Category: Previewing the Agenda

Well, it’s been a month since our last meeting and dear lord, there are 47 agenda items. It’s going to be a long one. Let’s see what’s up!

Consent Agenda:
1. Six different meeting minutes approval
2. LDC edits and updates (second reading)
3. Cemeteries details (second reading)
4. Appoint Daniel Bu/rns as Municipal Court Judge for two year-s
5-6. Mandatory ethics trainings for City Council and committees and extra ethics complaint procedures.. (Already in place, just making it official.) (second reading)
7. Purchase .1 acres on River Road for 24K (second reading)
8. Altering Household Hazardous Waste Program contract with Clean Earth of Alabama, Inc. $140K, 3 years.
9. Buying 4 buses, $423K
10. Contract to relocate Utilities and Public Works Dept, $181K
11. Approve 2019 revised Water Conservation and Drought Response Plan (to submit to Texas Water
Board.)
12. Change in service to agreement with Wood/bury Financial Services, Inc, $66K. (No content)
13. Change order for construction on South Guadalupe Street, infrastructure of MLK Drive – $130K
14-15. Purchasing ~5K square feet on Academy St, part of Ses/som/Academy drainage project. ~$147K.
16. TIRZ agreement for Paso Robles
17. Appointing Tyler Hj/orth to vacancy on Board of Directors of the Alliance Regional Water Authority.
18. DoJ funding application for $18K for forensic lab equipment
19. Change in service to water treatment stuff, $25K
20-23. Pay raises for the Judge, City Attorney, City Clerk, and City Manager. All in the $1K-4K range. Seems reasonable.

Public Hearings
24. Rezoning an acre over by the County Courthouse, off Wonder/World, from General Comercial to CD-4.
25. Development agreement to annex 379 acres in the ETJ, way out northwest – on the east side, roughly even with where Blanco Vista is.
26. Proposed application and funding process for human services funding. (Not sure what this means)
27. Appeal of CUP for Mr. Exotics Steak/house, denied by P&Z.

Non-Consent Agenda
28. False Alarm cap set at four instead of six per year. (1st of two readings)
29. Allocation of American Rescue Plan Funds. (2nd of two readings)
30-31. This is confusing. Issuance and sale of up to $38 million and $35 million of Combination Tax and Revenue Certificates of Obligation? Money goes to a bunch of public improvements – water/wastewater, Utilities, streat scapes, HVAC, building repairs, technology, fiberoptic and network equipment, parks and sportfields, etc. Maybe a bond proposal? (one reading)
32. Bond for $4 million – police and fire departments (one reading)
33. Bond for $17 million – electric utility (one reading)
34. TIRZ – Downtown Electric Cab Microtransit Project, 4 buses, $18K (1st of two readings)
35. November Election plans (one reading)
36. $9 million allocation under American Rescue Plan
37. Electric contracts, $2-3 million
38-39. CDBG Action plan for $800K, for 21-22
40. Mexican American and Indigenous Heritage and Cultural District
41. SM/RF needs city support to apply for County funding to buy El/sik tract
42. Update on Utility Assistance Program
43. Spearguns in the parks
44. Champions Crossing, letter of support to Tex Dept of Housing and Urban Affairs
45. Restoration and Preseration of Dunbar School Building

Executive Session
46-47. Wastewater discharge permit applications

This is going to be a doozy. They need to meet weekly, and instead they’re meeting monthly during June and July. Poor shmucks will be up meeting till dawn!

I don’t actually think anything is that controversial here? Perhaps it won’t be as long as I fear.

Consent Agenda:

1. Approval of the minutes from the past few meetings
2-5. Annexing and rezoning the land behind the outlet malls to be those funny little apartment-houses.
6. State Seized Asset Fund for police.
7. Registration of lobbyists and disclosure form
8-9. Dump trucks and semi-tractor, $750K, some other vehicles for Streets Division of the Public Works Department
10. Contract with LoneStar Paving, $260K
11. Agreement with the university on a raised water tank somehow involved in fire suppression
12-13. Hydroexcavator for $333K
14. CenturyTel contract, $125k
15. Whisper South PID
16. Utility Billing change in service, 125K for this year, 300K/year for the next three
17-18. Mowers for parks board, $137K
19. Support for El Centro to create a plaza and collaborate with city on it
20. SM/RF to apply for Parks Bond funds to acquire 102 acres, the Elsik Tract
21. Water main replacement shared cost – Developer Participation Agreement – <$200K.
22. Purchase of 10 acres at the end of San Antonio street
23. Annexation of 8 acres near the outlet mall
24. Sustainability Committee Purpose Statement
25. Homeless Committee Purpose Statement

Public Hearings:

26. Land Development Code edits
27. Modifying the apartment complex that gets attached to La Cima
28. CBDG reallocation plan

Non-consent Agenda:

29. Cemetery policies
30. Spearguns without permits
31. New municipal judge
32-33. Code of ethics updates
34. Purchasing .11 acres on River Road for flood mitigation projects
35-36. Amending the current budget to include, and allocate, Rescue Plan Funds
37. $640K on Covid mitigation funds
38-39. Election agreement with the county for this November
40. proposed activities totalling $823K of 21-22 CDBG action plan
41. Utility assistance
42. HPC, more signage
43. Returning to in person meetings!!
44. Study occupancy rates of both Purpose Built Student Housing and traditional student apartments

What’s on the docket for tonight?

Presentations

1 and 2: First quarter financial report and investment report.

Consent Agenda: All the stuff that has already been hashed out goes here for final votes.

3. Approve old minutes
4. 7 acres to be zoned CD-5 by Centerpoint
5. Miniature goats
6. 1 year injury leave for a specific police officer.
7. Wood grinding contract, $104K
8. Engineering contract for Highway 80, $350K
9. Blanco Vista elevated storage contract, $330k
10. Tx-DOT airport master plan reimbursement
11. Air quality
12. One year airport hangar lease, 12K. (Really, this needs approval by council?)
13. Rejecting a “sole proposal” for CDBG application. Not sure what the story is there, but if it were interesting, it shouldn’t be on the consent agenda, so I assume it’s pro forma for now.
14. LCRA interconnection agreement
15. IT contract $355k

Public Hearings: The hashing out happens here.

16-19. Annexing and rezoning a parcel of land out by Centerpoint
20. Submitting something about CDBG grants to HUD?

Non-consent agenda: And here.

21. Allocate $41K from the State Seized Asset Funds for various police technology and equiqment
22. Code of Ethics: lobbyists have to register and contacts have to be reported
23. Texas General Obligation Refunding Bonds up to $75 million? I don’t know what this means.
24. $73.6 million for twelve different infrastructure categories
25. Parks & Rec applying for county bonds fund.
26. Fill vacancies on various boards and commissions
27. Grant writer position
28. Mexican American and Indigenous Heritage and Cultural District
29. Lights Out, Texas! to turn off or dim non-essential lights during migratory peak periods
30. Parkland fee calculation methodology in the Land Development Code

Executive Session:
31-32: San Marcos Sports/plex purchase and sale

Work Session in the afternoon: Three items. Tax stuff, fiscal, and some Executive Session about a specific personnel issue.

Council meeting that evening: 31 items. Yeesh.

1. Charter Review Commission presentation. IDK?

Consent Agenda: items 2-16. That could shorten things considerably.

2. Minutes approval
3-4. Annexation and Manufactured Home zoning of the area north of the airport and 35.
5-6. Annexation/zoning of the old folks home near Red/wood
7-9. Fire Station by La Ci/ma annexation and voting
10. Clean Air ordinance (to deal with smelly factories)
11. Commercial scooters now kosher
12. Downtown TIRZ
13. Technology acquisition policy
14. Contract for test equipment for electric utilities dept. 56K
15. Hydro excavator for the Public Services Water people, 475K
16. Water treatment thing, 25K/yearly

Public Hearings:
17. 7 acres near Center/point
18. Staff presentation for CDBG block grant

Non-consent Agenda
19. Miniature goats!!
20. MOU on Cape’s Dam – is this contentious?
21. Enterprise Fleet to get vehicles for City Depts for five years, 1200K.
22. 10% discount at Kissing Tree Golf Club for SM residents?
23. Covid-19 Recovery Committee
24. Purple Heart Trail
25. Ethics Review Commission recommending ethics training for all
26. If you’re accused of an ethic violation, or you’re doing the accusing, you must be given rules of procedure for hearings within 7 days.
27. Spearguns in the River
28. Cite and Release discussion and direction
29. Grantwriter with help for Covid and future emergencies.

Executive Session
30-31: the stuff from the afternoon

Continuing on from Agenda Item #8:

8. Buy some Athletic gear for G/ary Sports Complexes. (I’m google-proofing just because I don’t have my sea-legs yet on this blogging thing, and wouldn’t like it to be found prematurely. It is still being posted publicly. I just don’t think anyone is paying attention.)

9. A grant for 45K to the PD’s victim services unit.

10. Buying a small tract (.7 acres) for 210K in Blanco Vista, for wastewater.

11. 80K for electrical.

12. Bike lane stuff, 174K.

13. An “Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract” for demolition, for 125k, through a CDBG grant. That’s quite a phrase for a contract!

Finally, we’re on to public hearings! I’m definitely going to need to find some efficiencies in this bloggy process. This is taking forever and I’m not even yet listening to them drone on.

14. 72 acres to be zoned for mobile homes. East of 35 and just north of the airport.

15/16: Annex a bit into the city to hopefully be a retirement home, on the corner of Redwood and Old Bastrop.

17/18/19: La Cima fire station stuff. Annex it. Rezone it.

20: Downtown TIRZ presentation. This is economic development stuff involving tax breaks. Should I find out more? Or just keep plugging away for the sake of establishing a habit? I have a fear that if I expect myself to dip down every rabbit hole, this thing will balloon in size and get out of control.

21: More of 17/18/19: Make the Senior home qualify as low income housing.

22. Whis/per So/outh PID. Where is this thing? It looks like maybe it’s the same area as item 14? But much larger?

Done with public hearing. On to the non-consent agenda!

23: Pollution policy. Just wonky text, no presentation slides to thumb through.

Note: The actual packet that City Council gets is 1000 pages. Being on city council is a ton of work.

Maybe it is not feasible to do this pre-reading AND watch the damn meeting. Maybe it should be one or the other.

24. Motor-assisted scooters. Do we hate these? Are we talking about electric bikes here? Stand-up Vespas?

Interesting: my memory is that we banned these, because we didn’t want companies coming in and leaving rentable ones all over the place. Now it looks like we’re quietly walking that back, probably because it was a dumb ban and now some company is dangling some financial incentive. (I’m just speculating.)

Ah, I see. We banned them in May 2020. By June 2020, the university’s buses had to run under capacity and they wanted to use scooters.

JEEZ THIS TAKES SO LONG TO DO. Only 10 more items to preview, but alas, I’m out of time for now.

This week there are two agendas to preview:

• Work Session on May 4th, mid-afternoon
• Council meeting on May 4th, that evening

Work Session:

1. First a Staff Presentation on Cape’s Dam. Interesting. What’s up?

Proposed Interlocal Local Agreement/MOU with Hays County regarding Cape’s Dam

• Looks like this is since August 18th of last year
• Essential items for inclusion: Environment, history, recreation, hydrology, endangered species impact. Maybe: financial, operations, maintenance, project planning, design, permitting, construction.
• Cape’s Dam, Mill Race, water to the waterfall at Stoke’s Park. Owned by TP&W, managed by City.
• Funding on a case-by-case basis, everyone try to get outside funding if you can.
• Timeline: Both should have it approved by mid-June? and then it ends in September 2025 or earlier?
• The last slide is “Questions”, and mine is “what are we talking about?!” I guess the presentation is entirely the logistics. Zero content of the ILA/MOU.

Executive Session: This seems to have two parts:

2. Legal Counsel about an application to discharge wastewater into…? The San Marcos River, I assume?

The company is “Fleming Farms Wastewater Treatment Facility” and it’s not yet built. Proposed to be down 123, on the corner of FM 1978 and 123, in Guadalupe County. This is super rural – old saloon, junkyard. This may have been where the plane was at in this photo! And then 1.2 miles east of this?

Why does San Marcos CC have any say in this whatsoever? Not that I want an unsupervised company, either.

3. And I quote: “deliberations regarding the possible acquisition of property for parks purposes and the possible lease of existing park property to a third party”

HMM. Maybe good! Maybe neoliberal infatuation with doling out contract work! who knows.

City Council Session

Bleagh, so long.

Consent Agenda:

• Two items on a 62 acre tract, at the intersection of Gregson’s Bend and Commercial Loop. (Gregson as in the recent councilmember Gregson?) I think Commercial Loop is across 35 from the Outlet Mall.
  • Annex it
  • Rezone as Planning Area District
• Contract with Utility company for some renovations
• 5 year extension of the Holt Tract PDD
• Cares act money details
• Oooh, #7 is interesting:

“[T]emporarily changing the method for calculating residential Wastewater Rates established by Ordinance No. 2007-54 by excluding the month of February 2021 from the months used to calculate average water consumption upon which Wastewater Rates are based due to the higher than average water consumption resulting from Winter Storm Uri during the week of February 15; including procedural provisions; and providing an effective date.”

First, it was called Winter Storm Uri? Who knew?

Second, this is good! Burst pipes will not be considered typical for water usage. But I have a lot of questions. What about electric? And does this affect what people were actually charged this past February, or is it just a formula for the future? And who is then picking up the tab, if it’s for this past February?

…

Holy shitballs, there’s 34 agenda items and I’m on #7. Good lord.