Category: Meetings

March 23rd City Council Meeting

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Before we dive into to Wednesday’s meeting, I want to rant for a sec: Hays County under scrutiny for nearly $2.5 million loss of funds. Originally, the county got $7 million for rental assistance, back in January 2021. And we just…didn’t spend it. And eventually the federal government starts re-claiming unspent money for redistribution.

The details are even grosser: by September, the county had spent exactly $0. This made us ineligible for future funds. The federal government then announces then that you have to clear at least 30% of your grant by October. We made it to 2.65%, and so we lost $770K, and then it happened again this past February, and we lost another $1.7 million.

All I can figure is that someone was supposed to care about people struggling to make their rent, and just …didn’t. The rental assistance just wasn’t considered urgent, or a problem to solve, or to dedicate time and resources towards, or to collaborate with community partners on. (You can read the link – there are excuses given, but they’re all very flimsy.) I don’t know who to aim my anger at, but this is super grotesque.

On to Wednesday’s meeting!

Hour 1

Meek and mild. Renters will now get a CONA rep, which is a win. (CONA is the Council of Neighborhood Associations.)

Hour 2-3.5

Kind of a referendum on Max Baker himself. Pretty problematic.

Hour 3.5-4.5

Should the entire performance evaluation of the city manager be made easily accessible to the public?

Agendas, packets, and videos here.

March 1st City Council Meeting

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Let’s dive right in!

Hour 1

In which I get way too much mileage out of Poltergeist jokes.

Hour 2

In which sewage sludge threatens the aquifer.

Hour 3.5-4.5

I was yelling at my computer monitor.

Less contentious things

The Arts Master Plan is approved. The Activity Center will get air purifiers. The Firefighters agree to a 2% raise, because city funds are tight, while SAMPOA split off and was not cooperative.

In the last twenty minutes, Shane Scott and Jude Prather had three agenda items, all of which they postponed because it was getting late. All three seem to be petty pot-shots at Max Baker: time limits on discussing topics, revisiting current rules of decorum, and how all city council members should show up in person. All of these put etiquette above the hard work of self-governance, and hopefully they’ll get briskly swatted down..

Find agenda and video here.

January 18th City Council Meeting

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Holy moly you guys, a 90 minute council meeting? This is so do-able that I probably could have attempted it in real time. (But I didn’t! Oh well.)

However, since the last meeting, there have been two 4-hour “visioning” workshops. I guess if I’m desperate enough to get your attention, I could attempt 8 hours of discussion which may or may not be limited to: “growth, quality of life, economic development policies, transportation, community partners, outreach, future infrastructure and facility needs, beautification and community enhancement, enhancement of core services including future staffing and personnel needs, flood mitigation strategies, and provide direction to Staff.” via

You know, riveting stuff.

Anyway, onto this week’s meeting:

HOURS 1-2

In which Chief Dandridge expounds on the subtleties of seating grand juries.

Video, Agenda, Packet

December 7th City Council Meeting

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Hour 1

In which we have a whole lot of citizen comments on the subject of the animal shelter, and on Item 28

And in which the consent agenda is passed

And in which several gas stations are approved.

Hour 2

In which the developer emphasizes that Tiny Houses are not the same thing as Micro Houses, and everyone promptly forgets, because semantics are dumb.

Hour 3

Development agreements, annexation, that kind of thing.

Thoroughfare master plan. Some discussion of sharrows, a thing where you paint the main lane to indicate that bikes are sharing the lane, which ends up increasing the fatality rate. Max Baker advocates for the biking community. Not up for a vote until the next meeting.

(No separate post for this hour.)

Hour 4

In which we discuss puppies, Jews, and fences, but not all in the same item.

November 3rd City Council Meeting

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Trying out a new format here! I will update this with links as I watch the meeting.

Hour 1

Citizen Comment Period

Flood Mitigation Presentation

Lobbyist Ordinance

Hour 2:

Just doesn’t warrant a standalone post. There was a discussion about supporting the animal shelter, and noises were made to appropriately respond to all the citizen comments on that subject. There was discussion of the 2022 meeting schedule. They specifically opened the door to shorter, weekly meetings, which I am a huge fan of.

And finally, it was Councilmember Derrick’s last meeting. She will be sorely missed.

The whole meeting was only an hour and forty minutes long! Unheard of.

Hour 1 – 11/3/21

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Citizen Comment Period

Several people from the Animal Shelter are super fed up. It sounds like it’s been a catastrophe over the past year, since their last director left. I couldn’t infer quite who was running the show in the interim, but the speakers are furious. Transparency has clouded over, advocates and volunteers are being shut out, animals are being euthanized instead of exhausting all options. It sounded pretty bad.

(Apparently they’ve recently posted the job opening for a new director, so hopefully someone good will turn up.)

Flood Mitigation

The presentation was fascinating. It sounds like long winding trenches have been dug along the Blanco river, to keep it from flooding into Blanco Gardens. Then there’s a relief channel that’s going to be built to meet up with the river, downstream. In addition, there’s storm water drainage repairs and more projects being done in Blanco Gardens itself.

The presenter seemed very competent and clear-headed, but what do I know?

Max Baker asked about archaeological remains, should they turn up (which they often do). The answer seemed reasonable and non-evasive: everything would shut down and proper authorities called in. Basically, this is being carried out with federal funds, and so standards are much stricter than Texas for the engineering, environment, archaeology, and so on.

Sounds good to me.

Lobbyist Registration Ordinance

Tell me this isn’t fishy as hell: this was on the docket last July. It was postponed until November 3rd, in order to involve the new council (which already seemed shady). Since the new member hasn’t been seated yet, Mayor Hughson called for anyone to make a motion to table it for a week or two.

Mark Gleason immediately moved to table it until the end of January. Three months? In order to let one councilmember get up to speed? One councilmember who has been on council before, and who had six months advance notice that this issue was coming? It was so over the top that I concluded that Gleason is personally scared of this ordinance. Or someone who is scared of it is leaning on him. Whatever the root, this was bullshit.

Max Baker called them out for sandbagging the ordinance and dragging it out through as many elections as possible. He is correct, and this is really overt crap.

October 4th City Council Meeting

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Well sheesh, this took me ten days to get through. And it was a miraculously short meeting, clocking in at just two hours. It was so unremarkable that I kept putting off watching the last 30 minutes.

Contracts for utilities were approved. A new HPC member was voted in.

Commissioner Scott had a few eccentric items:

1. City property should be auctioned off instead of thrown away when the city is done using it. And that the auction ought to favor San Marcos residents.

Which, fine. That is uncontroversial. The city’s response was, “Yes. We do this already.”

All the councilmembers competed to be the most enthusiastic and come up with more and more ideas. The staff patiently explained that all these thoughtful measures are already in place.

Finally it ended up that the only non-pre-existing part was the exclusivity of the auction for only San Marcos residents. Staff will look into it.

2. The second weird item from Commissioner Scott was a general discussion about work sessions and packet meetings. Apparently there used to be packet meetings, on Fridays, where council could hear presentations about the agenda and ask questions, prior to a Tuesday meeting. But no longer.

Commissioner Scott said that the constituents miss the packet meetings and want them back.

Mayor Hughson and Commissioner Derrick explained that they didn’t work very well. Councilmembers stopped showing up. It was impossible sometimes to finish reading the packet that quickly.

Bert Lumbreras chimed in that it didn’t allow councilmembers a chance to shape solutions, because they only saw the item a few days before the meeting. So Lumbreras had been the one to introduce work sessions in the first place, where staff can fully educate the council on an issue, and council can give direction before something is presented at a meeting for a vote.

Everyone agrees they love the work sessions.

Commissioner Derrick points out that there will be a new council after November, and how about letting them decide?

Commissioner Baker wants to be allowed to solicit experts to weigh in at work sessions. (This seems like a good idea to me.)

Commissioner Gleason frets tunelessly about competing experts and how much he trusts staff. (This seemed a tad directionless and meaningless.)

Mayor Hughson starts responding to every comment with, “We could put that on the list for after November.”

In the end, there is a nice long list waiting for the new council, in November.

3. The last item was about Short Term Rentals and how noisy and unpleasant they are. (This did not come from Commissioner Scott.) Everyone agrees to a work session to revisit the short term rental policy. See, they do love a work session.

That’s all! It was a Texas Miracle!