Short meeting this week! It’s budget season. Your taxes are going up, but in the mildest, most responsible way possible.
Let me tell you all the weedy details:
Hours 0:00 – 3:04: Mostly the tax rate and the budget, plus one little rezoning, just north of campus.
That’s all, folks!
(There was a very short, 15 minute workshop on the Capital Improvement Projects for the new budget, but I’ll just point you to the video and the slides, etc, here.)
The hot issues are all in the workshops this week: the budget and the river parks. Are we fencing the park off?! Kind of yes! (Also a lot of little items. Long meeting this week.)
Here we go!
Hours 0:00 – 3:25: Citizen comment, the annual survey of the homeless population, and the charter review commission
Hours 3:25 – 4:28: Lots of little items. Downtown funding, an alcohol permit, three SMPD small items, and who is rocking the best council ‘fit?
Bonus! Workshop #1: Our budget situation is grim.
Bonus! Bonus! Workshop #2: What’s up with fencing off the river?! Find out all the details here.
See you all next time!
Big long meeting this week! All the details on the Tantra saga, a lot on housing, and a little on Five Mile Dam, parking tickets, water towers, and deer. And more. A lot going on here!
Seven hours of meetings and workshops! Let’s dig in.
The 6 pm meeting:
Hours 0:00 – 3:21: All the exciting details about how Tantra got its groove back.
Hours 3:21 – 5:07: Low-income housing, Covid money, parking tickets, Five Mile Dam, some deer, and more!
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: GUYS. Guys. These were so interesting, I can’t stand it. I am being 100% sincere here.
Part 1: Rent-by-the-Bedroom corporations are the worst!
Part 2: Low-income Housing in San Marcos. Are we spending too much money on them??? (no.)
Say, if you’re like me…
You might be feeling a little vertigo and panic over the looming threat of mass deportations?
If so, let’s channel that energy! Here’s a list of organizations that can use your time and/or money, and are already planning how to best protect immigrants and refugees.
Local to San Marcos:
Mano Amiga is our homegrown organization. They are accepting donations, and will be able to use volunteers in mid-December. (Or they’ll send you to volunteer with a partnering organization.)
Regional Austin-San Antonio:
American Gateways: Their mission is “To champion the dignity and human rights of immigrants, refugees, and survivors of persecution, torture, conflict, and human trafficking through exceptional immigration legal services at no or low cost, education and advocacy.”
Catholic Charities of Central Texas: Has a specific immigration services wing, “Offering affordable immigration legal assistance from experienced attorneys and staff, with a focus on family reunification.”
Statewide:
RAICES: From their website: “WE defend the rights of immigrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking people and families, empower communities, and advocate for liberty and justice.”
Texas Civil Rights Project: Has a specific Beyond Borders program, “From the banks of the Río Grande to the plains of rural Texas, we envision a border state that respects the right to migrate and supports human dignity for all people, no exceptions.”
Texas Immigration Law Council: “We work across the political spectrum to bring together diverse voices to catalyze consensus on practical immigration solutions for Texas and our nation.”
….
Final note: All of these came recommended to me. If I’ve left something off, let me know and I’ll add it on!
Citizen Comment:
This connects to a thought I’ve had. We do kind of have separate rates for rich people!
Take water as an example:
As you use more water, the water gets more expensive. This is good! It incentivizes people to use less water.
Right now, we’re raising utilities 5% across the board. If Council had wanted to, they could have tinkered with these marginal rates. But I bet it gets complicated, fast.
(Electricity doesn’t have tiered brackets like this, though. )
….
Not exactly Citizen Comment, but a general concern from a community member: the San Marcos Housing authority put out a statement saying that they were going to open up the waitlist for housing vouchers on Wednesday morning.
So everyone showed up! Apparently something like 250 people turned in pre-applications for housing vouchers that were supposed to open up on Wednesday morning. A bunch of people even spent the night outside the Housing Authority, in order to be there when the doors opened at 8:30. There was supposed to be a lottery to accept new applications.
And…. it just didn’t happen. The Housing Authority did not actually accept any applications. All the people needing housing just got sent away.
I don’t know what went wrong, but I guarantee there’s a throughline between having chronically underfunded housing assistance for decades, and this kind of mess. And Texas especially relishes underfunding programs for the poor.
….
Item 1: New City Hall steering committee
Last time we had a big song and dance about the composition of the committee. Should we do things the way we always do them? Or should the DEI coordinator steer us in a more equitable direction?
Here’s what the DEI coordinator says at the beginning of the conversation:
A good general principle is that the composition of your committee should match the composition of San Marcos. So you look at things like race, gender, ethnicity, and try to match the overall population of San Marcos. (As your friendly marxist blogger, I’d toss wealth on that list, too. Socioeconomic status is should be included in DEI initiatives. Poor people are underrepresented!)
Here’s what Council settles on:
So depending on how much overlap there is between 1 and 3, there could be as few as 17 members or as many as 26 members.
The DEI coordinator tentatively pipes up: “The more prescriptive we are with roles, the harder it will be to achieve the DEI goals.”
What she means is that the Library Board, P&Z, Texas State admin, SMRF, the Downtown organization, and Chamber of Commerce are generally less diverse than San Marcos as a whole. The more you stack your steering committee with folks from these organizations, the harder it will be to make the composition of your steering committee match with the composition of San Marcos.
Jane misunderstands what the DEI coordinator means, and says, “Inclusion of these partners doesn’t mean exclusion of others! We’re not excluding anyone.”
She also says (tellingly), “This just follows the pattern of how we do appointments in San Marcos.”
It does follow the pattern! Councilmembers pick people they know and put them on committees. This is how power perpetuates itself. This is why you have to deliberately not follow the pattern of how we do appointments in San Marcos, if you want change.
The plan is to collect applications, and then have councilmembers select their two special besties from the pool.
Anyone can apply! Would YOU like to give your two cents on the new city hall? Submit an application here, why dontcha? They’re due in 30 days. (The application is not up yet, but I’ll edit this when it goes live.)
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Item 20: Parking by permit
The good people of Sturgeon are fed up with non-residents parking on their street.
Sturgeon is this street, in Blanco Gardens:
They filed a petition to make the street permit parking, so only residents could park there. This is the area they want permitted:
My guess is they’re either sick of college students or river-goers parking there.
To be honest, I hate this kind of thing. Everyone pays for roads! We don’t own the curb in front of our houses. It’s not yours.
Occasionally, there is an extreme situation puts an undue burden on residents. I can understand that. But here? Seven of those parcels are empty! Why are we banning the public from parking in front of empty lots? It makes me cranky. (All the tan lots are empty in the diagram above.)
I just don’t like the privatization of something that’s public. Public spaces belong to the public, end of story.
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Items 21-23: 51 acres off McCarty and 123
This bit is getting annexed and zoned:
It’s right by the high school, here:
Everybody knows we need more commerce on the east side of town. For years, residents have asked for this.
(Quick sidebar: But don’t forget! Council removed commerce from Cottonwood Creek here, and then two months later Council removed commerce from the giant future development on 123 here. For Cottonwood Creek, residents wrote letters and showed up to say that they wanted to keep the commercial! And yet Council killed it anyway, because the developer asked nicely.)
Anyway, in general there’s very few stores east of I-35. These guys are committing to putting commerce on this corner:
It’s being zoned Commercial.
The rest of it is being zoned CD-4:
CD-4 is a Character District. That means that city staff is really hoping it will look like this:
Little shops mixed with apartments, and oodles of charm.
But it actually usually looks like this:
Not terrible, and the housing is needed, but not quite as charming as Sesame Street.
….
You know what would be fun? Dusting off our five criteria for zoning! C’mon, guys, let’s see if we agree with our councilmembers.
1. Price Tag to the City: Will it bring in taxes that pay for itself, over the lifespan of the infrastructure and future repair? How much will it cost to extend roads, utilities, on fire and police coverage, on water and wastewater?
Who knows! No one ever provides this information!
But my educated guess is yes. The main problem is with single family detached homes – they don’t pay enough taxes to cover their roads and services. Since this will have apartments and commercial, it should be fine. It’s also along existing roads with existing utilities and coverage areas.
2. Housing stock: How long will it take to build? How much housing will it provide? What is the forecasted housing deficit at that point? Is it targeting a price-point that serves what San Marcos needs?
We also have no info here! But it doesn’t sound like giant $500K McMansions. It sounds like apartments plus stores.
3. Environment: Is it on the aquifer? Is it in a flood zone? Will it create run off into the river?Are we looking at sprawl? Is it uniformly single-family homes?
Environmentally sound. Not near the river. Not sprawl. Not all single family homes.
Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?
I doubt it will be mixed income. It is near schools, and hopefully near amenities.
The San Marxist Special: Is it a mixed-income blend of single family houses, four-plexes, and eight-plexes, all mixed together? With schools, shops, restaurants, and public community space sprinkled throughout?
I don’t know how charming this will be. We can hope.
So overall: I approve. It seems more good than not.
Council does, too. It all passes 6-0. (Shane Scott is absent.)
“YAY COMMERCE!” council cheers.
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Items 24-27: All the budget and tax rate final details. (Discussed here and here previously.)
First things first! The good people at City Hall were able to give me the General Fund breakdown.
I put together this side-by-side comparison for last year and this year:
Budgets are complicated. I don’t have any great takeaways here.
…
Next: We’re taxing ourselves less than we thought we were. We made an error in an obscure tax computation, and just now fixed it.
Here’s the quick version: You’ve got your existing taxable buildings, and you’ve got your new builds. Texas state law cares about the total amount you’re getting each year from the existing taxable buildings. (So you’re ignoring tax revenue from new buildings, for now.)
Is the total revenue from existing buildings going up or down? Sometimes it goes up because you raised taxes. Other times it goes up because your housing prices are going up. Either way, you’ve got to jump through some extra hoops if that total is going up.
We drew up our budget, and we thought it was going up, but…. <drumroll> it turns out it’s going down! Hooray? Since we didn’t change our tax rate, that means home values are falling.
(Jude: THIS IS A REALLY BIG DEAL! THIS NEVER HAPPENS!
Mark: IT’S THE GROWTH!)
….
You know me: I just always have to rant a little bit about taxes. (I swear this will be a very tiny soapbox. Two minutes, tops.)
Taxes are good! That’s how you fund your government, and take care of your community. The problem is that we won’t tax wealthy people in Texas. First off, the poorest people are paying the most taxes:
And this is worse than in other states!
Notice that Texas is one of the states on the left part of that graph.
People complain about high property taxes, but those aren’t the unfair part. The unfair part is the sales tax. (Both state and local.) Sales taxes really are the worst! Poor people end up paying a much higher percentage of their income than wealthy people. Literally, it’s capitalism for the poor and socialism for the wealthy.
End rant! I promised you I’d keep it short.
…
Anyway: only one person speaks at citizen comment and nothing gets debated. The end! We have a new budget and next year’s tax rate.
The vote: 5-1. Alyssa Garza votes against everything, presumably because of the utility rate hikes.
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Item 28: Mowing, landscaping, and litter around city buildings. It is a giant task.
We contract out parts of it to Easter Seals of Central Texas, to the tune of $1,432,702.54.
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Item 29: Purgatory Creek Channel improvements
We had a whole workshop all about the Purgatory Creek channel improvements last time! This meeting, we’re kicking off $3,281,773.35 towards engineering for Phase 1.
Saul Gonzales asks, “There’s a bunch of stagnant water in the side channels through Dunbar. Will this help with that?”
Answer: Sort of yes! Part of the project is raising some of the low-water crossings. That is a major reason why water can’t drain downstream. But also sort of no! This is supposed to recreate natural channels, and they do pool some.
The city applied for grants to cover a lot of the costs. We should find out next month if we get them. If we get them, we’ll start construction next year.
….
Item 32: Filling a bunch of vacancies on different committees.
There was one moment that ticked me off. There’s a vacancy on the Animal Shelter Advisory Committee. We only had one application.
Matthew Mendoza pointed out that on the application, this volunteer stated that they have only lived in San Marcos for two months. Matthew is uncomfortable with this, and Jane agreed. Matthew likes it when people have lived here longer. They decided to re-open applications and see if anyone else applies.
GUYS! Stop this rudeness. First off, you should be welcoming to new people.
Second off, if this were a vacancy on P&Z or the new City Hall steering committee? Sure, require 5 year residency. You want people with some roots and community background. (I guess.)
But that’s not this. This is the ANIMAL SHELTER. A new person moved to town and wants to volunteer their time to help the doggos! We should be appreciative, but instead we’re crapping on them for not having roots in the area. That’s dumb.
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Item 33: What night will city council meet, on election week?
The election is on a Tuesday. You don’t want to hold a council meeting the same day as an election. We don’t want to get in the way of anyone voting.
So should the council meeting be shifted to Monday or Wednesday? Historically we switch to the Monday. But Jane Hughson is suggesting that this year, council should meet on the Wednesday instead.
I want to emphasize two things:
This is really thoughtful and detail-oriented. Jane Hughson is unusually good at this sort of thing.
Citizen Comment:
A few main items:
Let’s tackle the killing of Malachi Williams first. There have been some major developments – namely the grand jury declined to press charges against the officer, and so he’s not facing any legal repercussions. SMPD released the name of the officer who killed Williams, but no one else, and the bodycam video from that cop, but not the rest of the footage.
I get to go first, because this is my platform!
Listen: there’s a big gap between what’s legal and what’s moral.*
Here’s what’s legal: According to Chief Standridge, the cops followed de-escalation procedure in the convenience store. Then there was a footrace. Malachi Williams was holding knives, and headed through the HEB parking lot, and so the cop shot at him several times.
The grand jury did not indict the police officer. This is legal – it means they thought there was not enough evidence to convict the cop in court. And the grand jury is probably correct. The Supreme Court standard for cops is that they are allowed to shoot if they perceive a threat. That is a very low bar to clear, which is why it’s unlikely this officer would have been convicted. It is easy to believe that this officer will claim that he perceived a threat. Therefore he’s allowed to shoot and kill Malachi Williams.
This is all legal.
None of this is moral. As a society, we failed Malachi Williams in many, many ways. Long before the night of April 11th, we had set the stage for this, because we do not provide anywhere near enough investment in mental health services and housing for homeless people.
Once Malachi Williams is having a mental health crisis on April 11th, we sent police officers in blue uniforms. These officers may have been trained in current de-escalation techniques, but plainly that training is nowhere close to what this kid needs. Remember, Malachi Williams had been acting creepy, but not violent. He has not actually threatened anyone with a knife, or even been close enough to anyone to threaten them with a knife. Importantly, he does not have a gun.
Malachi Williams runs away. You run away when you’re scared. But the cops do not think of him as being scared. They think of him running towards HEB, with knives. They themselves are running towards HEB too, with guns.
Malachi, with knives, is considered a worse threat than a cop openly firing a gun in the HEB parking lot. Malachi’s life is not worth the extra police training that it would take for this officer to better understand how to handle this situation. That is not moral.
Ultimately, the only person who did anything violent is the police officer. Malachi Williams is now dead and his family are now left to grieve. This is a moral failing by the police department and the larger, complacent society.
Some good links:
– why police officers are rarely prosecuted
– how to think about police reforms
– Guiding Principles on Use of Force, with a whole section on both mental health and people with knives. (That is a police research group, and they argue that police should never need to shoot someone with a knife.)
Onto what the speakers say:
A note about grand juries: proceedings are generally not released to the public, because it’s one-sided. The defense is not present, just the prosecutor. So it would be unfair to the defendant to release a one-sided story. However: this falls apart with police shootings, because the prosecutor can sandbag the proceedings, out of working so closely with the police. Independent prosecutors would help a lot with police accountability.
*hat tip to my friend for helping me with this framing.
Just to refresh, here’s what we’re talking about:
It’s that dotted blue line between Loop 110 and Hwy 1984. Not the whole thing, just the right hand elbow of it:
Speakers brought some numbers from TxDot, CAMPO, and the Traffic Impact Analysis:
So this is adding way more traffic to the surrounding roads.
Speakers also still want to know why the road moved – it used to be away from houses, and now it’s right by them. (We discussed this last time but didn’t get an answer.)
At the 3 pm meeting, the direct of of the San Marcos River Foundation (Virginia Parker) gave their two cents: they are in favor of the road annexation. They spoke to Caldwell County, who said that they’re stretched too thin to maintain the roads to San Marcos city standards. SMRF’s position is that it’s best for flooding if the city of San Marcos is responsible for maintaining the roads.
At the 6 pm meeting, it was pointed out that San Marcos can surely come up with a workaround there. We make deals all the time to deal with this sort of thing.
….
Onto the meeting!
Item 1: The SMART/Axis Right-of-way road is up first! (Background here.)
Aaaaaaand…… It got postponed. Womp-womp. Something was discussed during Top Secret Executive Session that made Mark Gleason want to do more research on the issue?
One off-topic comment: SMART/Axis’s whole shtick is that they can’t possibly give any details up front, because they don’t know who their tenants will be. Last year, they just want the whole thing annexed and zoned in one big blank-check chunk. They are still refusing to provide any details whatsoever.
This slide was shown during the presentation:
Wow, look at that magical exponential growth! In 20 years, their property will be worth $10 billion dollars! They may have make-believe tenants that they can’t yet explain to us, but they will definitely be wildly successful, and the city will swim like Scrooge McDuck in the tax windfall. Let’s make all these important decisions based on this Very Serious Graph of Reality.
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Item 12: Intralocal Agreement with the Animal Shelter
Up till now, San Marcos has been running a regional animal shelter, and it’s too much. So we’re transferring responsibility to Hays County, and operating a local animal shelter just for the city, instead.
Hays County was maybe taken by surprise by this? It’s in their court now.
City Manager Stephanie Reyes has talked with the city managers in Buda and Kyle, and has requested a few things:
Of course, these other jurisdictions could come back with amendments, which we’d consider. We’re not ordering them to adopt our version so much as asking them to consider this first version. But at some point, the ordinances need to match.
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Item 16: School Resource Officers (SROs)
SROs are a joint collaboration between the city and the school district. This is the yearly re-upping of the contract.
There are a few proposed changes:
Alyssa Garza makes the case that it should be discussed every year. She’s actually mostly on board with the program, but says she’s only gotten to this place by having lots of detailed conversations every year.
Saul Gonzales agrees.
Jane Hughson also agrees, and adds that the renewal should really occur in the summer, before the new school year starts.
Mark Gleason and Matthew Mendoza are both peeved by the discussion.
Mark: we’re wasting everyone’s time! I just want to bring stability to the program!
Matthew: We should stay in our lanes! This is school board business!
(They both sure do have a lot more trust and faith in policing than I do.)
The vote: Should the contract last one year or two years?
One year: Shane Scott, Alyssa Garza, Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzales
Two years: Jude Prather, Mark Gleason, Matthew Mendoza
So it’ll be one year.
The vote: Should the contract come to council? Or can it be renewed by administration?
Council: Everybody except Jude Prather
Admin: Jude Prather
I’m going to call shenanigans on Jude Prather here. This boy recuses himself all the time. He recused himself during the animal shelter discussion ten minutes ago! He recused during a discussion on equity cabinets, the first Lindsey Street Apartments discussion, an environmental Interlocal Agreement with Texas State, and many others. Usually it’s because it involves Hays County, and he’s employed with Hays County, or it involves veterans, and he works with veterans, or it involves Texas State, and his wife works for Texas State. (It’s not a bad thing. He builds a fence around the law.)
Anyway, Jude has a legit conflict of interests on SROs – his wife is actually the director of the organization that trains SROs. This is a literal conflict of interest! He did not recuse himself.
It didn’t affect the vote, and Jude isn’t running for re-election, so I’m not too fussed. But it’s still a thing.
Overall vote to renew the SRO contract:
Yes: everyone
No: no one
Alyssa says it’s the first SRO contract she’s voted in favor of.
….
One more note: In years past, Max Baker and Alyssa Garza kept asking for the SRO survey data, and it never materialized.
This year, it was here! Good governance in action.
How do middle schoolers at Goodnight and Miller feel about cops in their schools?
How do SMHS students feel about cops in their schools?
How do middle and high school teachers feel about cops in their schools?
So there you have it!
This week! Short term rentals, drought conservation triggers, childcare tax exemptions, and way too much detail on the tedious Lindsey Street negotiations. I’m very sorry about this.
Let’s get into it:
Hours 0:00 – 2:08: A little bit of fiscal reports, a little bit more on short term rentals, and some arguing about water conservation and drought triggers.
Hours 2:08 – 5:07: Sorry about all the tedious machinations of the Lindsey Street apartments. Also an important bit on childcare costs and daycare tax exemptions.
That’s a wrap!
This week, Council basically talked about the Lindsey Street apartments for 5 long hours. Straight talk here: I just don’t care about these apartments! At all! I’ll still tell you about them, but this post may be a little lackluster. I’ll bring the blather, you can be the judge.
Here we go:
Hours 0:00 – 5:18: Citizens call for a council resolution for a ceasefire. But mostly just five hours of those Lindsey Street Apartments.
Hours 3:18-3:28: A teeny little bit about water restrictions!
That’s all, folks! See you next time.
Hey there, you nut! Are you eager for more City Council details? This week we’ve got the Lindsey Street apartments, some fake low-income housing, our homelessness plan, short term rentals, and we double-check our water supply.
Here we go:
Hours 0:00 – 1:44: your old budget from 2023, your future budget for 2025, the former Quail Creek Country Club, and some proposed low-income housing (which I’m calling shenanigans on).
Hours 1:44 – 3:40: The proposed Lindsey Street apartment complex, our homelessness plan, short term rental rules, and the opioid settlement money.
Bonus! 3 pm Workshop: In which we update our Drought Stages and double-check our water supply.
Enjoy!
Citizen Comment:
Almost everyone speaking was local small business owners who are salty about Buc-ee’s asking for a $3.2 million rebate. They observe that, collectively, they create a lot of jobs, and yet none of them have been offered a proportional rebate.
I can understand their frustration! Much to discuss. Stay tuned.
Item 1: The Dunbar and Heritage District Area Plan
You’ve heard about VisionSMTX literally for years. (Discussed here, here, here, here, here, and here.) We’re neck-deep in getting it approved.
There’s a side-hustle to VisionSMTX, which are the Area Plans. What this means is that a neighborhood get to decide what makes it special, and then enshrine that special magic spark into the city code. This can be done well – “preserve these historical structures! More sidewalks!” – or it can be done poorly – “Create obstacles that keep poor people out! Micromanage everyone’s business!”
The first Area Plan is up! Here’s the boundary:
It’s a combined region that’s supposed to cover both the Historic District and the Dunbar neighborhood.
At P&Z, they recommended two big changes:
Splitting the two neighborhoods is a very good idea, given the historical legacy: one of these neighborhoods traditionally got all the resources, and the other was generally short-changed. Making Dunbar the focus of its own plan seems healthy to me.
Council is also on board with both of these changes. So these new split Area Plans will now go back to the residents for revising.
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Item 15: LIHTC Housing
LIHTC stands for Low Income Housing Tax Credits. Apartment complexes can apply for tax breaks if they provide low-income housing and access to social services.
Usually these are new complexes being built. But this time, it’s an existing complex:
These are the River View apartments, in Blanco Gardens.
One note: River View apartments is directly across from the stupid Woods apartments, which is now called Redpoint, as though they can escape my anger by changing their name.
Presumably “River View Apartments” was so named, because it used to have a view of the river, before The Woods was built, and they should probably rename themselves “Apartment View Apartments” now. But that would be too grim.
Anyway: there’s 54 units, of which 40 are Section 8 housing. They were bought by a new owner two years ago who wants to use LIHTC funding to renovate them.
Council asks good questions!
Mayor Hughson: Will anyone be displaced by the renovations?
Answer: Temporarily, yes, but no one will lose their housing. We’ll cover moving costs to a different unit or to a hotel during renovations. This is a HUD requirement.
Mark Gleason: Why is it so vacant right now?
Answer: It’s 30% vacant, because the units were in such bad shape that we weren’t allowed to rent them until we fixed them up. We’re about to get approval from HUD to start renting them.
Saul Gonzales: Are there enough washers and dryers? And are they priced affordably?
Answer: We’re required to have 1 set per 10 apartments, and we’ve got 6 sets, so we’re good. On the pricing, we’ll blandly demur.
Alyssa Garza: Are the wraparound services old or new? What mechanism do you have to make sure you’re not just going to under-advertise and phase out services due to low participation?
Answer: They’re new. HUD requires us to replace services that we phase out.
Council isn’t spending any money here. They’re just voting on whether to support the owner’s LIHTC application to the state. It’s basically just a vote of confidence.
The vote:
CLICKERS!!
Citizen Comment:
I’m also surprised that we’re moving forward with the fire station, although I guess you want to pick out land long before anything gets built. There have not been any public updates on the SMART/Axis Terminal since last summer.
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Items 3-5: This little triangle at the corner of East McCarty and Rattler Road:
was annexed and zoned.
The plan is for it to be a gas station with car wash along the part facing McCarty, and then a strip mall along the back part that opens onto Rattler Road. The developer is hoping for things like restaurants, medical offices, some commerce, etc.
There’s a larger context:
this whole dead spot between the high school and the city is supposed to someday turn into a thriving East Village city center. (According to the Area Plans, which are in progress. This is supposed to accompany VisionSMTX.)
Point being: this is a good spot for a gas station and some commerce. You have my blessing, Young Developer.
No one really has any questions, and the vote is 6-0. (Mark Gleason is absent for this part.)
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Item 6: Here comes your can ban!
So first, here are the Riverfront Parks that we’re talking about:
The plan is to carve out “No Zones” and “Go Zones”.
In a No Zone:
– Only reusable beverage containers
– Only coolers under 30 qts in size
– No containers under 5 oz, which is a little redundant, but we’re just doubling down on jello shots and mini-liquor bottles.
In a Go Zone:
– Go nuts. Have all the single-use beverage containers and giant coolers you want.
– Still no glass or alcohol or charcoal grills, but that’s not new.
So what are the boundaries?
It’s fuzzy! I thought there’d be a big conversation about it, but nope. None of the councilmembers had anything to say about these boundaries.
Here’s what was provided:
There are some trails to the right of Ramon Lucio park, in the map above. Those would all be No Zones, because there are so many river access points throughout.
Loosely speaking, it sounds like the big trails along the river will be the boundary of the No Zones. If you’re beyond the trails, you can pop that tab. If you’re closer to the river, you can’t.
My 2 cents? This is probably as good a starting point as any. It allows for plenty of big family picnics. The paths are already a big, visible feature, so it makes sense to use them as a boundary.
If we do a great job with the signs and communicate this boundary loud and clear, it’ll probably work. If we half-ass it, it’ll take a lot more effort to get people to change their behavior.
More details:
– It’ll kick in on May 1st
– The first year will be focused on education. Citations, etc won’t really kick in hard until 2025.
At the January workshop, there was a lot of conversation about hiring more staffing. Specifically, are we going to hire city marshals (who dress like cops), or will we hire park rangers (who dress like park rangers)? Nobody discussed this on Tuesday. So it’s still an open question.
Jane Hughson had a few questions, but they were extremely detail oriented – definition of banks of the river, clarity of exemptions for people cleaning up the river, that kind of thing.
The vote:
YAY for the can ban: everyone
Screw the river: no one.
This was a first vote, so it will come back around next meeting. But most likely, it’ll be here this summer!
The San Marxist 