Category: Meetings

May 18th City Council Meeting (Part 3)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Item 20: Cape’s Dam MOU

I sat down to write up this item, and got so bogged down in the backstory that it became clear that that had to be its own post. With that out of the way, the story becomes less important.

The foreground issue is a Memorandum of Understanding between the city and the county, about an East side park called the Cape’s Dam Complex. The background issue is whether or not the dam should be rebuilt.

Melissa Derrick moved to strike a clause from the main statement:  “whereas the scientific community has pointed out that the flow race of the main channel and the mill race are important for the protection of river wild rice etc etc,”

If you don’t know the background, this clause sounds totally innocuous, and Derrick sounds like an anti-science nut. But this is actually the false environmental propaganda, in my opinion. (I’m basing my opinion on the San Marcos River Foundation.)

Anyway, the amendment passed and the clause was struck.

Max Baker moved to insert SMRF into the groups where communication is a high-priority. This passed.

The county clearly thinks that the dam ought to be rebuilt. I don’t think the city has decided yet. Or rather, they’re split. “Renovate/rehabilitate the dam” may mean different things to different councilmembers.

The MOU passed. Only Baker voted no.

Onto the next-most-interesting items!

Items 19 and 27: Miniature goats! Spear-fishing!

You are now allowed to have miniature goats within city limits. Congrats! You must have a pair, so that they don’t get too lonely and hence noisy. You’re not allowed to sell your goat cheese or goat milk. Your goat shed must meet certain criteria. The billy goats must be neutered, lest ye develop a third goat.

Shane Scott likes to gig fish and doesn’t want to have to get a permit, because it’s not a spear-spear. Can gigging be exempt from the permitting process? Others pointed out that all fishing needs a permit, aside from the special spear-fishing permit. This was just a discussion item, and four voted yes to have city staff research it and bring it back. But it did not appear that four people would actually want to change anything.

Everything else:

  • Reviewed the process for Community Block Development Grants (CBDG) for the coming year
  • 10% discount for San Marcos residents at the Kissing Tree. Will it be raised to a 25% discount? Probably not.
  • Purple heart trail, ethics review training, etc.

DONE.

I skipped the work session again, this week. I’m still getting my sea legs on this whole thing, and the Cape’s Dam entry took a long time.

May 18th City Council Meeting (Part 2)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

The next two most important items are probably the Charter Review Commission and the Cape’s Dam MOU.

Item 1: Charter Review Commission

So, the city charter is like our constitution, I gather. It gets reviewed every four years. I think it can only be amended by public vote at the ballot box. A committee was formed, met over six months, and provided their final report to Council. Then Council decides which issues go on the ballot in November. (I might have this wrong, but this is what I inferred.)

Former Mayor Thomaides chaired the commission. Lots of connected people on there: Esther Garcia, Travis Kelsey, Zach Sambrano, Chance Sparks, Paul Mayhew and [Someone] Taylor. I’m less familiar with Garcia, Sparks and Taylor, but recognize Garcia’s name. Kelsey and Sambrano are on the Planning and Zoning commission, Mayhew used to be on the school board, and Sparks has apparently worked with lots of city managers thoughout Texas. And Thomaides, of course, was mayor until 2016, when he lost to Hughson.

On the whole, their recommendations did not seem to have any ulterior motive. They seemed genuinely to be thinking about the city as a whole. I haven’t read the charter, so I don’t know what they might have omitted, but at this point I have no qualms with their process.

Their 13 recommendations, loosely clumped:

  • Term limits: Council members would be able to serve three consecutive 3-year terms, and then they’d have to cycle off for a term. Mayor would be able to serve two 4-year terms, and then cycle off.

Baker, Scott, Garza, and Gleason were in favor of term limits. First, to limit the power of encumbency. Second, to have time to reflect on your decisions in office and see how they played out.

Hughson, Derrick, and Gonzalez were opposed – let the voters choose who they want. So that will probably go to the ballot.

Note: these are limits on consecutive terms, not term limits. Interestingly, Thomaides, Scott, and Hughson all have experience with cycling off. Former Mayor Thom/aides, the chair of the commission, is currently in one of these alleged periods of reflection. Scott also lost his council seat (maybe 5-6 years ago?) and got back on this past November. Has he grown and reflected on his choices back then? You be the judge. Finally, Mayor Hugh/son was on the council in the ’90s. She took 10+ years off before running again, circa 2010.

Currently the mayor serves two years, not four. The argument for the change was to free up the mayor from campaigning, and to align that election with presidential elections. Four of them opposed this, so it probably won’t be on the ballot.

(The combination of these two votes is weird: originally it was proposed that the Mayor should have two 4-year terms, and inadvertently they’re now proposing two 2-year terms. I hope that gets cleaned up at the next review session.)

  • Loosening a bunch of residency restrictions and council appointees. These seemed fine. It’s good for city managers and judges to live in town, but it does reduce the applicant pool. Some will be on the ballot, others kept as is.
  • Codifying some current practices around ethics investigations, Citizen Comment procedures, deadline flexibility, and cleaning up inconsistencies. Nothing else seemed momentous.

That’s all, but it took about two hours for them to get through all that.

Omissions I might have advocated for:

  • City Council meeting weekly instead of biweekly
  • City Council earning a living wage, to enable a broader portion of the community to be able to run for office

Next Post: Cape’s Dam.

May 18th City Council Meeting (Part 1)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Well! The most interesting item turned out to be such a clear smackdown that it is more open and shut than expected. Item 28 was to re-discuss Cite & Release.

[Sidebar: if we’re having 6+ hour meetings every two weeks, when do we start thinking about meeting weekly for 3 hours, instead? This is dumb.]

Background: San Marcos passed a Cite & Release ordinance a year ago. Since 2005ish, Texas police officers have been allowed to give citations and court dates for certain nonviolent offenses, instead of arresting people and hauling them down to the station, and setting in motion the turmoil of having one’s life abruptly struck. People miss work, get fired, can’t arrange childcare, CPS gets involved, etc etc. It’s the kind of thing that tips people from “barely getting by” into “abject poverty”. Since then, C&R hasn’t been applied fairly – white people were getting cited-and-released, black and brown people were being hauled down and physically arrested. So after a HUGE campaign by Ma/no Ami/ga, we made it mandatory to use C&R for seven specific offenses, a year ago.

So, tonight? Councilmember Scott has put C&R on the agenda as a discussion item. It’s very nebulous: “Hold discussion on Ordinance 2020-18, Cite and Release and provide direction to the City Manager.”

First, Mano Amiga generated a ton of citizens to show up during Citizen Comment.

[Sidebar: Citizen comment is 30 minutes. Each person gets 3 minutes. 27 people signed up to talk. The Mayor asks the council if they are okay extending Citizen Comment Period. There was exactly one dissent: Shane Scott, who preferred to cut it off after 30 minutes.]

Anyway: the community members make many great points about the benefits of C&R, the inadequacy of the data after such a weird Covid year, and so on.

Six hours later, the council finally gets to Item 28. Shane Scott has to go first, because he put it on the agenda. He basically says “I’m getting a lot of phone calls about increased crime. We just need to give Chief Dandridge some breathing room!”

(Crucially, Scott mentions that he has not talked to Chief Dandridge about this.)

Everybody weighs in, in predictable ways. Derrick points out that the chief was hired after C&R, and said he supported it in his interview.

Finally Chief Dandridge weighs:

  • We need to be victim-focused. There is huge amount of victimization of violent crime in SM.
  • We are nearly 50-50 on violent crime vs property crime. That’s crazy. There’s way too much violent crime here.
  • Violent crime is NOT being driven by C&R. He quite clearly emphasizes and dwells on this point: He fully supports C&R. He has continuously supported C&R. It frees up his officers to make them available for more immediate concerns. A direct quote: “It would be a myth to suggest that our city is more dangerous due to C&R.”
  • He goes through the 7 categories, and gives 2019 vs 2020 numbers. (Drug paraphenalia, theft, disorderly conduct, pot, driving without a license, city ordinance, mischief.) All are steady or down. He gives a big caveat about how Covid complicates everything.
  • The SM/PD has a dashboard, available to the public, keeping track of C&R data. (I would link it but I’m not ready for a broader readership. It can be easily found via the city website.)

He will share a major plan soon. He has a lot of ideas. Two major themes for crime-reduction:

  1. Community Engagement
  2. Technology. Apparently we have a woeful 20 year old CAD system, and I can believe that it’s pitiful in terms of wasting everyone’s time and energy.

Basically, Chief Dandridge gave a statement that was perfectly clear and concise and laid to rest this issue completely. C&R is going to stay and is not up for debate.

The rest of the councilmembers weighed in, in predictable ways, and that was that.

Mayor Hughson did mention how she did NOT support C&R last year. I had forgotten that. She said that she wanted officers to have discretion. She says she still does, but she also supports the chief, who supports C&R, etc. So hers was a bit mealy-mouthed.

It was decided to postpone this topic until the Chief shares his business plan.

Incidentally, “business plan” for a police department is annoying. It’s not a business. Profit is not a consideration. “Strategic plan” would be better.

May 4th, 2021 City Council meeting (Part 3)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Miscellaneous – what else was discussed?

  • Mobile Home park approved, north of airport, east of 35
  • Redwood affordable senior housing development approved
  • Fire department,
  • Tax contribution for downtown master plan
  • PID for Whisper tract
  • PD Victim of Crimes fund
  • Environmental Air Quality policy
  • Commercial Scooters are in.
  • Some other pro forma stuff.

There were like 34 items and it went till almost midnight, and that didn’t include the afternoon extra session, which I skipped. But finally I have completed one meeting!!

May 4th, 2021 City Council meeting (Part 2)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

The second most interesting item of the night was Item 32: Paid Parking in the City Parks.

This came from the Parks and Rec Board as a recommendation. It was basically swatted down hard. The conversation was handled very well.

First off, everyone was against charging in Rio Vista parks. There’s barely any parking there already. It would push cars to park in the neighborhood. So the conversation was quickly restricted to the parking lots right by the Lion’s Club.

Second, everyone was strongly against charging residents to park there. It was basically just a conversation about whether or not to charge tourists to park.

Jane Hughson made all the sane points against this:

  • it would be a giant mess to implement a city parking permit program and get the word out to residents. Residents would constantly be showing up and either get charged or turned away to do some paperwork, or their pass would be in their other car, or they’d be riding in the car with their out-of-town guest, and so on. A million headaches.
  • Furthermore, it’s not even clear that we have enough of a tourist industry to pay for the headaches caused.

Melissa Derrick made the best points in favor, namely that the river is overused and we risk eating our own tail if we can’t find a way to protect it. Many cities with important natural resources seem to use a permit system just fine, like Florida beach towns or whatever. Why can’t we?

I hear what she’s saying, but somehow there’s a much steeper obstacle here in terms of awareness. Maybe just because every Florida beach town grapples with that same issue, and here it’s spotty. But it would be a huge mess.

Hughson puts a plug in for us to charge for football parking, though. That seems like low-hanging fruit.

May 4th, 2021 City Council meeting (Part 1)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

The most interesting item of the night was clearly #29: Consider a Revised purpose statement for the Council Criminal Justice Reform Committee.

The CJR Committee was formed to address Cite and Release issues. Cite and Release has been adopted. Max Baker and Alyssa Garza are the two Councilmembers on the CJR Committee.

The CJR has been pursuing other topics that would fall under Criminal Justice Reform, and city staff has gotten prickly because the topics aren’t within the purview of the mission statement.

Tonight’s issue: to revise the purpose statement so that City Staff can carry out the supporting work. That is the text. As always, there’s a lot of subtext!

So how did the discussion go? Bert Lumbreras was arguing for procedure to be followed. It’s a committee that operates at the discretion of the council. City Staff serves the council. Therefore, the council needs to bless the new direction of the committee before City Staff can do its bidding.

Max Baker comes with a new proposed purpose statement. City Council tweaks it and seems on board with it. Hughson, Derrick, and Garza kick the wordsmithing around a bit.

Then Scott says, basically, why isn’t this committee over?

Baker and Garza explain that there are a lot more simmering issues still. Here’s where the subtext arises. Their take is that they’re being stonewalled by City Staff because these are controversial issues, and made to dot their i’s and cross their t’s with far more precision and wasted time than other committees.

The charitable take on City Staff is that they’re being CYA precisely because these are hot-button issues. They do not want to be perceived as acting without direction on controversies. Whereas when issues are boring, they can take more liberties without Council direction, because they’re not going to be on the hot seat defending their choices.

The uncharitable take is that yes, they’re stone-walling because they’re unsympathetic to the cause. 20 minutes later, on the next item, they ask for council members to come directly to them with Covid ideas because it’s simpler.

Scott asks the new Police Chief Dandridge what his thoughts are. He does not stay neutral. He explicitly tips his hand against the committee, saying this will take time away from the top items on his to-do list, a lot of which have to do with the recently killed and injured police officers, and the department trauma and repair. He also took issue with the merging of national conversations with local issues.

IMO, his failure to stay neutral when delivering his answer undermines his credibility on this topic. A bit of acknowledgement of issues of police racism and brutality would have really given him a lot more credibility when he listed the competing issues. Are the other issues real? Absolutely! Does he believe in them? For sure. But for his opening bid to be so dismissive of this committee is a giant red flag. He does not seem to buy into the idea that good reform is safer for officers as well as the community.

In the end:

  1. they approve the new mission statement for the CJR committee. I don’t have the exact wording, but it involved Cite & Divert, working with the county, and increased police transparency where allowed by law.
  2. Hughson lectured the committee about taking their priority list to the police chief and seeing where there are goals in common, and working with them instead of against them.
  3. Hughson lectured Lumbreras about needing to inform councilmembers on which items are quick to retrieve and research, and which items are time-consuming. Councilmembers don’t know how the databases and systems are set up, and can’t necessarily predict the workload involved.

Side note: To google-proof or not? Do people have alerts set up for their name? Do I want people to read this while I’m still getting the kinks out? I don’t know!! (I decided to play it safe for now and google-proof names.)

[Updated 8/8/22: removed google-proofing]