engineers.

Note: “Prepared and checked by engineers” is all well and good, but that’s not enforcement.  What happens if the builder cuts a bunch of corners? Enforcement has to come after that. Will city staff actually withhold their building permit and require them to fix it? Or will we just good-naturedly punch them on the shoulder and say, “Bro! You know better! Try not to do this again, but here’s your permit.” 

The answer is: who knows! That step is invisible. 

The second enforcement comes with maintenance: if you have a retention pond, do you check the drain and pumps regularly? Does the city? What happens if the drains get clogged and no one pays to have them cleaned? Will the city actually remove your permit? Or will they just wring their hands and say, “I hope this gets fixed!”

2.   The roads

Which roads should connect into this new neighborhood?

Councilmembers talk in particular about Gravel Road and Bintu road:

Gravel Road is a sleepy little dead-end with some houses on it. Bintu is a sleepy little road with a Holiday Inn on it.

Here’s the Transportation Master Plan:

So you can see that in theory, MLK and Gravel are both going to be extended across Purgatory Creek, into this new neighborhood. And Bintu is supposed to be extended across the tracks, to connect the I-35 frontage road into the neighborhood.

Is this a good idea?

It depends!!

Bintu Road extension: Yes, I think this is a great idea. No one lives there. Another way to get across the tracks would be great. Let’s do it.

Gravel Road and MLK extensions:

If you have two sleepy neighborhoods that are back-to-back, it is generally a good idea to connect them.  You want the people in these neighborhoods to have multiple ways to leave in case of flooding, for example.  Connectivity is good.

However! If you connect two sleepy neighborhoods and Gravel Road becomes the New I-35 Workaround, then that’s a whole lot of traffic that these neighbors didn’t bargain for.  All of a sudden, cars are zooming down Gravel Road at 50 mph.  

At the same time, the city does need more roads running parallel to I-35, aside from just Hopkins.  Maybe MLK? (My vote is also for Leah Drive, on the east side, and to extend the road that runs by Target, Barnes Drive, all the way to Wonderworld.)

Answer: Stay tuned! This will be a fiery debate when the Transportation Master Plan comes up for revision in the next 1-2 years!

…

Here’s the bottom line: currently, the developer is allowed to build all kinds of nasty things.  Our hands are tied here.  We’re not zoning new, rural land.  We’re re-zoning land where the owner has current rights to build all sorts of things.  This is a least-bad-decision.

Each part – blue, pink, green – gets its own vote:

The Blue Vote: Should the blue part be big apartment complexes?

The Pink Vote: Should the pink part be smaller scale dense housing, like townhomes?

I probably would have voted yes. It’s a good place for town homes and moderately dense housing. We just have to be thoughtful about the Transportation Master Plan.

The Green Vote: Should the green part be set aside for the trail?

That last one is easy. 

One final note: The developer says he doesn’t actually have any plans right now. This is not going to be immediately developed in the next 2-3 years.

Hours 2:39 – 4:58, 12/3/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Now we get into the weeds. These next five items are pulled from the Consent Agenda by Amanda Rodridguez. This means that Staff guessed that no one would want to discuss anything, and Amanda said, “Not so fast!”.

(Alyssa and Jane also pulled items, but just had a quick question on each one.)

The five items are:
– Mailing parking tickets directly to people
– New bathrooms at Dunbar park
– Covid money for mental health collaboration between SMPD and a mental health treatment center.
– SMPD buying seven new Tahoes for $350K
– SMPD applying for a grant to start a Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Unit

A few observations:

First, Amanda is thorough. Holy moly. She is reading everything with a fine tooth comb.

Second, what is Amanda’s point?

Her larger point is that these are the kinds of things we approve automatically. Taken together, these five items add up to $709K. (For perspective, keep in mind that we budget $550K yearly on social services.)

We just aren’t this generous – both in dollars and spirit – in other areas. Recall how it took Alyssa years of banging on about it to get $115K extra Covid money set up for emergency housing. Why is $350K for police cars so easy, and $115K for emergency housing so difficult? What Amanda is doing in these next five items is scrutinizing items that usually pass uninspected.

Honestly, I would vote in favor of all five items. I don’t actually think they are abusing city dollars.

It’s just that this level of generosity should be the standard, and it’s not. When it comes to my pet issues – homelessness, holding landlords accountable, transit, the parks department, etc – we should be as quick and gracious to fully fund them, as we are when it’s time to spend $350K on new police cars.

“BUT WAIT!” you cry, “We can’t afford to spend a million dollars all over the place like that! We’re broke!”

Gentle Reader: never forget that we spend $1.2 million on Kissing Tree each year. And it’s gated, and you’re not allowed in. Sorry.

….

Anyway! Onto the weedy details.  Brace yourself.

Item 4: Mailing parking tickets

The parking lot next to the Lion’s Club is going to become a pay lot. Supposedly it’s going to be free for residents (but the details are murky). Out-of-towners will get their parking tickets mailed to them. (We discussed this last time.)

The first issue: In general, there’s an Early Bird discount – 50% off! – if you pay your tickets off early. You get 14 days to get the discount.

But if you’re mailing tickets out, you’d want to extend that window to account for the mail. Staff said 17 days. Amanda wants 30 days.

This is a little tricky because there’s also a late fee that kicks in at 30 days. Council decides to extend the Early Bird discount to 29 days on tickets-by-mail. The very next day, the late fee deadline will kick in.

Amanda Rodriguez has a number of other notes:

  • She wants to fully fund the parks department, but not through fees and fines.  (This is a big issue, nationwide. Map here showing that San Marcos is not a big offender, though.)
  • There’s a bunch of murkiness in the policy language: operators versus car owner? Standing vs parking?  Are robots writing tickets here?

They clean up the ordinance a little bit.  Robots are only scanning license plates as you enter or exit the parking lot.  The rest of tickets are being written by people, and the system mails them automatically.

You’re supposed to be allowed to load and unload for up to 30 minutes in this lot. But right now, the ordinance is ambiguous:

The Vote: Should we clean up language to allow for lawful loading and unloading?

Yes, of course:  Jane, Amanda, Alyssa, Saul, and Mark
HELL NO! Ticket them to smithereens:  Matthew Mendoza. 

Okay Matthew, if you think that’s best.

…

Amanda’s next point: Paid parking for out-of-town residents reflects an “Us vs. them” mentality. We should welcome our visitors, not shake them down. 

The counter argument to this is put forth by Mark Gleason and the city manager, Stephanie Reyes:

  • San Marcos residents don’t use the river, because they’re too full of out-of-towners.
  • The out-of-towners aren’t spending money in our downtown, or hotels, or restaurants. They pack in a cooler and leave town after they get out of the river.
  • The parks and river are getting trashed and destroyed, and there’s a lot of drunken fights and medical problems.  San Marcos is stuck paying for this unless we can collect some money from the out-of-towners.

Jane also has a good point: why is this ordinance so narrow?  Right now, it’s only city park.  Why not write it to include future paid parking lots?  (This does not get fixed.)

More points from Amanda:

  • This is 6 am – 11 pm every day.  No free parking after 5 pm? Holidays or something?
  • Registration process for San Marcos residents – how will that work? It’s supposed to be free for them.

Answer: there will be a big education campaign! We’ll hold events at the library.

Alyssa chimes in: San Marcos has a big problem with roll outs. How many people have microchipped their pets? How many people have signed up for the Enhanced ID at the library? How did the can ban PSA go?

All of those public information campaigns sounded great in paper, but in practice, we just don’t connect with people.

(Note: good public outreach is extremely time-intensive. It’s not enough just to translate everything into Spanish and promote things on social media. You basically need to maintain close and healthy relationships with a lot of community leaders who are in close contact with your hard-to-reach populations. What church does your population go to? What barbershop? Etc.)

Finally: This is just a pilot program. If Council wants to shut this down next year, there will be an opportunity.

As Parks and Rec director Jamie Lee Case says, “City Council will have a chance to decide if the juice is worth the squeeze.” She wins my most-favorite line of the night, hands down.

The final vote: Should we mail parking tickets from the City Park parking lot?

Amanda and Alyssa are both no, mostly due to lack of details on how the registration process will work.

I probably would have voted for it? It seems like a pretty cautious step.

…

Note: The vast majority of conversation these days is between Alyssa Garza, Amanda Rodriguez, and Jane Hughson.   Just because I’m a shit-stirrer and this made me laugh:  

At 3:01: Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, and Matthew Mendoza are all clearly on their phones.  I guess someone does not find the intricacies of parking violations as thrilling as I do?  Talk about a violation of Municode Chapter 23.46, Section 3.0045, paragraph 8.243. 

…

Item 6:  We’re spending some Covid money on installing new bathrooms at Dunbar.

Amanda Rodriguez is thorough.  Like thorough. 

She catches that the contract does not include baby changing tables nor little trashcans for used period products, and asks that those be added in.  

Everyone agrees that this is a good idea.

….

Item 8: Oh, so confusing. 

Here’s the caption:

But here’s what was originally posted, back in November:

The problem is that there’s no such thing as “the City Mental Health Court Program”.  So they changed it on the agenda to SMPD. (Currently this is how the program works: SMPD mental health unit identifies people who need mental health or substance abuse treatment, and refers them out to Evoke Wellness for treatment. Then Evoke Wellness provides in-patient and out-patient substance abuse and mental health treatment.)

What Amanda brings up, though, is that there’s an entire contract in the packet between the City, the treatment center, and the non-existent City Mental Health Court Program. 

No one seems to know what’s going on.

This gets postponed. However, this is Covid money, which expires on December 31st. So it absolutely has to get squared away at the next council meeting.

…

Item 9: SMPD wants $371K to buy seven new shiny Chevy Tahoes.

Ideally they like to replace police cars every five years. But due to Covid shortages, these are more like 7-8 years old.

Amanda Rodriguez points out that plenty of people drive cars much longer than that.

Chief Standridge explains that the game is to optimize resale value. The Tahoes we’re selling are 7-8 years old, have about 80-85K miles on them, and about 6500 idle hours. (Reddit tells me each idle hour is equivalent to 25 miles driven.) If they wait any longer, repair costs go up and resale costs go down, and everyone gets bummed out.

Each car is $52K, plus each car gets its own fancy Police costume. Installing the costume on the Tahoe, inside and out, is about $20K per car.

Alyssa Garza follows up: SMPD officers use police cars to do their off-duty work. So they’re putting wear and tear on these cars. Can the private companies pay to offset the cost of the vehicles?

(Max Baker and Alyssa actually first brought this up back in 2021. )

Chief Standridge says he actually just met with someone about this just last month! Nothing happened. One of the off-duty employers is SMCISD, and we don’t want to spring it on them.

(I mean, it’s been over three years.)

They also say that we should be leasing SMPD vehicles instead of buying them. This is cheaper in the long run. But because of the tax shortfall this summer, we couldn’t budget for an ongoing expense, so we have to use special one-time money to purchase them.

The vote:

…

I warned you that these items were weedy! There’s still one more to go.

…

Item 14: Autocrimes Unit

SMPD is applying for a state grant for $177K. This would pay for establishing a Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Unit, with one full-time officer and a bunch of license plate cameras.

It’s not free – the city pays $35K in matching funds.

Amanda points out that there were 157 stolen cars last year. Out of 70,000 residents, that’s 2.2 vehicles per 1000 people. Her point is that this is inflated in people’s minds. Everyone acts like it’s a giant issue, but that’s actually fairly small.

Here are some other problems, for perspective:

  • 27.7% of San Marcos residents live under the poverty line. That is 277 per 1000 people.
  • I don’t know how many jobs pay minimum wage, but it is definitely more than 2.2 per 1000 people. We could raise the minimum wage.
  • As of 2017, we needed almost 6000 more low-income housing units. Obviously housing prices have gone up, but let’s use the 6000: that works out to 85 units needed per 1000 people.
  • The uninsured rate in San Marcos is 16.1%. That works out to 161 uninsured people per 1000 people.

Chief Standridge is a hard no on any mitigating context! He wants zero crime!

Amanda grills him on the value of education, and why is it deprioritized in this grant application?

Chief Standridge argues that they do tons of other education! Also, out-of-towners come in to take cars. We can’t educate out-of-towners. Education is only one piece of the larger approach.

Mark Gleason is furious. This is an epidemic! There is a 50% increase in stolen vehicles from 2023 to 2024! These stolen vehicles get used for crimes!

(Repo man)

Mark and Amanda have an angry exchange. If you want to listen, it goes from 4:30:49 – 4:34:15.

Mark is furious that others aren’t taking car theft seriously. He sees a stolen car as derailing someone’s livelihood, and he’s furious that Amanda is challenging Chief Standridge’s plan to reduce this epidemic.

Amanda is furious that we don’t take other problems as seriously as we take car theft. Yes, it’s super shitty if your car gets stolen. But here we are, prepared to drop $35K to match a grant without any discussion, and we don’t apply this same eagerness and dollar amounts to issues that affect a lot more people. As policy makers, council’s job is to figure out how to compare apples and oranges and apply some consistency across many different issues. Right now it’s wildly inconsistent.

Alyssa and Matthew Mendoza also get snippy with each other – if you want to listen, it’s at 4:29-4:30.

Saul doesn’t get snippy with anyone! But he does ask: How do we pay for this two years from now, when the grant runs out?

Answer: It’s a recurring grant. We expect to get it again.

The vote:

…

Phew! That’s it for the items pulled from the consent agenda.

…

The rest of the meeting is extremely short.

Item 24: Tantra is going to get reimbursed the $750 fee for appealing the noise violation. Yay!

…

Item 25: Right now each councilmember gets $12K to travel to conferences.

Shane Scott wants to double this to $24K. City Manager Stephanie Reyes gets a little faint at the notion of magically locating $84K extra dollars in the budget for this.

This will come back around, with more details. Like do all the council members even spend all their money? Maybe they can share the pool a little bit amongst themselves.

Hours 0:00 – 3:21, 11/19/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen comment:

  1. Live music at Tantra Coffee Shop. 
    P&Z killed their live music back in September.  The community is livid! We’ll hash it out in Item 9, below.
  1. One speaker talks about deer. (Item 17, at the end of the meeting.)
    – Urban deer are responsible for more deaths than any other animal. 
    – In 2010, Council thought hard about this, and decided to do nothing.  Now we’ve got an even bigger problem.
    – Also, stop feeding the deer, even though they’re cutie-patooties, with their big eyes and spritely tails.
  1. November 10th, in Rio Vista.  Two speakers talk about this. 
    – Apparently there was a violent dispute, and a shot was fired, and the cops were called.  The guy with the gun left the scene.
    – The cops showed up with 8 cop cars, SWAT teams, set off 6 flash bombs from neighbor’s yard, blared megaphones, and generally acted like the circus-military was setting up camp in Rio Vista for a night of revelry, from midnight to 3 am. 
    – The suspect was not at home, this entire time.
    – This police response did not make the speakers feel safer, whatsoever. It felt like an untrained, reckless mess.

4. At the 3 pm workshops, Virginia Parker talked about Cape’s Dam. She is the director of the San Marcos River Foundation, aka SMRF. (Cape’s Dam explainer here. Warning: I wrote that when I was a baby blogger. I did my best.)

Here’s what Virginia Parker says: SMRF owns the high bank at Cape’s Dam. For ten years, SMRF has been saying that removal of the dam is the best thing for the environment. The city has been dragging their feet, and saying they’re going to hire a project manager to run a feasibility study on rebuilding the dam. There’s no money to hire this person. This study is not coming anytime soon.

Virginia Parker says: Cut the bullshit. (My words. She is far more polite about it.) SMRF will never agree to rebuilding the dam, and they own the high bank. The city would have to take it under eminent domain.

So (she says): Dissolve the agreement with the county. Reallocate the money. Dams are not safe – a teenager just lost his life there recently.

Plus, there are federal grants available for dam removal. It’s free. It’s the fastest and cheapest way to deal with this situation.

I totally agree! Listen to Virginia Parker!

Onto the meeting!

Item 9: Tantra Coffee Shop

You know you love Tantra:

photo credit

Back in September, Tantra went to renew their alcohol permit. This is where our story starts – at that Planning and Zoning meeting.

The P&Z Meeting: September 24th

There was one speaker (LMC) who was mad about the music.  “They’re blasting profanities and obscenities into the HEB parking lot!!”   She’s called the cops on them two or three times, but nothing ever came of it. Because there was no actual violation taking place.  

Now, LMC talks at almost every meeting. She’s prolific. P&Z and Council are used to taking her comments in stride.

But P&Z kicked things off with guns blazing.  Jim Garber had a well-prepared speech.  First he compares the decibel levels allowed at a bunch of other towns, but he mostly cherry-picks residential areas.  (More on this below.)

This is the most absurd part of the speech, and I’m quoting verbatim here:

“Frank Sinatra tells us that New York City is the city that doesn’t sleep at night. He’s wrong. Because in residential areas, in various boroughs, [the noise cap] varies in daytime 45-55 decibels. We allow 85.  At night, 35-45.   So New York does sleep at night! The city that doesn’t sleep at night is San Marcos! You experience more noise in downtown San Marcos than you will in New York City.  Something to think about.”

You guys: no.  San Marcos is not louder than Manhattan.  I promise. New York is such a dense, stacked place that small noises quickly amplify.  So they have to control the noise output of things like air conditioners, ventilation, bars, construction sites, and garbage trucks.  You get this ambient background noise level, and then all other sounds ratchet up, in competition. 

New York City is not remotely parallel to live music at Tantra, with the occasional naughty word floating over to HEB.

Garber wraps up his speech with the 60 decibel limit for Tantra.  There’s one single other comment from a P&Z commissioner, about how un-family-friendly it is to have vulgar music blasting into a grocery store. 

The owner of Tantra is attending the meeting! He’s there on the zoom! But no one asks him a question, so he can’t say anything.

The P&Z vote is unanimous: Tantra’s alcohol permit comes with a 60 decibel cap.

The whole discussion takes just over five minutes.

How bad is 60 decibels?

The problem is that 60 decibels is actually very quiet:

So P&Z has effectively killed live music at Tantra with this decision.

So Tantra appealed P&Z’s decision at City Council this week.

The stakes are high! It takes 6 votes to overturn a P&Z decision.

First off, Council is absolutely flooded with emails and speakers. They got over 200 emails. Between Citizen Comment and the public hearing, there are over 50 people speaking in person. The major themes are “This place is community. This place is love. This place makes me happy when life gets hard.” It’s a pretty amazing testimony.

Everyone’s favorite speaker is a kid who plays the harmonica for council, and explains that they’ll be playing at Tantra on Friday, because Tantra is the only family-friendly music establishment that allows kids to perform. It was adorable.

My favorite written comment – hilarious, but maybe less adorable:

I love a straight-talker. I laughed.

 Basically, Council listens to 2.5 hours of people pleading them not to kill their happy place.  

Several people have decibel readers with them, and point out that this very city council meeting has ranged from about 70-90 decibels!

(Staff also provided this corrective to the specific noise ordinances mentioned at P&Z:

So San Marcos is not an outlier.)

Council discussion

Right off the bat, it’s clear that it’s going to be reversed.  No one is defending the ridiculous 60 decibel cap. 

Mark Gleason proposes:

  • 1 year permit instead of a 3 year permit
  • 75 decibels after 7 pm on Sundays

No one goes for either of these propositions.  

Amanda Rodriguez – our new, shiny councilmember! – asks about getting the owner reimbursed for the $750 appeals fee.  Everyone is on board with this, but it’s a whole process.   So yes, but not tonight.

Both Alyssa Garza and Mark Gleason say, “This is why the community has to show up at P&Z meetings!” 

I think that’s wrong! This should have been an easy case at P&Z. It would be exhausting if you had to rally all your clientele every time an ordinary alcohol permit needed to be renewed. Tantra was in good standing and had not violated any conditions of their permit.

Really, P&Z made a mangled mess of this permit. No one could have seen this coming. They should have spent more than five minutes on this discussion (and perhaps staff should have encouraged them to postpone when they felt it was going off the rails.) 

THE VOTE TO REVERSE THE DECIBEL BAN: 

Council knows which side its bread is buttered on.

Finally, let’s talk about swear words. 

Some band was playing Rage Against the Machine songs on a Sunday night.  There was profanity. You could hear it at HEB.

But listen:  Can we stop pretending that bad words make little childrens’ ears bleed?

You can say a  really kind, nice sentence with the word “shit” in it, and you can cruelly eviscerate someone without using any bad words at all.  The absolute deference that this country pays to naughty words is mind-boggling. 

One last nerdy note:

Decibels are a logarithmic scale. If you increase by ten units, you’ve multiplied the sound by a factor of 10. So Garber’s proposal to go from 85 db to 60 db was gigantic: he actually scaled the cap by 1/500th.

If he had only dropped the cap to 82 db, he could have cut the sound in half, without anyone being the wiser. (Nice chart here.)

Hours 3:21 – 5:07, 11/19/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 10:  LIHTC Housing (LIHTC = Low Income Housing Tax Credits)

Back in May, we approved this LIHTC Complex:

It’s for senior citizens. Right around the corner from Target.

How affordable will these units be? The developer agreed to set aside a certain number of affordable units:

AMI means the Austin Area Median Income. So 30% AMI means your family’s yearly income is 30% of the median Austin income. But the Austin median income is $86K, whereas the San Marcos median household income is $47K.

So the categories are a little weird. Those 188 units at 51-60% AMI? That’s low income for Austin, but pretty normal for San Marcos.

….

The developer is back, and wants permission to change some things.  First, they want to loosen the ranges of incomes:

So he wants to take the 188 units for families earning $63-$75K, and spread them out for incomes earning $63K-$100K.

Side note: You can live in an apartment intended for a higher income than yours. However, you would not get a fully reduced rent:

The guy also changed his mind on BBQ grills and picnic tables, due to space concerns.  He wants to swap them out for two horseshoe pits.

Jane, Alyssa, and Amanda are all not happy about this. 

The developer says he’s got a market study. There’s just not demand for the under 60% AMI group! If he can extend to the 80% range, he’ll be able to find more residents. 

Jane is open to this, but she doesn’t like the unspecified numbers.  She proposes this:

0-30% AMI: 34 units
51-60% AMI: 86 units
61-80 % AMI: 102 units

Her reasoning goes like this: Seniors get a yearly 3% cost of living increase on Social Security. If you were earning 60% AMI and you get that bump, you could get priced out. Suddenly you’re making 61% of the AMI.  You don’t qualify for your apartment anymore. If there’s not a tier above you, you have to pay market rate, or move.

Alyssa and Amanda call bullshit on the whole market study.  (ME TOO.)  It just doesn’t pass the sniff test that San Marcos has run out of families earning less than $75K, and you have to subsidize families earning up to $100K.  Our median household income is $47K, for pete’s sake! 

The developer does not have the actual market study on hand, to show council.

Amanda calls him out on this: Does this market study even reflect the people we’re trying to help? We don’t know, because we haven’t seen it.

The vote on Jane’s amendment: (86 units under 60%, 102 units under 80%)

Yes:  Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzales, Mark Gleason
No:  Alyssa Garza, Amanda Rodriguez

But!! It takes four votes to pass.  Since Matthew and Shane are absent, this fails. 

The developer pleads that it’s not a complete blank check! The subsidized apartments still have to average out to 60%! 

The final vote:

Should the developer get to split up the Under 60% category however he wants?

Sorry, dude! 

…

Item 7:  We’re down to the final dregs of Covid money.

Last time, we discussed this funding:

Alyssa Garza basically chewed everyone out for never, ever prioritizing rental assistance. I mean, she was nice about it. But she has said this one million times.

And lo! They made it work! New funding plan:

Staff thinks we can give this rental assistance out with fewer strings attached than CDBG money.   This is very good, too.

…

Item 12:  Getting ticketed at the Lion’s Club.

Paid Parking is coming next summer to the City Park parking lot.  (Ie the Lions Club parking lot.)  Instead of paying someone to write tickets, they want to use cameras and mail the tickets out.  

Some extra details:

  • The lot will free for San Marcos residents, but you have to go online and sign up somehow.
  • If you pay within 14 days, you get a discount.

Council asks good questions:

Amanda: How does the 14 days work? From the day of the ticket? What if they’ve got some situation and their mail isn’t coming promptly?
Answer: We could change that. What about if it’s 14 days from when the ticket arrives at the house?
Amanda: ?? How would you know?  Let’s just make it 30 days.

Saul: Is there a warrant if this isn’t paid?
Answer: San Marcos parking tickets are a civil offense, so no.  Hays County, though: those are criminal offenses. They’ll getcha.

Amanda: What happens if someone’s car breaks down?
Answer: There is an appeals process.

Amanda: What’s the resident registry process like?
Answer: It’s online.  We are also going to do some library outreach to help people sign up. 

Alyssa: I can’t actually find the appeals process online. 
Answer: Yep.  We’re going to put the link on the actual citation that you get in the mail.

The vote: 5-0

…

Item 13: NEW FIRE TRUCK!

We’re getting an ERV010 Star Side Mount Pumper Truck with a 500-gallon tank and 1500 GPM pump.

I’m guessing that it looks something like this: 

…

Item 14:  Five Mile Dam

If you know the youth soccer league, you know that it all happens at Five Mile Dam:

image source

Which is located here:

The soccer fields opened in 2010.  They’re owned by the county, but maintained by the city.  So the city pays for the lighting, playground, sprinklers, etc.

This photo makes it look like maybe the sprinklers aren’t working? Idk.

Surge Soccer uses the fields for free.  (Surge used to be called SMAYSO, changed their name, missed their opportunity to call themselves Smoccer.)  This helps keep prices cheap for San Marcos families. Surge is good about this.

…

Hays County is selling us the Five Mile Dam parks. But Hays County doesn’t actually care about the soccer fields.

What Hays County cares about are these two other parks:

  1. Dudley Johnson Park:

2. Randall Wade Vetter Park:

Let’s zoom in on that sign:

Yep! That’s the right place!

Those are here:

At least, that’s my best guess.

So these three properties are a package deal. You want the soccer fields? You have to take Dudley Johnson and Randall Wade Vetter.

How much is Hays charging us? 

Zero! It’s free!   Wow, they must really want to get rid of those parks. 

The last dam report was in 2016, and at that point, the dam was in good condition.   And the county will help with maintenance on the parks for the next year.

Is this good for us? 

Yes. We want those soccer fields, or else Surge Soccer won’t stay cheap for local kids.

The danger is that Kyle or some private company would buy the fields.  They can make a lot of money renting them out.  But it would end Surge soccer.  Or at least, the affordable, community-focused version of Surge. 

Soccer is the biggest youth sport in San Marcos, by far. It’s important to secure these fields. 

Council votes unanimously for this deal.

….

Item 16: Blanco Vista Water Tower

Same neighborhood as Five Mile Dam! They’re getting a water tower, as part of all this ARWA stuff.  There is $50K in the ARWA budget set aside to paint the water towers. 

How would we like to paint it?

Here’s what our other towers look like:

Here’s what some neighbors do:

Here’s what some fancier cities do:

We could either keep it simple, or pay $100K+ to go all out. 

Council: keep it simple. 

…

Item 17:  The Deer

Deer are a big problem.  Mostly they cause a lot of car crashes, but they can also get impaled on your fences. (Ewwwwww.)  

A speaker came from Texas Parks & Wildlife, and talked to the neighborhood commission.  Basically, the first step is to get people to stop feeding the deer.  

Should we ban feeding the deer?

  • Pros: deer are a big problem.  
  • Cons: have you seen how cute they are, with their big eyes and fluffy tails???

The Neighborhood Commission decides on an education campaign, instead of an outright ban, because of all those people who love the big-eyed-fluffy-tailed-deer.

What does Council think?

MARK GLEASON HAS VERY STRONG FEELINGS! 

  • First, even if you ban feeding, it won’t help.  Too much available food.
  • Deer have no natural predators.
  • You must hunt! Open up the parks to hunting!
  • We could make a whole weekend of it! Have drawn hunts! 

This is a thing – see here and here.  And Texas does allow hunting at its state parks.

The problem is that Mark is bringing a huge energy here – It must be discussed! It works! Cutting people off. It’s the only thing that works! – and everyone is a little taken aback. 

Jane: They’ve been hunting on my land for 20 years, and it doesn’t keep the deer away.

Mark: IT WORKS! You just need to hunt a few. After a few generations, the mothers keep their babies away!

Alyssa: I dunno, doesn’t work on my dad’s ranch either.

Eventually Jane shushes him, and everyone goes back to talking about corn. 

 Don’t feed the deer, everyone, but really don’t feed them corn.

…

Item 18: Animal Shelter Vacancy

We finally got it filled.  The new person talks about how much they love animals, and how they’ve fostered and volunteered before. 

(I still have a lingering weird feeling about the other person who was jerked around by Council for months, but this person seems fine.)

Hours 0:00 – 0:50, 11/6/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Onto the little meeting!   

Just one citizen comment, from a community member about the Dunbar Heritage buildings that are under renovation.

…

Item 12: The good people of Riverside Drive want to ban parking on their street.

The issue is that the street fills up with river-goers in the summer. Since there is not enough proper parking around the falls, people park on Riverside Drive during the summer, and walk over. 

Look, I’m not in a great mood.  I didn’t like it last month on Sturgeon, and I don’t like it now.

  1. This is exclusionary.  The street does not belong to you.  

  2. It’s counter-productive! Street parking is a traffic-calming measure. It makes drivers go more slowly, instead of tearing through your neighborhood at 40 mph.

  3. I might be sympathetic if local residents did not have driveways, and were forced to park away from their houses and walk to get home.  But that is not what is happening. The residents of this street put out orange traffic cones to block river-users from parking in front of their houses.  They’re not putting their own cars out on the street. 

  4. The parking ban is year round. (Holidays and weekends.) There is no reason for the ban to exist during the winter.  Does it matter? No, but it’s overreach.  

Living near the river is a privilege.  The streets belong to the public, and that includes those who want to visit the river.  I’m just not in the mood for territoriality and exclusion at the moment. 

The Vote:

Yes, parking bans are great: everybody
No, parking bans are the worst: nobody

Oh well. At least I can rant on the blog.

…

Item 4:  The new HEB.

Everyone cheered and quickly voted on this, in about 30 seconds.

Here were my concerns last time:

  • Would all HEB employees get the $15/hour as required by local ordinance, even at the existing stores?
  • Can we include something about wage and benefits, to make sure our workers are given good jobs?
  • Is it in writing that Little HEB will stay open for a certain number of years? 
  • Can we ask HEB about purchasing that little triangle of land next to Purgatory Creek from them?

Here’s what council said about these questions:

[Nothing.] 

I know, we were all consumed with the election. But I still wish we’d fought on behalf of employees.

The vote:

YAY HEB 4-EVAH: Everybody, unanimous, etc. 
I hate everyone’s favorite grocery store:  nobody.

…

Item 10: The Mitchell Center

We mentioned this last time at the workshop: it’s being handed over to the Calaboose African American History Museum. 

It’s located here, tucked in the back corner of Dunbar park:

Apparently there is a covenant that runs with the land that requires the land be used for a public, non-profit purpose.   This seems like a good choice.

…

Item 13:  Naming the alleys

This also came up last time:

Those seven alleys with names in white are getting officially named. 

The remaining alleys are driving Jane crazy.  She wants to pair them up with movies or anything, and get them named.  No one else seems to be in that big a hurry.

…

Item 14:  Municipal Court

I guess we’re getting a new spot for our municipal court?

I don’t know if this is where the public will go for court, or if it’s administrative type stuff.

Here’s the building, according to Google Maps:

We signed a 20 year lease.

…

Item 17: River Bridge Ranch is this giant future subdivision:

It’s located here:

(That bit above is actually two closely related developments: River Bend Ranch and River Bridge Ranch. But the details are murky to me.)

This development makes me cranky:

  1.  In 2022, they wanted to put an industrial plant on the southern corner, which would have required an insane cut-and-fill.   This would have increased flooding in Redwood. Huge numbers of residents from Redwood turned out to argue against it, given the flooding and infrastructure.  The permit was denied.

  2. Originally, River Bridge Ranch was approved to be both housing and commerce. After all, it’s huge! And we have this long-standing issue where there isn’t any commerce on the east.  They waited for a polite amount of time to pass. Then they came back and asked if Council would just forget about the pesky commerce bit. 

    Council said “You betcha!  This way you’ll make more money!” And lo, no more commerce.

This meeting, Council forms a subcommittee on it: Saul Gonzales, Matthew Mendoza, and Jane Hughson.

So this means it’s going to be coming back around again. Fingers crossed!

…

Items 16 and 18: The New City Hall

We’re designing a new city hall.

Council has this grand idea that the new city hall should replace the dog park and skate park, and the current location should be housing:

I am not convinced! Why should we develop our parks? Why not re-build where you are?

Anyway, Council appointed a 23-person steering committee:
– The mayor and two councilmembers
– These groups all get to pick a member: P&Z, Library, Downtown Association, River Foundation, University representative, Chamber of Commerce
– Each councilmember picked two community members.
In total there are 23 people.

SO! After multiple meetings and lots of discussion, what did the DEI Coordinator say about the end result? Did we achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion? Moment of truth!

…Nothing. The DEI coordinator wasn’t there. Status quo was upheld.

This would have been the moment to verify that “business as usual” had produced a diverse committee that matches San Marcos.  We did not verify this!

Hours 0:00 – 1:24, 10/15/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:

  • Texas Disposal Systems is the trash/recycling company. They’re up for a five year contract renewal tonight. This topic had the most speakers.
    – There were people saying what an amazing job TDS has done, and how we must renew with them.
    – There were people from other waste systems saying that they can also do a great job, and if we’d just open up bids, they could show us.
  • One speaker made an interesting point about HEB: as long as we’re getting a new HEB, why don’t we revisit the almost-HEB, and see if we can acquire that land?

Here’s what he means:

There was almost an HEB here, back in 2016:

That is when HEB was the controversy of the day. HEB applied for a rezoning to put a grocery store on that corner.

The community was furious. Purgatory Creek had flooded just one year earlier, and it’s very environmentally sensitive. Traffic is already mess at that intersection. The WonderWorld extension was new, and part of the deal struck was that no new curb cuts would occur on WonderWorld. People were worried that HEB would close Little HEB.

But Council approved the rezoning anyway. (Jane Hughson and Jude Prather were two of the yeses.)

Zipping along to 2024: clearly HEB never built the grocery store there. This week’s big announcement is the new HEB on McCarty and I35 instead.  (See item 10.)

So… can we buy this old land from them?  Can we at least approach them for this land? It’s right there, where we’re putting all these trails down. Why don’t we at least ask?  

Great question! 

….

Onto the meeting!

Item 12:  Rezoning a little over an acre, out on Hunter Road:

in other words, just to the right of this Shell station:

as you’re headed south on Hunter.

It got zoned Neighborhood Commercial, so it will definitely not be apartments. Some kind of office or store.

…

Item 2: After four years, we have a new Comprehensive Plan! VisionSMTX is now officially approved.

Backstory here. There are lots of big thank yous, and no major changes.

So how exactly did the committee thread the needle?  If I had to summarize, they:

  • Added back in the language about walking, biking, and transit. How close are you to parks, schools, and stores, without needing to drive?
  • Added ADUs, duplexes, and triplexes back into low intensity areas.
  • But kept one of the major P&Z changes, which was to split “Neighborhood Low” place types into two sub-types: Neighborhood Low-Existing and Neighborhood Low-New.

They did a great job of carving out a compromise position.

…

Item 4: We lease land to the Chamber of Commerce for $1/year:

On CM Allen, on the edge of the river parks.

They’ve been there since 1977. They are raising money to build an extension, but for the time being, they want to extend this contract until 2031.

Here’s what Jane says at 58:00 minutes in:

“Whenever the Chamber got ready to expand, the city discovered that there were a lot of back lease payments that we had never advised the Chamber to pay.  And the Chamber didn’t know they needed to pay, and the Chamber president came to me and said, ‘If you add all this up, and the penalties and interest, the money that we just raised for the expansion kinda goes up in smoke.’ So I brought it to the council and we forgave all of that, so that the Chamber could use the dollars they’d raised for the expansion.”

I can’t find any Council discussion of this, so I assume it happened in top secret executive session?

This bit was boxed red in the packet, so I assume this is the Forgotten Lease Payments:

Look how cute that 1978 typewriter font is.

Here’s the thing: Sure, forgive Chamber’s debt – it got lost to the sands of time. Just be sure that we are equally charitable to other nonprofit organizations that may need a bit of grace.

(We did cover a bunch of debt from Together for a Cause a few years ago. One of the Place 5 candidates is involved, at that link.)

…

Just for funsies: Remember the time that we rented that land to Chamber of Commerce for $1/year, and they turned around and rented office space back to us for $28,760/year? And everyone – besides Alyssa Garza and Max Baker – voted to approve this!

…

Item 5: We finalized the gateway signs business.  It’s going to look like this:

And go here:

and

This was not discussed. I just wanted to wrap up the topic.

….

Item 10: Texas Disposal Systems

Staff did a pretty good job writing up the backstory, so I’m just going to cut-and-paste from the packet:

Council is kind of split. Everyone definitely loves TDS.

  • Jane, Shane, Jude and Alyssa are all fine with going with TDS now, and opening up bids for the 2030 contract.
  • Matthew, Saul, and Mark are all a little more uneasy about not going through the process of soliciting bids, and seeing what other companies can put out there. 

The vote:

TDS it is!

.

Hours 1:24 – 2:05, 10/15/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 13: Remember that time we didn’t have any commerce on the east side?

Will anybody save us from this food desert??

OH YEAH! It’s all very exciting. 

Back in May, Council approved a call for bids, saying “hey Grocery stores! We’ll work with you on tax breaks if you hit up the east side!”  HEB was listening loud and clear, and reached out to us in August.

Here’s where it will be: 

So right next to Embassy Suites, on NB I-35. 

They’ve owned this land for a long time, but HEB likes to do that: purchase potential land and then just chill with it for awhile. 

It’s a pretty ideal location: Between McCarty and I-35, you can zip pretty much all over the place. 

(This would be a great time to connect the two Leah Drives! Which are disconnected for reasons that are still murky to me:

Idk!)

So what are the terms?

Those rebates are pretty much exactly what Council proposed last May.

What kind of dollar amounts are we talking about?

I’m mildly skeptical about these sales tax numbers. Or rather, it’s not all new tax revenue to the city. Some of that money would have been spent at the existing Big and Little HEBs, and is just being diverted to the 3rd HEB. Now, a lot of folks on the east side currently drive down to HEB in New Braunfels, and so that will bring in new tax dollars if they switch to this new store. But not everyone!

What about jobs and such?

Ok, but what kind of pay and benefits? When we negotiated with Buccee’s, the company specified that they will pay $18/hour and get full benefits.

As far as I can tell, we entirely skipped this part of the negotiation. HEB will have to abide by the 2016 San Marcos law requiring companies to pay $15/hour, in exchange for tax breaks.   Does this mean that all HEB stores have to pay at least $15 an hour?

I believe HEB is pretty good to their employees, but this is poor work by Council and staff. We should always be negotiating on behalf of employees.

…

Sidebar: When we passed the 2016 (partial) minimum wage law, we did not include automatic inflation adjustments, the way we do for other contracts. If we had, $15/hour in 2016 would have automatically risen to $19.96 in 2024.

Hey council: Let’s update the 2016 ordinance and include automatic inflation adjustments! Like we do for so many things?

…

Back to HEB. What did Council say?   Mostly everyone gave a victory lap of thank yous. 

Mark Gleason added: “To other grocery stores, our economic incentive offer still stands! The east side can have more than just one grocery store!”  That’s great to hear.

Also: Mark is hearing from the community that lots of people are worried that Little HEB will close. During the meeting, councilmembers say “It’s great that they’ll keep Little HEB open” but I can’t find this actually written down anywhere. It would be good to have that in writing.

So here are my questions:

  • Would all HEB employees get the $15/hour as required by local ordinance, even at the existing stores?
  • Language about elevated minimum wage and benefits should always automatically be in these agreements.
  • Is it in writing that Little HEB will stay open for a certain number of years? 
  • Will Council please update the 2016 ordinance to peg the minimum wage to inflation???
  • Can we ask HEB about purchasing that little triangle of land next to Purgatory Creek?

The vote: 6-0.  Everyone hams it up in really cheesy ways: “Absolutely yes!” “Finally…yes!”  Fist pump. Etc.

…

Item 14: Alliance Regional Water Authority (ARWA)

ARWA is our big plan to shore up our water supply for the next 50 years. We originally signed onto it in 2008.  Instead of getting our water from Canyon Lake and the Edwards Aquifer, we’re piping it in from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer. 

(image via)

It’s just about time to start drinking that sweet, sweet Carrizo-Wilcox water! 

These are slides from the packet, but no one actually gave a presentation on it.

so I’m just winging it here.

Tonight is about extending a bond for the next part of the project.  Everyone celebrated it, but I’m not sure what the special significance was. 

…

Item 16: Renaming downtown alleys

A couple years ago, Council dipped its toe in the exciting world of naming downtown alleys.  First up was Kissing Alley, in 2017.  It came with a whole revitalization effort – Kissing Alley concerts, etc.  It’s been great!

Next up came Boyhood Alley, to commemorate the movie Boyhood, which has an iconic scene shot there. This council conversation was kinda hilarious, because some councilmembers thought it sounded like Pervert Alley.

In order to dilute the pervy-sounding Boyhood Alley, Jane proposed that the rest of the unnamed alleys to be named after other movies. 

So the Convention and Visitor Bureau Advisory Board and the Main Street Advisory Board took up the charge. Tonight they’re back with their recommendations:

Four of the alleys have names already used:

That’s kinda cute about the dog.

A few others have informal names:

  • Music Alley
  • Imagine Alley
  • Railroad Alley

The committee is proposing two new ones:

  1. Getaway Alley, because some scenes from The Getaway were filmed near there:
Clockwise from top left: Sewell Park (upstream of Aquarena Drive), Texaco at 205 West Hopkins Street, intersection at West Hopkins Street & Moore Street, tire shop at 141 West Hopkins Street. Via this now-defunct website.

Steve McQueen! Ali McGraw! Haven’t seen it, but it seems like a fun romp.

2. Telephone Alley, after the old Telephone building that got torn down in 2019:

Isn’t that a very cute building? I was bummed that it got torn down. (Photo from here.) It was demolished to make room for The Parlor apartments.

That’s on San Antonio. Here’s a before and after, according to Google Maps:

I’m not actually opposed to the apartments, but I wish we could have spared the cute Telephone building.

… 

There are still more alleys without names. Jane wants to pair up the rest of the unnamed alleys with old movies, but other councilmembers want to roll it out more slowly – maybe Main Street can pick one or two per year, and figure out a good name for it. Sounds like that’s how it will go.

Hours 0:00 – 1:00, 10/2/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:

Only one speaker! Max Baker, representing the San Marcos Civics Club. They held their “Reasons Why NOT to Vote”* rally last weekend.

At the rally, they had a “Worst Issues in San Marcos” ballot. Here’s how the votes shook out:
-6 for public safety
-9 for economy
-13 for transit
-30 for environment
-40 for housing

Max highlighted those results for City Council: 137 people turned out for this rally, and they definitely care about housing and the environment!

Is this rally – and these votes – representative of San Marcos? Yes and no. It’s not a statistically random sample, no. However, it’s definitely a new and different outreach pathway, so it’s probably capturing a different set of folks than the same people who always fill out the city surveys.

*The name of this rally makes my stomach hurt a little bit. Here’s the Civics Club blurb: “The San Marcos Civics Club has talked a lot about local politics since we’ve formed and we wanna recognize the very real reasons people have to not vote each election cycle with this event.”

I get that they want to amplify the voices of people that are frustrated. The problem is that these two things can both be true:
1. People have real reasons that they don’t vote.
2. Republicans in Texas spend A LOT of time and energy trying to increase the number of people that feel that way. Apathy, hopelessness, and a sense of futility work in favor of Republicans.

It’s so hard to get people to show up and vote! And so important! This whole topic gives me an ulcer. Please vote.

For the record, they did have voter registration at the event! I just feel conflicted about promoting a message of resignation and hopelessness.

….

Item 10:  VisionSMTX is inching towards the finish line!

Background

VisionSMTX is the new city comprehensive plan. Think of this as a master plan for planning & zoning: “We want this kind of development over here, but that kind of development over there.”

In 2020, Council appointed a gigantic 30 person steering committee. They met with consultants for two years, and produced the first draft of VisionSMTX. 

In January 2023, it got handed off to P&Z.  They looked at it and had a heart attack.  “What’s all this stuff about affordable housing?! What’s all this stuff about bike trails and walkability and things besides cars?!”  It was really kinda a self-satire.  They clutched pearls, got the vapors, etc.  “The historic district will be destroyed!” they cried.  

“No no!” said the steering committee and city staff. “We want the rest of San Marcos to be more like the historic district!” 

But P&Z formed a subcommittee (with the mayor) and rewrote it. Here’s their new cover page:

(not really. Sorry, it’s a slow week.) 

The new version basically amounted to: “If you got a 30 year mortgage before 2015, you’re going to LOVE how nothing is changing! Sorry everyone else.”  

Lots of people got mad, myself included.

So it was a major hot potato when it got sent over to city council, in September 2023.  

Council seemed like they were going to pass it, at the first two meetings. But at the third, they unexpectedly postponed and formed a subcommittee. The subcommittee decided to survey the community, to see how popular the P&Z changes were.  This was this past spring.  The survey results showed that the community was split. 

So since March, it’s been total radio silence.

This brings us to the present

The committee has hammered out a compromise position. They threw out some of the P&Z revisions, but also upheld a lot of them.

Two community members spoke during public comment: Gaby Moore and Diana Baker.  (Usually I don’t put private citizen names on the blog, but I think it’s instructive this time.)  What you need to know is that Moore is solidly in the camp of the original draft, and Baker is solidly in the camp of the P&Z revision. 

They both praised the new, committee version! This is kind of wild. I was prepared to hate the current draft, but it seems like the Council Committee managed to thread the needle and carve out a compromise position.  I don’t hate it!

Council still has to vote on it one more time, at the October 15th meeting. Then – after four long years – we might have a new comp plan.

…

Item 5:  The library is commissioning some stained glass windows:

(That’s a mock up on the right – it’s not made yet.)

But isn’t that going to be lovely? Everyone likes it.

Jane Hughson has a question: how come sometimes, Council allocates money for art and gets to see the design, and how come sometimes they allocate money without seeing the design?

Answer: It’s not one single process. There’s a dozen different processes, depending on where the artwork will be and who is funding it.

Jane: I’m really talking about the new mural on LBJ.  We didn’t preview the design for that one.

She means this one, as you’re heading from I-35 towards downtown:

Answer: [mumbo-jumbo about that specific funding process.]

Jane: Look, if I’d seen the design, I would have pointed out that there’s a bobcat, but there’s no rattler.  That’s a pretty big omission.  We should have had more eyes looking at the design so that someone would catch that.

She is totally right:

It is totally gorgeous! But it says “Welcome to the land of arrowheads, Texas State, Downtown, and the River, and that about sums up San Marcos!”

It should have had a rattler, and probably also some nod to Hispanic culture. Maybe on the far left, near the purple flowers.

…

Item 6: Quail Creek

Back in 2022, we bought this: 

That is Quail Creek Park.

Located here:

It used to be Quail Creek Country Club:

But the golfers of yore have all wandered off to graze in greener pastures. Golf on, my preppy brothers! Golf with the wind.

Anyway!

Now we’re hiring some engineers to draft some plans for what we might do with it. There will be lots of opportunities for community input, etc.

Mark Gleason: It would be nice to have some trails and connectivity! It’s actually very close to Walmart.

This is a great point. In other words, Quail Creek is a total pain in the ass to drive to:

But it’s not actually so far if you could bike:

Staff replied: TWINSIES! We have been thinking the same thing.

San Marcos is so carved up by rivers and railroad tracks. Both are hard for cars, but easier for bikes. Once this place gets path-connected, bikers will be able to really sail around town.

Item 15: We’re filling vacancies for three committees:
– Animal Shelter Advisory Committee
– Citizen Utility Advisory Board
– Parks and Rec Advisory Board

Last meeting, they had one applicant for the Animal Shelter committee, but they wouldn’t put that person on the committee because they’d only lived in San Marcos for two months. (I scolded Matthew Mendoza and Jane Hughson for being unwelcoming.)

They postponed so that more people could apply.

So we’re back tonight! And… no one new applied. They were in the exact same situation with the same applicant, all over again. Alyssa pointed out that the “two months” was written back in June. Now that it’s October, they’ve actually been here six months.

But Jane argues that this person hadn’t written anything about why they wanted to save the pups.

The thing is, this is the prompt on the application:

This applicant checked off three possible commissions they would be willing to serve on. So they answered that questions generally: “I want to serve the community, etc.” They didn’t give three separate answers, for each possible commission.

(Furthermore, I’ve never ever seen council nitpick the answers that people give on the application form. This is a weird time to get out the microscope.)

Anyway! It turns out they ALSO only had one applicant for the Utility Advisory board. And this person also didn’t give any detail. So in the name of fairness, they kicked both of these vacancies down the road. (I still disapprove! Give these people a chance unless you have an actual reason to look askance at them.)

If YOU would like to be on a board or commission – or the future City Hall Steering Committee – you can apply here. It’s pretty short and not too painful.

Parks and Rec has a new board member, though. That vacancy got filled.

Hours 0:00 – 3:38, 9/3/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:

  • Five people spoke against the SMART/Axis road annexation.
  • A guy from the airport asked about his lease rate for his hangar

That was about it.

…

Items 2-3:  Quarterly financial and investment report.

This is the official report for Jan 1st – March 31st went.  Back in May, we got a sneak preview: sales tax was tanking below projections and we were scrambling to reign in spending. 

This is more re-hashing of that same news. Sales tax was down, so everything got pulled back.

…

Item 19:  It takes two public hearings to approve the budget.  This is the first, and then final approval will be on September 17th.

Here’s the big picture:

With highlights:

For me, the highlights are only somewhat helpful. I need context in order to makes sense of these notes. What helps me most is a breakdown of the general fund, by department.

Last year’s breakdown of the General Fund, by department:

I got that by submitting a FOIA request last year. I’ve requested this year’s General Fund breakdown, but haven’t yet gotten it.

[Let me put on my tinfoil hat for just a moment. Indulge me in the dullest conspiracy theory of all times:

– The 2024 draft budget has the General Fund breakdown by department, starting on page 82.
– But the 2024 adopted budget has no General Fund breakdown anywhere!
– the 2023 draft budget has the General Fund breakdown by department, starting on page 88.
– But 2023 adopted budget also has no General Fund breakdown anywhere!

For the past two years, it’s disappeared from the actual budget, once it was approved. What on earth.

Finally, even the 2025 proposed budget does NOT have the General Fund breakdown included. This annoys me, hence the FOIA request mentioned above.

I submitted the request back on August 22nd, so we’re past the normal FOIA response time. The information is in the budget, but it’s scattered. It would take hours of work for a layperson to extract it from the online budget, one department at a time.

END OF MY MILDLY EXASPERATING CONSPIRACY THEORY!]

…

Back to budget discussions. Utility rates are going up:

The average home-owner will pay $13.46 more per month. There’s a big discussion in the workshops about utility assistance, so I’ll cover some details later on.

We’re using the same tax rate as last year, 60.3¢.

…

Listen: I cannot stress enough how little conversation there is about any of this. Partly this is because there have been a lot of budget workshops already.  Partly this is because the community didn’t show up to complain. (Although they have one more chance.) But mostly because this council is so used to each other that they all know exactly where they all stand.  There’s nothing left to say.

…

Matthew Mendoza asks a great question. During the section on the Water and Wastewater Fund, he asks: “These contract costs keep increasing every year. Why do we keep contracting out? There’s like 4 water and wastewater contracts. Why not do these things internally?”

The answer has a few parts:

  • Some contracts are management contracts, others are infrastructure and CIP
  • The contracts for the surface water plant and the wastewater treatment plant both have automatic inflation adjustments built in
  • On the wastewater treatment plant, we’re at the end of a 20 year contract. We’re putting a provision in the new contract to have an exit clause, so we could convert staffing to in-house in a few years if we want. When it was built in the 90s, it actually was operated by city staff. We started contracting it out in the 2000s.

This is SUPER interesting! Let’s highlight some things:

  • It’s so common for contracts to have built-in, automatic inflation adjustments! You know what doesn’t? The minimum wage. Failure to peg the minimum wage to inflation is one of the most underappreciated policy failures of the 20th century.
  • The wastewater treatment plan used to be city-run! We privatized it in the 2000s! What. Privatization is not your friend. Let’s get that back.

Mark Gleason asks if trash and recycling contracts also have automatic inflation adjustment?

Answer: Yes on refuse collection.

Alyssa still votes no on the utility fund votes, because of the rate increases. But she acknowledges the workshop on emergency utility assistance. (We will cover this below.) If it were working as it should, she says she’d be able to vote for the regular rate increases.

…

Item 4:  Axis Logistics (aka SMART Terminal) road annexation.

Backstory. The giant Axis Logistics/SMART company:

wants Council to annex city land for a road:

However, the company has made total enemies of the surrounding community, by always being super secretive about their plans. In this case, the road has jumped locations. Originally it was further from houses and now it’s closer to them.

At the August 5th meeting, there was a fair amount of discussion. Everyone seemed concerned. Nothing was resolved.

At the August 20th meeting, it was mysteriously postponed.

Time for the exciting conclusion! So much drama! Buckle up for…

…zip, zero, zilch. Literally, Council spends four minutes total on this item.

The vote:

No one ever asked in public about whether the road could be moved back to the original location.  No one explained whatever Mark needed more time to research since the last meeting.

This is what I mean when I say this council is stale. Everyone knows where everyone stands on everything, and so no one bothers to say anything outloud.

…

Item 24: School Resource Officers are back, baby!  (School Resource Officers = SROs)

Last meeting, the city approved the SRO contract. 

Two changes had been proposed by SMCISD:

  • The SRO contract should be two years instead of one
  • The contract can be renewed administratively, without Council approval. 

Council renewed the contract, but nixed those two changes. They wanted to see the contract, in person, every year.

Since then, the school board met: they really want the two year contract and admin renewal.  So they held the line on those two details, and punted it back over here.

Remember last time how I pointed out that Jude Prather should really recuse himself, because his wife is the director of the organization that oversees all SROs, statewide?  

  • He didn’t recuse himself this time, either. 
  • He actually was the one who made the motion to approve
  • Superintendent Cardona even mentioned that Prather’s wife wrote the officer training.
  • At Q&A at the end, a community member (LMC) asked about this conflict of interest.
  • By that point, Prather had gone home.  LMC said it was a question for the city lawyer, but Jane Hughson ended the meeting without giving the lawyer a chance to answer the question.

This is getting into more egregious territory!  Jude certainly knows better. He recuses himself over absurdly flimsy pretexts all the time.

ANYWAY.  Chief Standridge says he could include SROs in his yearly update to Council.  Superintendent Cardona talks about how closely everyone meets and supervises the SROs.

Mark Gleason politely says “I told you so! Stability. Safety. Etc.”

The vote: Should we switch to two year SRO contracts and administrative renewal?

… 

Item 25:  This was a little confusing.

Gather ‘round, children.  Once upon a time, there was a little Municipal Utility District, on the north end of town:

That’s east of I35, on Yarrington road. The year was 2014.

It was actually kind of gigantic if you zoomed out:

But none of the townspeople ever did. 

Here’s what the developers pretended it would look like, some day:

Look at all that water! What the hell is going on here. Here’s the satellite photo of this area:

So much less water!

(Were those lunatics planning on a great new lake? Were they going to tap the Blanco, where it runs underground, to create a watery playground for rich people? Maybe!)

Back to our story.

The village council elders put a weird clause in the development agreement that allowed landowners to opt out.  Usually council elders wouldn’t do such a thing, but in this case they did.

By 2023, these owners had opted out:

The red parts had opted out.

In 2023, the rest of the land owners opted out:

So at Tuesday’s council meeting, the little village dissolved the Municipal Utility District altogether. There’s no development agreement. There’s no lake.

THE END! 

The moral of the story is: there is no moral. 

…

Item 26: New City Hall and Hopkins Redevelopment project

Back in July, we saw some pretty pictures about what the new City Hall could look like, and what Hopkins could look like, maybe someday:

Today’s task: we’re going to form a steering committee, to help shape the vision. 

Who does Council want to be on the steering committee?

Jane: We could have each councilmember pick a person, and then have a representative from some key constituents – Texas State, River Foundation, Downtown Association.

Alyssa:  Before we have this conversation, we need the DEI coordinator. Otherwise we’ll do what we always do. That leads to the status quo, and the same old people still have the same old power. 

Mark Gleason: I like each councilmember picking two people, plus the key organizations should all have representatives.

Alyssa:  Hey! You guys. We need to stop and get input from the DEI person, before we have this conversation. 

Jane: And councilmembers themselves. What about the mayor?

Alyssa:  Listen. Stop. The DEI coordinator is not here.

Matthew Mendoza: Why should Texas State get a seat on the committee?

Jane Hughson: It’s just part of being good neighbors. They also have a representative on the downtown committee.

Alyssa:  Hello? Anyone? Bueller?

Shane Scott: You know how councilmembers get their names in the building? I think we should have little bobbleheads of ourselves, instead.*

Alyssa:  LALALALALALA AM I SHOUTING INTO THE VOID HERE?

Matthew: We should require that members have lived in San Marcos for at least five years!

Alyssa:  [mumbles to self about DEI coordinator]

Jane: How about a P&Z representative?  How about a library representative?

Alyssa:  [draws pictures of a council consulting the DEI coordinator, and holds them overhead, in the style of Lloyd from Say Anything.]

Saul: Should we require that they be caught up on their taxes?

Jane, dryly: We don’t require that for elected officials. 

Alyssa:  [Launches little confetti cannons. Sends in carrier pigeons with tiny notes tied to their legs, which read “Let’s consult with the DEI coordinator”. Does an interpretive dance for the letters “D”, “E”, and “I”.] 

In the end, everyone agrees to come back next time with their final ideas for the composition of the steering committee.  City staff is going to talk with the DEI coordinator and get best practices from her, and they’ll share those next meeting.

Here’s the thing: You have to get the DEI coordinator to talk to everyone before the brainstorming. Otherwise the brainstorming will perpetuate the same old power imbalances as always.  The point of the DEI coordinator is to gently get everyone to cut that shit out, and redirect them into new territory.

*This is a real comment. I did not make this up.

Hours 1:54 – 5:32, 8/20/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 20: The Budget

This one item is nearly three hours long.  

The budget is long and complicated.  First off, city starts having workshops in January and runs them through the end of September, when they pass the budget.  

These workshops are deathly boring and I am unable to sit through them.  I’m sorry about this.

Notice that they present twice to the Neighborhood Commission:

heh. (via)

Anyway! Here are the strategic goals:

Sure, why not.

The budget is split across a bunch of different funds:

Each of those colored headers is a different fund. So you can see the General Fund on the left is the big one, and there are a lot of little ones as you move right.

Revenue

Last year, we took in $37 million in property tax, and $42 million in sales tax.  So sales tax is huge for us.

The problem is that sales tax revenue took a big hit this spring:

I know that’s not very dramatic-looking.  Here’s how they presented it over the summer:

They kinda know what went wrong now. Here’s the biggest sources of sales tax:

Basically, some of the top sales taxpayers had unusually high sales for the past few years, and now they’re reverting back to normal. But we had banked on those returns to keep increasing. Whoops. (I’m guessing it was post-covid supply chain kinks working themselves out, especially Matheus Lumber.)

We’re going to start a sales tax volatility fund to help hedge against this kind of fluctuation.

…

Most departments are going to have the same budget as last year.  Since inflation is about 3% and the town is growing, that means they have to cover more ground with less money. So that sucks.  

We’re doing a little hiring.  These are the budget-neutral positions being added:

These are the ones that aren’t budget neutral:

…

I find it extremely hard to get a handle on the General Fund budget. So last year, I filed a FOIA to have them send me a list of how much each department gets from the General Fund.

This is what they sent me:

This is really helpful! This is how my brain works. That’s very clear to me.

What I plan on doing is put this side-by-side with next year’s proposed budget, so we can see what areas are growing and what is shrinking.  (I filed a FOIA for the new one, but it’s still being processed.)  

…

Another day, we should have a conversation on the $185K of seized assets, at the bottom of that chart. Seized asset forfeiture is wildly unethical! Have another link. It’s really bad.

Here’s what it says in the 24-25 budget:

There are not enough details on the $185K – what’s it being spent on? Was that all seized in San Marcos? Why is there a state and federal part? I have no idea.

….

Let’s talk about TIRZes. These also aren’t discussed much.

A TIRZ is a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones. What this means is that the taxes from those zones mostly go back to those zones. We have six of them, maybe?

The example you’ll hear about most often is the Mainstreet Downtown TIRZ, because we can all appreciate it. We all want a thriving downtown! Taxes from downtown stay downtown, to keep downtown nice and vibrant.

But let’s focus on the Kissing Tree TIRZ, instead. Here are the details from the 23-24 budget:

So San Marcos sent $1,288,406 of tax dollars back to this one single gated community last year. Did you enjoy a thriving Kissing Tree or a thriving downtown more? Which ones benefit all of San Marcos? Feel free to compare $1,288,406 to your favorite category in the General Fund, above.

The other TIRZes are Loop 110, the Downtown plan, the Embassy Suites Conference Center, and maybe Blanco Vista? I can’t tell if that one ended in 2022 or not.

This year’s budget does not have a TIRZ breakdown either, which I find annoying. 

…

Let me be clear: city staff does an amazing job trying to clearly communicate the budget. No one is withholding anything maliciously.  

I just think that the breakdown of the general fund is a bit of a blindspot. It would help if it were there. 

Here’s the city budget webpage, if you’re curious to poke around yourself.

…

I’m skipping over a lot – there’s SO MUCH.  

Utility rate increases are being discussed.  It’s generally much wiser to raise rates by small amounts every year, rather than letting it accumulate and then needing a giant increase.

Alyssa Garza is opposed, out of economic concern for our neighbors.  I think she’s wrong here.  Starving your government is how you let capitalism run unfettered. Don’t be a shill for Reagan.

…

That said, we do have a utility assistance program.  The DEI coordinator gives a presentation on it.

The city puts about $230K from various sources into utility assistance:

And here’s what we handed out:

There is lots of anecdotal evidence that we do a mediocre job connecting with community members who need help:

One thing that makes it complicated is that there are two kinds of people who need assistance.
– First, people who need wraparound services in lots of areas. These people benefit from filling out the mountain of paperwork needed for federal programs. Community Action does this.
– Second, people who just need a one-time boost to get out of a hard spot. These people benefit from a low-barrier process and quick payment, so that their utilities don’t get turned off.

There is going to be a work session to try to make all this more effective.

…

Final notes:

  • There’s some discussion on how the Airport has been in the red for a long time, but I can’t find this info in the slides. 
  • As ARPA money comes to a close, we’ll have to pick up a bunch of slack in the budget next year.  So more expenses are looming.

That’s the end of the three hour budget discussion!

…

But wait! There’s more!

Item 21: Setting the max tax rate for the new budget.

Background: here are some different tax rates: 

That’s all just different vocabulary for levels of property tax rates. City Council can pick any number it wants, although if they go over 70.36 ¢, they’d have to get voter approval.

This whole budget above has been planned on the 60.3¢ number. Here’s how it would affect the budget if we raised or lowered the tax rate:

The 60.3¢ rate is the same rate as last year. Of course, if your home value goes up, then your taxes go up, even if the rate stays the same.

Home values really have shot up:

So how much more is the average home owner paying?

If Council goes with the 60.3¢ rate, the average homeowner will pay $164 more this year, or $14/month.

My prediction: The next few meetings will see a lot of focus on home owners in poverty, and whether its fair to ask them to pay $14 more per month. Some considerations:

  • Most people in poverty do not own homes. But there are definitely some, and they deserve compassion. However, they’re likely to own less expensive homes. So if $14/month is the average increase, maybe for a homeowner in poverty, it’s more like maybe $10/month.
  • Focusing on home owners in poverty allows us to avoid a conversation about wealthy home owners.

Today: just setting a ceiling.  What’s the upper bound for the tax rate this year?   (This is just a weird Texas quirk.)

The vote to set the maximum at 60.3¢:

I have no idea why Shane voted no. 

…

Item 26: We’re giving Southside $800K to Southside from ARPA money to implement the Homelessness plan.  

Over the summer, we fronted them $50K to come up with a working plan, which they’re now presenting. It’s really thorough! Unfortunately, the slides aren’t in the packet, so I’m relying on screenshots.

The three strategies:

  1. Stop the growth
  2. Improve existing systems through effectiveness and efficiencies
  3. Expand Capacity

Honestly, I’m not an expert, but she sounded way better than Robert Marbut. Feel free to listen, starting at about 4:56 here.

These are just some of the slides:

” – We will hold a community-based network to help neighbors in need.
– We will use best practices and data-driven decisions to guide our work
– We will implement collaborative technologies to support coordinated services
– We will honor the humanity and dignity of all people and help the entire community to thrive”

Target population: Those experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness

  • San Marcos resident families at risk or experiencing homelessness for the first time
  • Those with a recurring situation
  • Individuals at risk or experiencing homelessness for the first time, or in an episodic manner.

Key Deliverables:

  • Activate a network of community partners and volunteers to help neighbors in need
  • Develop a homelessness prevention and rapid rehousing framework
  • Implement coordinated entry processes for easier access to services
  • Establish standard intake procedures for streamlined client onboarding and information sharing
  • Implement a client management system, like HMIS, for secure data storage and reporting

So you don’t want homeless people having to supply data and information to a dozen different people in order to get help. You want to get someone in the system one single time, and then let the providers talk to each other and coordinate a response to get help to that person.

It sounds like we’re going to use HMIS:

A big piece of this is stabilizing people who are right on the brink of becoming homeless, or who just went through a crisis:

They’ve already started on this:

It’s just an extremely complicated problem that requires lots of human scale collaboration to put all this together.

One big piece of this is expanding capacity – we literally need more beds.

Again, it’s probably worth it just to listen for yourself. I’m struggling after a long meeting here.

….

After this, Council zips through a ton of items super quickly:

  • Whisper North and South, and Trace all get their annual thumbs-up. (Whisper North and South are giant planned neighborhoods on the east side of 35, at Yarrington Road. Trace is down south, past the outlet malls, also east of I35. These are all PIDs: Public Improvement Developments. It’s similar to a TIRZ. This is where my knowledge ends. Maybe they’re smaller? idk.)
  • The Intralocal Agreement with CARTS to provide transit in San Marcos gets re-upped for another year. Also one with the university.
  • Something something new roles on the Finance and Audit committee, we’re all pretty drowsy at this point. Shane Scott tries to kill off the whole Finance and Audit committee, but its very existence was not on the agenda, so he’s stymied.

That’s about it!