the proposed student housing on Lindsey street (much, much more to come)
San Marcos Civics Club, inviting Councilmembers to drop in.
In favor of turning the Mitchell Center into an African-American History museum, overseen by the Calaboose board. (This is an item on the Executive Session agenda, so I don’t have any other info on it.)
Five people spoke in favor of a council resolution calling for ceasefire in Gaza. (Discussed a bit last time.)
Items 1-3: Financial reports. All about Q3 2023, which is last June-September.
How did last summer go?
We came in under-budget and over-revenue. Great.
They also went through the special funds: Electric, Water/Wastewater, Stormwater, Resource Recovery, Airport, and Hotel Tax. It all seemed like normal fluctuations to me, but knock yourself out if you’re curious to know more.
Item 16: We’re knee-deep in next year’s budget. I haven’t watched ANY of the budget planning sessions, because they’re dull as rocks, and I say this as someone who finds council meetings riveting.
I think this is the key part of the Budget Policy Statement:
What does “Eviction Services” mean? We’re helping the tenant and not the landlord, right? We’re not the baddies, are we?
In part A, “Mental Health Diversion” sounds promising. None of this got any discussion at Tuesday’s meeting, though.
I’m not sure what distinguishes As, Bs, and Cs. Funding level? Different departments? Urgency?
We bought it, but it wasn’t inside city limits. So now we’re annexing it.
Google maps tells me that it looks like this:
Nothing I enjoy better than the derelict remains of former wealth, as it returns to the common good!
….
Item 18: LIHTC projects are low income housing complexes, where the developer gets some tax breaks in exchange for building affordable housing. (We talked about LIHTC projects last month.)
These guys want to build affordable housing right behind the high school:
Great!
How affordable is “affordable”?
What this means is that there are 348 apartments, and all of them will be priced so that they are affordable for people making $58,401 – $70,080.
What does “51-60% AMI” mean?
AMI stands for “Area Median Income”. In other words, the AMI is the middle income in the town. So then “51-61% of AMI” means these apartments are for people earning roughly half of the middle income, or a little more. On the poor side of the AMI though, for sure.
Hopefully you’re thinking, “Wait, what? How is $58K-$70K on the poor side, for San Marcos!?”
It’s not! Here’s where the hocus-pocus comes in. San Marcos is part of the Greater Austin-Round Rock Metro statistical area. The median income for a family of four in Austin is $122K. And therefore 51-60% of that gives you $58,401 – $70,080.
People earning $58K-$70K in San Marcos are above the median income. These households are on the richer half of San Marcos. Not actually rich, but relatively well off for San Marcos. It’s completely absurd to call this apartment complex “affordable” or “low-income”. These are regular, market rate apartments for regular, old San Martians.
But here’s the thing: they’re not applying for tax breaks from the city. They’re only applying to state tax breaks. So this isn’t costing the city anything.
Still, they’re getting tax breaks from the state. Are they at least providing services that go above and beyond?
Eh, not really. Pretty bog-standard.
City Council is happy with this because we’re not giving away any money. So they give it a thumb’s up.
Look, as far as San Marcos goes, this is fine. It’s housing.
But they’re still jerks! They’re diverting funding that would otherwise subsidize actual low-income housing. They’re getting a subsidy, without helping the people it’s supposed to help. It’s not technically illegal – we’re within the Austin MSA, so officially our median income is $122k. Just kinda shitty of them.
The developer wants to put student housing there. (The developer is Shannon Mattingly, former head of the San Marcos Planning Department, which is pretty shady, yes. She was hired by The Dremer Group out of Austin about two years ago.)
There were actually four decision points at the P&Z meeting:
Should downtown include that pentagon on the left? (No.)
Should the mishmash of different zonings all be consolidated to a single zoning? (Somewhat.)
Should they be allowed to have Purpose Built Student Housing? And is this the same as Rent by the Bedroom? (Yes.)
Should they be allowed to go to 7 stories? (No.)
This week, council tackled the first question. The rest of the questions are being saved for next time.
So today, we’re only talking about the yellow, striped pentagon:
Basically, if you start at Zelicks, and walk uphill past North Street, and keep going until you hit the university, we’re talking about the houses on the left when you reach Texas State.
I believe it’s these houses:
One of them burned down maybe five years ago. One of them was transplanted from Riviera Street about ten years ago. Two are bungalows from the 1920s, and one of them is considered a High Priority Historical Resource from around 1900.
This one is the high priority one:
It is very cute!
First off, Jude Prather recuses himself because his wife works for the university, in a building close to this spot. This is probably a reasonable recusal, but it affects the vote calculation coming up.
Second: today is just discussion. No vote until next time.
So: should downtown include that yellow, striped pentagon to the left?
If Council says yes, then they can apply for a zoning (CD-5D) that lets them build up to 5 stories and have 100% impervious cover.
If Council says no, then the developer might back out, and not buy the property. (Or they could build whatever they’re allowed to under the current zoning, which does allow apartment complexes.)
Public Hearing:
Against: Four speakers.
Similar to the P&Z meeting, they were concerned about student housing, expanding downtown to encroach on neighborhoods, and the preservation of historical buildings.
In favor: 10 speakers.
Some of these speakers made sense to me – the current owner, the developers, etc.
But a bunch were totally ludicrous. Lots of students spoke about how passionate they were about this housing complex. “Simple laws of supply and demand!” they kept saying, as if they’d all been given the same script. One collected 1200 signatures of students who are also super passionate. One of the hardcore Historical Preservation Committee people, who would usually spit on this sort of thing, instead turned up and openly raved about only having heart-eyes for this project.
I mean… come on. The developer must have paid students $15/hour to all read from a script. “We students are just madly in love with the application of supply and demand curves to the inelasticity of housing supply near campus! Please, ya gotta approve this Preferred Scenario Amendment, mister! For the kids!” Come again?
…
The developer is offering some new concessions, since the P&Z meeting. For the left hand yellow-striped pentagon:
they’ll cap at 4 stories now,
only have 1, 2, and 3 bedroom units,
no Rent by the Bedroom leases,
limit impervious cover to 80% instead of 100%.
Have the cute old historic houses relocated elsewhere, instead of demolishing them.
Would that sweeten the pot?
Matthew Mendoza kicks things off: he talked to constituents in traditionally Latino neighborhoods. They all say, “Keep students away from me. Why aren’t the students by campus? Why aren’t students staying on their side of town?”
He went over to the proposed neighborhood. The whole character of the neighborhood is university. This makes sense. Alyssa Garza agrees with him.
Saul Gonzales goes next:
I see it just a little bit different. I’ve lived here almost 62 years, and I saw the town when I was on P&Z many years back. It was only a few bars, and that’s all we were going to have. And before you knew it, it spread and it spread and it spread. Now there’s no stopping it. It’s too late.
With a property like this, I see the same thing. Where does this stop? This is still a neighborhood, as far as I can see it. People that I talked to tell me, “Saul, what happened to downtown? What happened? Look at all these apartments. Look at this, look at that.” And I’m going to tell them this time “well, we just put another one up.”
I’m just not in favor of it. There’s other reasons – the flooding, the parking, and I just don’t think… It has to stop. I’ll be voting against it, just because it has to start with me voting no.”
Saul, my good man, what the utter fuckare you talking about. Are you really trying to tell me that in your adult lifetime, San Marcos didn’t used to have a lot of bars? In the 1980s, this was a sedate little sober town? Dude, this town has been soaked to the gills since Prohibition. That is some wishful thinking.
More earnestly: Saul is making a slippery slope argument. He’s saying he doesn’t mind any one particular development, but over time, the neighborhood will hit a tipping point where it starts to feel like a university student housing neighborhood, instead of a traditional neighborhood of houses.
The problem is that this ship has sailed. This neighborhood is already university housing.
Literally, the university owns Sanctuary Lofts and the Vistas apartments now. Everything north of Lindsey street is campus.
Let’s pause to count the votes:
P&Z denied this motion. This means that council must have 6 votes to overturn P&Z. Since Jude recused himself, that means it has to be unanimous to override the P&Z denial.
If Saul really is a hard NO, then this whole item is sunk.
(The actual vote is not until next meeting. Today is just discussion.)
Back to Council discussion:
Mark Gleason talks next: I take each case individually. I haven’t made up my mind. But the bright line between downtown and the neighborhoods is not North Street. That’s absurd. C’mon, you all know that I will fight for the neighborhoods. This isn’t that. Clearly Moore Street is the bright line. I will need restrictive covenants to enforce the offer that the developer made, and I haven’t totally made up my mind, but I’m here for it.
Mark Gleason is making the most sense. He’s entirely right.
Jane Hughson asks about the flooding?
Answer: the reason there’s flooding in this area is that it’s coming down from Texas State in waves. This property would have to follow city code, which says you can’t make flooding worse. But you can’t fix flooding from Texas State with this project.
Jane: North Street is a bright line for downtown, for me. But maybe a lesser zoning?
Quick lesson: all the zonings have confusing names. CD-5D, CD-5, CD-4, ND-4, and many more.
As far as I tell, all anyone cares about (in this situation) is the number of stories and the percent impervious cover. Loosely speaking, the choices are:
Up to 5 stories and 100% impervious cover (CD-5D or CD-5)
Up to 3 stories and 80% impervious cover. (CD-4 or ND-4)
The developer is asking for the Option 1, and offering to only build 4 stories at 80% impervious cover. It sounds like Jane is going to try to build a coalition to get them Option 2 under a lesser zoning.
Maybe Saul will go for that! Maybe the developer won’t! Exciting times.
There’s no vote this time – it’s just discussion. Stay tuned!
….
Item 15: American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money is coming to an end. The first deadline is the end of 2024: you have to have contracted out all your money by the end of 2024, and it must be spent by the end of 2026.
San Marcos put $900K from ARPA money for homelessness initiatives. We then hired Robert Marbut to tell us how to proceed. We discussed it here, and I was not a fan of him.
In 2019, journalists just could not stop writing bad articles about this guy.)
After the study, $800K was left to actually carry out Marbut’s plan. You can read his San Marcos study here. It’s loosely stated enough that it has wiggle room – it all depends on whether it gets implemented humanely or not. The council homelessness committee determined that Southside is the best organization to implement Marbut’s plan.
Southside wants to use $50K of the $800K to hire two part-time people to write the implementation plan. One of them worked under Dr. Marbut before. Southside has to have this implementation plan written by June 2024, and so they’re under the gun to get it done quickly and well.
Jane Hughson is skeptical about what the city is getting for this $50K. Just an implementation plan? That’s all?
The counterargument is that we are investing in Southside and setting them up for success. Everyone goes with it in the end.
I’m not bothered by the $50K, but I am definitely nervous about whether Marbut’s worst instincts will show up in the details of the implementation.
Item 20: Short Term Rentals (STRs)
We saw this at a council workshop, back in January. Our current regulations are illegal: you can’t outlaw parties and you can’t require that the owner live on site. So we have to pass something new.
The new proposal states:
All STRs would need a permit.
Owners can only have one STR.
Only one STR on a block, or at least 600 ft apart.
Short-term tenants can have parties, but not excessively noisy ones, just like any other resident.
Everyone who lives within 400’ gets a postcard with a hotline number to call if you’re having any trouble.
Shane Scott and Alyssa Garza are opposed to the proposal, but they’re extremely cagey about why. Alyssa says the zones are weird. Shane is opposed on general libertarian grounds.
Look: hand-wavy arguments like that are lazy. Spell out your reasons. If you can’t spell out your reasons, go think harder about why you’re arguing your case.
Anyway: Jude Prather gives the impression that probably what’s bothering Shane and Alyssa is the bit about how STRs must be 600 feet apart.
Jane makes the same point as I made – Alyssa and Scott should specify what they don’t like in the ordinance, so that we can modify it instead of throwing the whole thing out.
Alyssa is kinda prickly in her response – she doesn’t have unlimited time or any staff to go work on this ordinance.
Confidential to all council members: you can always consult your friendly Marxist blogger for sound guidance, when you’re short on time! I got you.
….
Item 23: There have been a lot of opioid settlements:
We’re contracting with Cenikor to start spending the $325K-ish we’ve got:
That’s running us about $100K. Seems like as good a place to start as any.
Fourl people spoke, calling for City Council to issue a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Three people spoke against Buccees. I’ll save the details for the item on Buccees, below.
One landlord speaks against items 17 and 18. These are resolutions from the Neighborhood Commission. We’ll get to those, too.
On the topic of the Gaza ceasefire: clearly, the mass killing of the Palestinian people by the Israeli army is a humanitarian crisis. Now in general, city resolutions on international issues aren’t going to carry much weight. We didn’t issue resolutions when the Rohinga were being killed in Myanmar or the Darfur genocide in Sudan.
But Gaza is more relevant because the US supplies Israel with weapons, and it’s even more local because Governor Abbott actively supports the Israeli army. So you can make the case that cities in Texas should actively and vocally oppose Abbott on this. I support the speakers calling on Council to issue a resolution for a ceasefire.
……
Item 13: Some folks want to put a hotel on I35.
It would go here:
On the street level, it looks like so:
That’s the view from the southbound I35 access road, as you’re heading from Wonderworld towards McCarty.
It had been zoned Heavy Commercial, which does not allow hotels. So the developer is asking for regular commercial, where they can.
What does Council think?
(Saul is absent.) So it passes easily.
…
Item 14: Rezoning some land out by Redwood:
There’s a gas station and some senior apartments there already.
It has been zoned CD-5, which is supposed to feel like a walkable downtown area. Cute little two-story buildings along a sidewalk, where you can easily dip in and out from store to store. Zoning that farmland as something “walkable” is a little ambitious? But sure.
The owner hasn’t been able to get any developers interested in the spot. So he wants to change it to regular commercial. This is more like your strip malls or dollar generals. Big parking lot out front. No longer striving for walkability.
What does Council think?
Great.
….
Item 2: Buc-ee’s.
At citizen comment, there were several people who spoke against Buccees. I’m going to organize their concerns:
We cannot handle this. We don’t have the infrastructure to handle this.
Is the problem that Buccee’s is tacky? Do the good people of San Marcos only want serious, dignified gas stations, without cartoon mascots? What are we talking about here?
Concerns that at least make sense to me:
Buccee’s promotes oil-dependency and unhealthy food.
Keeps travelers from exploring San Marcos
Buccees generates less property tax revenue in NB than other I-35 frontage retail.
Jobs are closer to Kyle than San Marcos.
We should not be subsidizing retail jobs that pay below the median wage.
These are all legitimate drawbacks. Are they drawbacks that outweigh the projected $400K/year that the city will get in taxes? Eh, probably not.
Concerns that I share:
Contract is full of green-washing and light on details.
The work environment is toxic. They pay well because they work you to death.
I can’t evaluate whether or not the contract is green-washing. It’s certainly incredibly brief on the rainwater collection and oil-and-water runoff separators. I’d be interested to know what an environmental expert says.
One last piece of evidence came during the February 20th meeting. The Buccee’s representative said multiple times something like, “The job is tough, so we compensate you for it! No one said it’s an easy job!” That is not a great thing to hear from management.
What does council think?
Mayor Hughson: I just want to highlight the dollars that this will bring in to the community.
Alyssa Garza asks if there’s any representative here from Buccee’s, who can speak to the accusations of bad labor practices?
Answer: There isn’t. City staff weakly gives some anecdotes about staff retention. But there’s no data on turnover or anything
Matthew Mendoza speaks to the quality of the opportunities and why we need good jobs for people without college educations.
The vote:
Everyone reassures Alyssa that labor violations are a federal matter! Surely the Department of Labor will respond promptly to any issues.
That is some magical thinking right there. (Also I learned something new: federal law does not require lunch breaks or rest breaks. Unsurprisingly, neither does Texas. We should probably require breaks in our Chapter 380 agreements.) But generally, there is plenty of wiggle room to be an abusive employer without facing consequences from the DoL.
All new developments have to bury their power lines.
In other words, this is bad:
whereas this is good:
There’s a lot of reasons why this is good practice:
Ok, great.
Whisper South and Whisper South Industrial are here:
Whisper South has requested skipping burying their electrical lines. Staff denied the request. So they appealed to City Council.
City Council agreed with staff, and denied the request as well.
Good job, Council!
…
Items 17-18: The Neighborhood Commission
Maybe the Neighborhood Commission is my arch-nemesis? I disagree so hard with them that steam is coming out my ears.
They sent Council two resolutions, on Occupancy Restrictions and Purpose Built Student Housing.
Occupancy Restrictions
Back in April 2022, Council voted to loosen occupancy restrictions from a max of 2 unrelated people in a house, to a max of 3 unrelated people in a house. Unfortunately, the code wasn’t updated for another 18 months. By this point, Max Baker was off Council and Matthew Mendoza was on it.
It finally passed, officially, in October. So it has been in effect for six months. But in a sore loser move, a subcommittee was put together “to study the issue further”.
The Neighborhood Commission is pissed off.
They want the rule to revert to a max of two unrelated people.
Listen: a cap of two unrelated people is batshit crazy. They clearly hate students, but banning students effectively bans poor people as well. (I really don’t care if that’s accidental or on purpose.) This prevents poor people from pooling their resources and being able to afford the rent in a quiet neighborhood. That’s super gross!
Who actually thinks City Council should be in the business of policing who is married? Why are we micro-managing people’s private lives this way?!
Usually people will say “It’s about parking!” or “It’s about noise!” or “It’s about wild parties!” But there are other mechanisms for dealing with noise and parties. (Namely code enforcement and rental registries for landlords.)
What about the extra cars, parking on the street? Listen: your desire to keep street spots empty is less important than other people’s right to affordable housing. I don’t know why we allow “empty street spots” to be a weapon that existing home owners can wield against renters. Home owners do not have a right to keep street spots empty.
But let me be fair: surely the neighborhood commission gave thoughtful reasons, right?
Unless I’m missing something, they’re saying that three friends living together is causing all this:
Rising costs of home ownership
Impact on residents remaining in their homes
Impact of landlords attempting to put 3 unrelated students in a home
Negative impact on the neighborhood
Wow. That is high on blame and short on details. If something is going on, spell it out explicitly, because right now it looks unhinged. (Also home prices are currently falling.)
What does Council do?
Remember the subcommittee that was formed? It hasn’t met yet, mostly because it doesn’t have a purpose.
Jane Hughson calls for the subcommittee to meet within 30 days. The subcommittee is Matthew Mendoza, Mark Gleason, and Alyssa Garza.
Shall they meet?
Yes, they must meet!! Jane, Matthew, Mark No, it’s over, this is dumb: Alyssa, Shane, Jude
So the informal vote fails. They do not need to meet.
But wait! There’s more from the Neighborhood Commission!
They hate Purpose Built Student Housing and rent-by-the-bedroom leases.
There is an argument that RBB leases are predatory. (I don’t exactly agree, but we’ll talk about this extensively in the Bonus P&Z section.) But for now, it’s safe to say that the Neighborhood Commission is not upset because students are being exploited.
The Neighborhood Commission is saying this:
They do not want student housing complexes. I think this is clear.
So let’s summarize: they do not want students renting houses in neighborhoods. They also do not want apartment complexes to cater to students.
This is just delusional. Look, we have a university! With a lot of students! They are entitled to live in this town!
If students are throwing obnoxious parties, then we need to properly fund Code Enforcement to shut those down. If you have a problem with rentals, hold landlords accountable. This commission thinks that shutting off the actual supply of housing – this human right that we all deserve – will somehow lead to different behavior by students.
What does Council do?
It’s a little perplexing. Jane Hughson moves to postpone the discussion.
Her explanation is that they didn’t put Rent by the Bedroom (RBB) on the agenda, and so legally Council cannot discuss it. She wants to put both RBB and Purpose Built Student Housing on the agenda, so that Council can have the appropriate discussion.
But this is just wrong. Look at the agenda:
Rent by the bedroom is actually right there, on the agenda! How did no one correct her? They literally read that blurb out loud at 1:30:56, here.
(I mean, I truly don’t care. Let’s postpone. It’s not urgent.)
….
Council or city staff: if you’re reading this, I do have one practical suggestion:
If you’re going to regulate RBB leases, you should require that leases include an option to rent by semester, for a modest surcharge. Students need some flexibility to be able to take internships, or graduate in December, or move home for the summer.
Since the complexes are profiting off of being quasi-dorms, they should provide this benefit specific to students, like a dorm would.
Item 17: you may have heard of this gasoline station?
They want to come to San Marcos.
Specifically, here:
Even more specifically here:
It’s going to have all your Buc-ees features that you know you love:
120 gas pumps, some electric vehicle charging stations, massive travel center, endless Buc-ees themed gear, etc. You know the drill.
There’s going to be some extra roads:
This is a good location. It’s not in any floodplain, it’s not over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, nor any other sort of environmentally sensitive zone. It’s good for traffic, too, because there are off-ramps and on-ramps right there. Southbound I-35 traffic can get in and out, without having to wait at any traffic lights.
…
So now the bargaining begins. What can they offer us? What can we offer them?
They’re offering a minimum of 175 stable jobs:
Just to be clear, $18/hour puts you at $36K per year. That is above the federal poverty rate for a family of four, but it does not exactly leave you any breathing room. It’s a hell of a lot better than our $7.25/hour joke of a minimum wage, though.
The benefits are meaningful – health care, 401K with matching contributions, 3 weeks paid vacation. They’re not doing the asshole move of scheduling everyone for 35 hours/week in order to avoid having to pay for healthcare.
Environmentally, they’re offering to install an oil-water separator to handle the runoff from the fueling area.
Virginia Parker, the director of the San Marcos River Foundation, had a recommendation: include a clause in the contract to require regular maintenance inspections of the oil-water separator on a regular basis.
Take her advice, Council!! Systems need maintenance! Don’t just let things degrade over the next 50 years.
(Council ignored this.)
So what do they want from us?
Background: businesses pay both property taxes and sales tax. – Property tax rate: 0.063 cents per $100 appraised. – Sales tax rate: 1.5 cents per dollar.
The deal is that Buc-ees would pay all of their property taxes, but only half the sales tax, for 15 years.
Here’s what the fiscal analysis predicts:
So we stand to bring in a lot, but we’re also giving a lot away.
Let’s just do some quick back-of-the-envelope math. If Buc-ees expects to pay $188K in sales tax in the first year, that means they’re expecting to bring in over $25 million in sales, from this one store, that first year. Over the whole 15 years, we’re rebating them $3.2 million. That implies they’re expecting to earn $426.7 million in sales, at this location alone.
Bottom line: Sure, it’s in our best interest to give up this $188K so that we can get the bigger revenue. But they’re not struggling to keep the lights on. This isn’t a feel-good grant to a struggling mom-and-pop shop.
One other note:
This is not in SMCISD. Your local schools won’t see that money. Is Hays ISD a perfectly nice place? Sure. But it’s vast and stretches up to Austin, and it’s mostly not San Marcos, which is what this Council represents. Probably 98% of the kids in San Marcos are zoned for SMCISD.
One more interesting detail: The EDSM board is the Economic Development of San Marcos Board. They took a look at this project at the end of last year, and they recommended a 10 year rebate. But then it got changed to a 15 year rebate. Why?
Shane Scott asks this very question, later on: Why was 10 years not okay? The Buc-ee’s rep says: This is our standard Chapter 380 agreement! If you want 10 years, we need a bigger rebate. Or if you want 20 years, we’d take a smaller rebate. You’re getting the standard package!
Saul asks: Would you stay if it was 10 years at 50%? Answer: Yeah, no. We’d walk.
Mmhmm.
Saul asks: What about part-time employees? Answer: We pride ourselves on having a maximal number of fulltime employees.
Saul: Is your customer base going to be local people or I-35 traffic? Answer: We think it will be 80% out-of-towners. Our business model is that we’re a road trip stop. Shouldn’t affect local convenience stores or gas stations.
Matthew Mendoza asks about trash and recycling. Answer: We are aggressive recyclers! We do as much as we can!
Matthew also asks if this is actually a truck stop? Answer: Nope! No 18-wheelers except for the ones delivering things to the store.
Alyssa asks about benefits for employees? Answer: 3 weeks vacation, health care after 60 days, and a 401K with 100% match up to 6%.
Those are all reasonable.
Jane Hughson asks one of the city staff to talk about programs for local small businesses, and he rattles off a dozen small programs. You can get coaching, you can get grants to replace your awning, you can get a grant if you want to do something environmentally friendly, that kind of thing. (That is the extent to which City Council heard and placated the citizen comment complaints.)
Jude Prather is super stoked. This sends a message that San Marcos is OPEN FOR BUSINESS!
Mark Gleason praises the choice of location for traffic and environmental reasons, which is fair. He says he’s a little uneasy about the 15 years, and wouldn’t have agreed to it if they also were getting property taxes back. Also fair. He compliments them on their fair employment practices and reiterates Jude’s OPEN FOR BUSINESS line.
The vote:
This will come back around next time for a final vote.
I know I sound a little grumpy here. I’m not saying Buc-ee’s is a bad corporation. They seem like nice people. They seem like they make an effort to treat their employees well and do more than the bare minimum for the environment.
Here’s what I’m saying: In Texas, we allow corporations to get away with staggeringly awful behavior. So when a company comes along and doesn’t treat their hourly employees like utter dog shit, we fall all over ourselves with shock and awe. What heroes! They pay $36K a year! You can go to a doctor and take a vacation!
Excuse me while I sidle away from the wankfest? Thank you for clearing this extremely low bar of decency?
Bottom line: do I think we should we take this deal with Buc-ees?
Eh, yes. I do. I’d vote for in favor, if it were up to me.
…
Item 5: THE CAN BAN!
This is the final vote. We’ve been over the go-zones and no-zones, the issue with the coolers, and everything else. (Here, here, here, and here.)
Alyssa Garza mentions again that she’s opposed to the ban on big coolers on the river. I too think it’s silly, but the “go-zones” ended up being so big that there’s plenty of space for big coolers to hang out.
Everyone is very gracious and appreciative of staff, and very excited to get this done.
THE VOTE:
There was an actual burst of applause in the chambers. Everyone’s super stoked.
This might feel a bit like insider baseball, but it’s insider baseball that makes me happy.
Here’s the issue: say a developer applies to get their land zoned. The developer says, “You’re gonna love it! I’m going to put in some cute condos, a great restaurant, and some retail.” They show us some charming sketches of what they have planned. We think it looks great and give them the zoning they want.
Then they change their mind and sell it. The new owner gets the zoning, but decides that they really want to build something that pisses everyone off. As long as the new plan is legal under the zoning, there’s no mechanism to stop them.
(To be fair, Council and P&Z know not to trust charming sketches. But in general, there are a lot of hard calls on zoning when you’re okay with some uses and not others.)
Enter PDDs. PDD stands for Planned Development District. This means you get to micromanage the developer. You get to see the actual plans and say, “A few more trees over there, how about an awning on this little store, etc.” You can be extremely heavy-handed and rigid. Everybody signs the PDD contract and the city gets exactly what it signs up for.
There are bad parts, too: it’s an enormous amount of work for city staff. Sometimes it has meant sweetheart deals for developers who don’t feel like following the code. Sometimes PDDs haven’t been enforced. PDDs are only as good as the council that approves them.
Here’s the frustrating thing: we used to have PDDs, but in 2018, we threw them out! I never understood this. Why not just use them less? You’re allowed to have tools that you don’t use very often. But no: we went Marie Kondo on our tool set and completely cut them out. (There are plenty of PDDs that are still around – Trace, La Cima, etc, but we eliminated our ability to write new ones.)
Since then, there’ve been a number of occasions when it would have been nice to have them! The most obvious example is the SMART Terminal. We were on the verge of handing over 2000 acres and saying, “Have fun with all that! Let us know what you decide to do with all that heavy industrial zoning!!” Only for massive public activism did we back away at the 11th hour.
So now we’re bringing PDDs back!
Jane Hughson’s main motivation is to hold developers’ feet to the fire. If they promise beautiful things, then they can put it in writing and be held accountable. I agree – that’s a great reason to have PDDs.
Everyone else is on board. What’s not to love about micromanaging developers?
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Item 8: Emergency Sirens
There are emergency sirens throughout town. We occasionally have emergencies – floods, tornados, snow-vid, etc. (Now, I can’t recall ever actually hearing them during different emergencies we’ve had? but surely they did their job.)
If we’re going to have massive sprawl, maybe the developers should include sirens in their new developments. Everyone agrees this sounds reasonable.
Shane Scott asks about GMRS systems? Apparently these are fancy walkie-talkies, somewhere in between CBs and ham radios, in terms of watts of power.
Answer: they require really tall towers, so they wouldn’t piggyback on the siren towers. But maybe someday!
10-4, good buddy.
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Item 9: Boards and Commissions appointments.
There are 19 different city boards and commissions with open slots. It’s appointment time.
Last year, Alyssa Garza was super frustrated by the perpetual Oldness and Whiteness of the applicant pool. It was never shared with the public if anything came of that? Maybe the DEI coordinator worked with the communications outreach team to get the word out more effectively?
Jane Hughson applauded this applicant pool for being the most diverse yet. Maybe it is! I have no idea. Alyssa did not say anything good or bad either way about it.
On P&Z, there were three open slots. All three current members – Lupe Costilla, Jim Garber, and William Agnew – were re-appointed for a second term. Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzalez, Mark Gleason, and Matthew Mendoza voted for those three reappointments. Jude Prather, Shane Scott, and Alyssa Garza all voted for some new and some returning people.
All three of those P&Z members work hard and in good faith. I’m totally annoyed with how P&Z handled VisionSMTX, but that’s just one part of many things they do, and they do other things well. (New appointments keep it fresh and interesting, though.)
One last thought: I recognized so many of the names from people who are friends with me on social media! You’re good people. Everyone who submits an application to be on these commissions deserves a hearty thank you.
Mission Able, a nonprofit that offers home repairs for low-income residents of San Marcos
Being opposed to the potential Lindsey Street high rise
How some people online are blaming the historic district and unprotected neighborhoods for sprawl. Watch out for AI. It’s not rich vs. poor, it’s protected neighborhoods vs. unprotected neighborhoods.
Obviously that last comment is catnip to me! I’m so excited to take it apart.
“People online are blaming the historic district and unprotected neighborhoods for sprawl.”
I hope the speaker doesn’t mean me! I don’t blame the historic district for sprawl. I blame the neighborhoods that aren’t like the historic district. I want all single-family neighborhoods to have the interesting housing options that the historic district has, like ADUs, and 3- and 4-plexes.
I blame neighborhoods that are uniformly single-family homes for sprawl.
“Watch out for AI.”
I think this means for the VisionSMTX survey – the speaker doesn’t want someone programming a bot to bombard the survey with 2000 responses against her.
I also don’t want that! However, I’m publishing a cheat sheet, in case any people out there want a shortcut to sharing their opinions. But listen: I only want people. No bots.
“It’s not rich vs. poor, it’s protected neighborhoods vs. unprotected neighborhoods.”
I have definitely phrased the VisionSMTX fight as “haves vs. the have-nots”, which amounts to the same thing as rich v poor. So my ears perked up.
What does “protected neighborhoods vs. unprotected neighborhoods” mean? My best guest is that the speaker is referring to HOAs. I think they are saying that HOA neighborhoods are protected and non-HOA neighborhoods are unprotected.
As luck would have it, I’ve been thinking a lot about HOAs as well! They’re fucking wild. There’s a kernel of truth to what the speaker is saying. HOAs can ban things – like ADUs – even if the city says they’re allowed everywhere.
However, I don’t want to extend HOA protections to non-HOA neighborhoods. I’d rather level the playing field by de-fanging the HOAs. HOAs operate under the pretense that nothing they do affects anyone outside the neighborhood. But when it comes to collective action problems like sprawl and density, opting out of the solution does affect others. And so it should be banned.
Will we take bold action on HOAs? Ha. ha. No. Sorry.
…
Usually I don’t mention the Consent Agenda, because it’s a formality. But it’s important this time, because:
CLICKERS ARE BACK!
But just for that one vote! Then they stopped working. 🙁
Mayor Hughson has an amendment: it will be a $50 fine if you park a non-EV vehicle in an EV spot. Seems reasonable. The amendment passes 7-0.
The vote on all the parking updates: 6-1.
Alyssa Garza was a “no”, but didn’t say why. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Item 5: Taking $800K of ARPA money and giving it to Mission Able and Operation Triage.
ARPA money is Covid money, and it has to be fully spent soon. So we’re giving $400K to Mission Able, and $400K to Operation Triage.
Mission Able is these guys. They come in and repair people’s homes. For various reasons, they can make the application process much less painful than the CBDG application process.
Operation Triage is these guys. They do something similar, except they focus on veterans.
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Item 6: We’re also shuffling around CBDG money. It’s not a surprise – it’s a continuation of this plan for flood mitigation.
…
That was literally the whole meeting. It was surreal!
Council hemmed and hawed, and asked staff to bring two more final choices back.
So these are the two finalists:
I like these rocks better! These look like river rocks, not suburban masonry. But the new heron is worse. It was better off-center with the blue outline, I think.
The one on the left reads: “State Park, but make it Business-Professional.” I’m okay with that vibe.
They will be located at these two locations:
I always enjoy it when staff draws the city sideways. Look at that wonky compass in the corner:
What’s reality anyway, man? Time is a construct! North is an illusion! You’re not the boss of me!
What does Council think?
Mayor Hughson, with a pained expression: So these are our only two choices?
Staff: You literally told us to only bring back two.
Mayor, deep sigh, clearly repressing the urge to say, “But I didn’t mean this crap.”
Matthew Mendoza: Maybe it’s because I live in Rio Vista, but I love the heron! It symbolizes conservation and the environment. Option B for Bird.
Alyssa Garza: I like the bird. Ever since I first visited San Marcos, I’ve seen those beautiful white birds. Option B.
Jane Hughson: The bird does not represent the whole city. It could be a neighborhood sign, but I don’t like it here. Option A.
Mark Gleason: The bird is not the mascot of San Marcos. It’s distracting. Option A.
Saul Gonzalez is also for Option A. (Jude and Shane are absent.)
So it’s 3-2. Council argues about whether to wait until Jude and Shane are back, so that one option can get a full four votes. Alyssa weighs in: “I truly don’t care. We are spending way too much time on this. I’ll switch my vote.”
So the State-Park-But-Business sign wins with a clean four votes. And City Council gave the bird to the bird. (Ba dum ching.)
….
Matthew: Can we cycle through different colors for the lighting? Purple on Rattler nights, Maroon on Bobcat nights, holiday colors around the holidays?
Answer: Yes! As long as it’s static. TxDOT just says no moving parts.
So there you have it. At some point this year, these harmless little welcome signs will appear on I-35.
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Item 9: Rezoning 18 acres behind the outlet malls.
This has come up before. It’s part of a larger chunk of land:
Mostly light industrial, but with this one little piece for apartments. These were never built, either!
The current owners want to change the yellow square to Light Industrial, to go along with the rest.
Saul is the only one who asks questions:
What is the expected tax revenue for this?
Staff says, “We can’t give an estimate.”
What is the impact on the neighbors?
Answer: They’re all doing the same thing.
It passes 5-0.
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Item 11: We are fiddling with little parking details, as discussed here.
Among other things, we are raising the parking ticket fees, for the first time in 50 years:
I didn’t really know what to make of this. Are the little cities price gouging? Or are the big cities subsidizing bad behavior? So I emailed the chair of the parking committee (Rosalie Ray), who tells me:
– By state law, your fine for illegally parking in a handicap spot must be at least $500. So those cities with cheaper fines in that category just haven’t updated their fees since 2009, when that law was passed. (We hadn’t updated ours since 1974!)
– To avoid price-gouging, the committee has a couple things in place:
you can opt for community service instead of a fine,
you can get a payment plan, and
you can get your fine cut in half by responding within 14 days. (Council could extend the 50% discount to double-parking and blocking alleys, if they want.)
– The main targets are things like FedEx and delivery trucks. They’re the ones blocking alleys and bike lanes or double-parking. So we want them to pay their fair share.
We’re now three years deep in writing the Comprehensive Plan, or VisionSMTX. (Discussed here, here, here, here, and here.) – Years 1-2: a 30 person citizen group meets and a draft is written. – Year 3: A subcommittee from P&Z guts a lot of the important details meant to address suburban sprawl and unaffordable housing. P&Z passed the gutted version.
So how will council go about getting community input?
Basically, a massive outreach campaign. City staff is going to carpet bomb the city with fliers and emails. They’re going to put a little insert in with your utility bills. They’re going to wash social media in links. They’re going all out.
You’ll be able to:
Fill out a survey on paper, or
Fill it out online, or
Leave comments directly on the Summary of Changes table, for other people to read.
The survey opens February 2nd and closes February 23rd.
The problem is that the actual document is long and boring, and the details are fiddly. The summary table is 22 pages long! So it’s going to be hard to get people to wade into it.
Here is my plan: I’m going to try to provide a cheat sheet. If you care about the same things I care about, I’ll have some language that anyone can borrow, to make it easier to fill out the survey.
What did Council think?
Jane Hughson starts, “A common complaint is that this is all about protecting rich neighborhoods. But this is about protecting all neighborhoods! Not just the wealthy ones!”
That is not my complaint. Sure, yes: the changes apply to all the neighborhoods. My complaint is that “protecting all neighborhoods” means locking in sprawl and preventing renters from living in quiet neighborhoods.
There is some bickering over the third survey option, where you’ll be able to write comments directly on the Summary Table. Should comments have a “reply” feature, so that people can go back and forth in a single thread?
Jane and Mark say no. It will disintegrate into fighting, and intimidate people who might not comment out of fear of having their comments shredded. Plus, anyone can leave a new comment and respond to another comment – it just wouldn’t be a “reply” feature on a comment.
Alyssa feels strongly that we should be able to. Adults aren’t kids and you don’t need to be coddling them. Classrooms use this kind of thing all the time. If people can’t handle this level of discourse, they should go to therapy.
Matthew Mendoza says that he’s okay with a little back and forth.
So it’s tied 2-2. Jane says, “Saul, you’re the tie-breaker. What do you want to do?”
Saul says, “I’ll go with the majority.”
Jane: [Eyes bug out.]
Saul: Ok, just comments. No back and forth.
In Saul’s defense, he seems to be feeling really under the weather. Later, when asked for his opinion, he just weakly says, “I took some Advil…”
I’m with Jane, Mark and Saul here: classrooms are heavily moderated by the instructor. Unmoderated spaces deteriorate fast. I personally would not wade into a situation if it felt like a cesspool to me.
…
Q&A with the Press and Public:
LMC asks about the Gateway signs. How much did we pay the consultants? How much staff time? How much will the signs cost?
Answer: The consultants were $63K. The signs will cost $200-250K. It takes staff about 1-2 hours per week.
…
That was the whole meeting! It was short and sweet.
People talked about: - Funding for rehabilitating various buildings in Dunbar – Whether we really want to change the name of Citizen Comment to “Community Perspectives” or not. – Concerns over police accountability – How Mark Gleason got a letter of admonishment from the Ethics Review Commission, for voting on items where he should have recused himself. Specifically, he voted on the meet-and-confer contract for the fire fighters union, after receiving several donations of different sorts from them. (Details here but all you can do is watch a video. There are no minutes or documents.) – Max Baker is starting a monthly San Marcos Civics Club, to get the public engaged and hold City Council accountable. (I imagine you could reach out to him on Facebook if you’re interested, and he’d be glad to have you.)
Item 1: We have a Sidewalk Maintenance Program.
Basically, the city looks for places where people are complaining, or there are pedestrian traffic accidents, or underserved areas, or high pedestrian traffic areas.
This is the type of thing they do:
Here’s what’s going on for the next year:
The five year plan is a little more loosey-goosey and responsive to changing needs, but here’s the tentative map:
Jude Prather: there’s been a lot of improvement to our sidewalks. Let’s keep the gas pedal on.
Shane Scott: It happened outside my shop. They were really careful about the tree roots.
Mark Gleason: It happened to me! They laid the sidewalk today. They were very professional and they were careful of my trees. Added convenience and safety.
Mark Gleason does have one suggestion, which is that the city should use goat paths to identify potential places for new sidewalks.
I think he means this kind of thing, where over time people have worn a little path:
Alyssa: Great job. One of my neighbors posted about their really positive interactions with the city.
Jane: We started thinking about sidewalks in 1992, we said “schools and grocery stores.” So we’ve come a long way.
One issue is how to add sidewalks to streets where we don’t have a right-of-way. In other words, how do we build a sidewalk in a high-needs spot, where the city doesn’t own an easement along the road? Jane asks about this.
Answer: It makes it a bigger project than the Sidewalks Maintenance Project. We have to collaborate with Public Works. It goes on the CIP list.
My two cents: We need sidewalks running out to the high school. I know it’s far away, because that’s where land was cheap enough to acquire. Do not put a bike lane that feels like part of the street down 123 – put in a proper sidewalk. All the way to the high school. (And do it now, because a lot of that empty land is zoned for housing and apartments, and putting sidewalks in will get even harder.)
Item 18: Flood money.
After the 2015 floods, we got a big chunk of CBDG money from the federal government. It comes in two flavors:
Housing assistance
Stormwater projects
For Housing Assistance, we built 14 homes and repaired some of the public housing homes on CM Allen. (We discussed a few of these homes last year, being built in Sunset Acres.)
It’s depressing that it took eight years to get these people into safe housing. I think the main reason is that there were five rounds of funding, and so those from the first few rounds got their housing sooner. Plus I’m sure there were Covid delays, and some of it was generic government red tape. The last few houses remaining were finished this past year.
Three applicants withdrew in 2022 and 2023, and at that point it was too late to get new applicants, and so the housing portion came in $1 million under budget.
On the stormwater projects, we’ve got:
Uhland Road Improvements:
This one finished up in the fall.
2. Midtown Drainage – Aquarena Springs and I-35
This one will finish in April 2024.
3. Blanco Riverine: Berm and Floodwall
This one is supposed to finish in June 2024.
We discussed this one briefly back here. It’s a really big project:
and it’s supposed to do this sort of thing:
Basically geo-engineering a place for the water to go when it floods, instead of going into Blanco Gardens.
4. Blanco Gardens Drainage Improvements
This one is supposed to finish in August 2024.
The point of today’s presentation is that as some of the projects wrap up and have a little money leftover, the money gets shuffled around to the other ones that are still ongoing.
There are some other projects that will take a little longer to finish: – Acquiring land for flood prevention – Electronic rain gauges that are tied into the flood warning system – 3 sets of permanent flood gates: Cape Road, McKie Street, and Jackman Street/Gravel Street.
This is all supposed to wrap up by 2027.
What does City Council have to say? Saul: On Barbara Drive: what kind of drainage? Looks different than Conway. Answer: It’s the same as on Conway. They’re both Open Channel.
Saul: Is it dangerous for kids? Answer: Velocities should be slow. Will have gates. Won’t have easy access.
Mark: I was personally affected by all the flooding. We’re still dealing with the ramifications.
Mark has a few questions: – Will the new raingauges be integrated with the WETmap website on the Hays county website? Answer: Yes. – Will emergency info/river flood data be shared with NOA? Answer: I assume so but I don’t know for sure. – When will rain gauges be done? Answer: End of 2023, but they’ll be tinkered with in the Stormwater Master Plan. – What kind of gate are you using for gating off those channels? Answer: Single arm. – So people are losing access to these alleys in Blanco Gardens. Are they aware? Answer: we sent notifications and knocked on some doors.
Shane Scott asks the hard-hitting questions: What about Quiet Zones for trains? Answer: That’s a totally different topic. Different grant money.
Alyssa: I was also in Blanco Gardens during the floods. As projects wrap up, can we get back to the people in these neighborhoods? We need to explain that we’re working through issues and they haven’t been forgotten. Answer: there will be ribbon cuttings, etc.
Saul: A neighbor said they’ll only be allowed to have 1 cable. Is that true? Answer: Yes. There are 3 telecom companies. Time-warner/Spectrum, Astound/Grande, CenturyLink/Brightspeed. Two of these pulled out of Blanco Gardens. So you basically only have Spectrum.
This is just a discussion item, so there’s no vote.
Item 19: There are some toxic chemicals under Guadalupe. (We talked about this here a few months ago.)
Short version: there’s a bunch of groundwater toxic chemicals – PERCs, TCEs, VCs – deep in the ground, leftover from some dry cleaning businesses 40+ years ago. They’re really not good, but the chemicals will break down over the next 100 years into carbon dioxide, a little chlorine, and water, which are not so bad. They’ve basically sunk down way underground, into this stuff called Navarro Clay, which is a super thick gunky layer that just sits there underground, above the water table of the aquifer. So we can’t really clean it up, but they’re also not going to get into the river or the aquifer water table. We mostly need to leave them untouched until they decompose.
Here’s the three properties we bought, at the site of the original contamination:
The official way to let the chemicals sit there is to set up a Municipal Settings Designation, or MSD:
In this region, no one can drill any groundwater wells. You already can’t, because it’s within city limits, but now you EXTRA can’t.
We notified anyone who has a private well within 5 miles of this site. That worked out to 109 well owners. None of them seemed particularly concerned.
The San Marxist 