Category: Meetings

BUDGET TIME! Who’s a good budget? Yes you are!

Hours 0:00-3:44: Let’s talk about budgets for three hours.
– Property Taxes in their dirty glory
– What would we do with $700K extra in the budget?
– Chief Stephens and Chief Standridge both make their cases

Hours: 3:44-4:30: In which we discuss the development behind the outlet mall, the Blanco Vista flood mitigation project, and the new downtown fire station

Hours 4:30-5:10: It’s time for new contracts for SMPD. Mano Amiga declares war.

The League of Women Voters debate will be on October 11th. Unfortunately, it looks like they’re still only over zoom, which is disappointing. I miss the frisson of live debates.

I am planning on a rundown of my opinions of candidates, but I’ll wait till the election is closer.

Oy, Batman, a seven hour meeting?

First, a little housekeeping. I’ve got some ideas for posts that I’m thinking about putting together as running features. 

Possibilities:
1. A list of city council topics from the past year that got introduced, and then were put on hold, and never came back.  It’s so easy to forget about unfinished business – I want to keep track of it.

2. A list of the important things that Council did over the past year (both good and bad), and how councilmembers voted.  Seems useful for election season!

3. A list of projects that Council approved to get built, and now move into the mushy limbo phase where we can’t remember or keep track of what’s been approved.

That last one is hard. Like, how exactly would something ever move off the list, unless you drive by in 2032 and notice it was finally built? How do you keep a list like this from just being an inexorable slog of addresses on little roads in weird far-flung sprawling areas? Should it be organized by chronology or part of town? The more I think about it, the more exhausting it seems.  I dunno.

I picture updating these lists once or twice a year. (Sure would’ve been nice if I’d thought to do this while Council was on vacation!) 

Onto last Tuesday’s meeting!

Hour 0:00 – 1:00: Citizen Comment

Hour 1:00 – 5:00: Four long hours of zoning cases.  Don’t worry, I boiled it down to four hours of reading about zoning cases.

Hours 5:00 – 7:30: You’ll come for the pot, but you’ll stay for the abortions! (I actually think these are both serious, despite the flippant tagline.) Plus city council raises and a new city park.

Just saying: the council adjourned at 1:30 am. Before the 6 pm council meeting, they held a city council workshop starting at 3 pm. That means city council sat in those seats, more or less, for 10.5 hours.  What on earth. 

Why not cap city council meetings at 3 hours, and adjourn until Wednesday, and then put in 3 more hours? Or meet weekly?  All I’m saying is that every city has a city council, but not every city council meets for seven hours at a time.

July’s meeting! These summer meetings are too far apart. A whole ‘nother month will go by until I see you all again in August.

Early on, Jude Prather went home, presumably sick, and Alyssa Garza was zooming in, mid-suffering from covid (which is pretty dedicated) and seemed to be feeling pretty lousy. So this meeting felt smaller and a little scaled back.

Hours 0:00-1:30

Are you fired up about the film studio on the aquifer recharge zone? Are you prepared to be politely-but-firmly sent packing?

Hours 1:30-4:00

In which I lump a ton of zoning and land use items into one post.

Hour 4:00-4:12 

Let’s talk about equity, and Equity Program Coordinators. While we’re at it, let’s visit the June 29th Budget Workshop for a sec.

Hours 4:12-5:20

Lots of little odds and ends: elections, GSMP reps, library fines, COLAs, and Amtrak.

And that’s a wrap for July. Bye now! I miss you already! Do write!

A note: this is my first post since the shooting at Uvalde. Even though it’s been a few weeks, I want to say how crushingly sad and enraged I am.  I know that we all are.  Unsurprisingly, I have strong opinions on gun control and on the utter shitstain of a police force that dithered about, while children bled out.  But I’m not going to wax on about that – I just wanted to take a moment and hold space for the storm of grief that has impounded that city for the foreseeable future.

Since I went public with this blog, there’ve been a number of major stories – the war in Ukraine, Roe v Wade being demolished, etc, – where I’ve wondered if I should say something here.  Ultimately I figured that there are plenty of smart people writing smart things about state, national, and international issues, elsewhere.  There aren’t many San Marcos blogs, and so this place should mostly stay specifically dedicated to San Marcos issues.   The Uvalde tragedy breaks through all that, though, and needed a moment on this local blog.  

Onto last Tuesday’s meeting!

Hours 1-2

In which City Council is quick with a stop sign, and Southside’s CBDG grant application gets scrutinized.

Hour 3-4.5

At some point, every councilmember must look into the abyss and answer the following question: “Does my irritation with Max Baker outweigh my ability to evaluate the merit of his proposals?”

For many, that moment came around 3 hours, 27 minutes into Tuesday’s meeting.

Hour 4.5+

In which we reflect on why this council struggles, and I play armchair psychologist.

Final note: City Council only meets once in June, and once in July. So the next meeting isn’t until July 7th, and then August 2nd after that. Hmmph.

When City Council is short, I end up rambling about my general beliefs. Sorry for the drivel!

Hour 1

In which landlords in Citizen Comment derail me into a deep dive on the Strategic Housing Action Plan that San Marcos put together in 2019. (And after that, there’s a small bit on GSMP.)

Hour 2

Comacho Warehouse wrap-up, and downtown parking. This entry is tiny, almost as penance for that slog I launched at you in Hour 1.

Hour 3

There are four jobs that are filled directly by city council. Should they get COLAs? Should they get public evaluations?

Bonus workshop!

City Council talks about Capital Improvement Projects.

Ugh. Listen: Gabrielle Moore lost by 15 votes, in the school board election last night. Just 15 votes. And the opponent is a disengaged random walk-on who has never voted in a school board election in something like 20 years, but conservative voters went for him.  And Gaby would have been great.  

It is a pretty brutal slog to run for office. I personally loathe small talk and glad-handing, and can’t imagine anything worse than having to convince people to vote for me. But I’m so grateful that people do run for office. And then to come so excruciatingly close! It sucks and I’m sorry.

But on to City Council:

Hour 1:

In which LMC fights for her trees, and wins

Hour 2:

In which we have some zoning cases.

Hour 3:

In which we dabble in some light Economic Development Policy

Hour 4:

In which we relish the sentence, “Nothing would give me more pleasure than to sue him.”

All of these are actually pretty short. 

A few other notes

Apparently Half-Price books is leaving San Marcos, and I’m super bummed about it.  They posted a letter saying they were priced out of rent, and unable to find anything else affordable.

We have a glut of empty store fronts, and yet the vacant store fronts are priced unaffordably for local businesses, and landlords are raising rent on existing buildings and forcing tenants out. Couldn’t GSMP do something here? I generally don’t see eye-to-eye with the business community, but this is their wheelhouse. Could they shake some sense into commercial real estate landlords and get them to stop sabotaging San Marcos? In other words, set rates that are appropriate for San Marcos retail, not Austin retail.  I already miss Half-Price Books.

Lastly:

I’m halfway through the city council workshop from Tuesday afternoon, and finding it fascinating. There was an excellent presentation on homelessness in San Marcos, and on an ordinance to hold landlords accountable for unsafe or subpar rental properties. Both are extremely complicated topics.

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.

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