Hours 0:00 – 1:58, 10/17/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment

Here are the main things people care about:

  • CM Allen district – we want Option 2! There’s too much student housing and not enough parking. Last riverfront property.
  • CM Allen district – we do not want Option 2! There’s not enough housing and not enough parking, and there’s better ways to spend money.
  • CM Allen district Option 2 was conceived in the dead of night behind closed doors, and we object to being locked out of the process.
  • Big $36 million grant available for river restoration.  Letter of intent deadline is coming quick. Could use this to study Cape’s Dam? (SMRF)
  • San Marcos does a miserable job of making this city accessible for people in wheelchairs.
  • San Marcos does a miserable job of taking care of our heritage trees. You all recently cut down a big one on the town square, and another one across from the Veterans Memorial.
  • We’re going to sue you if you pass those airport rezonings.

We’ll get to the Great Option 2 Debate when we discuss the Downtown Master Plan. The rest of the topics raised don’t really show up again this evening.

(The airport rezoning passed with the Consent Agenda.)

….

Item 13: The bus.

Everyone loves the Austin Powerplant sign for using that Gotham City font, but may I humbly submit that the San Marcos Station font is a serious contender for charming font choices?

(I think it’s actually the same font, but we don’t go making such a fuss about it.)

Anyway, good news: Buses are free in San Marcos! Paratransit services are free, too! These have all been free since the beginning of Covid, actually. Maybe there’s a route that suits your needs?

This is all very good! No changes are coming.

All they did on Tuesday was set up a procedure so that someday, if service or fares do need to change, there’s a procedure in place, which includes a public hearing. Also good!

The vote: 7-0. Good job, Council!

Item 14: VisionSMTX++

We are almost to the sad end to an excruciating process.

Background:
VisionSMTX++ is the Comprehensive Plan, the big vague guiding document for how we want the city to grow and change over the next ten years. Or rather: growth is coming regardless of whether or not we want it, so let’s have a plan for where to put it.

A 30-person citizen steering committee met with consultants for two years to produce VisionSMTX. Tons of extra community input was solicited.

Mayor Hughson and P&Z read it and got mad about it. So they formed a subcommittee and made 74 pages worth of changes to a 300 page document. Given that a lot of the 300 page document is fluff and filler – pretty pictures, etc – you can see that they really dug in and tore it apart. (We first discussed this here.)

A lot of the committee – including me! – got mad about it. P&Z held a workshop and approved the new version. (Discussed here.)

City staff adds an extra “+” to pour one out for their homies, each time P&Z wrecks something important. So by now, it’s become VisionSMTX++.

Public Hearing:

It is almost entirely people mad about the subcommittee changes.

  • P&Z subcommittee destroyed all the community input that was solicited for original plan.
  • Original is the right version, not the P&Z shadow version
  • In their effort to protect the Historic district, they’ve now hamstrung all the other neighborhoods from getting basic services
  • Support for a second city center on the east side, but please be sure to commemorate the El Camino Real trail running through it.

(Guys. GUYS! You know how our whole thing is “A River Runs Through Us”? We could have a companion piece, “This Historic Trail Also Runs Through Us.” Yes, yes?)

  • More people saying the original Vision SMTX is better
  • Rosie Ray reiterating her two main points from last time:
    1. please remove “vehicle” from the definition that’s meant to deal with reducing car dependency.
    2. Please add “multiplexes/duplexes/condos” to the things that are currently found in neighborhoods where they currently exist.

What exactly are the substantial changes?

There are roughly three camps:

1. People passionate about the Historic District. We love Belvin and San Antonio street.
2. Developers who want to maximize profit.
3. Lefties who are worried about sprawl, the environment, and unaffordable housing. Hi!

Group 1 holds all the power in this discussion. They have a majority on P&Z and Council. The P&Z subcommittee, plus Jane Hughson, was overwhelmingly Group 1.

Group 1’s perspective:
– They are extremely worried about Group 2 destroying cute old houses and putting up giant apartment complexes in the middle of neighborhoods. To be fair, this is a thing that Group 2 would cheerfully do, if allowed.
– They think Group 3 is kind-hearted idiots who will do inadvertently the bidding of Group 2.

In order to prevent this, they locked down the Historic District into carbonite and said, “We hereby declare that nothing shall ever change!”

However, they actually locked down all single family neighborhoods. This was not an accident. They see a black and white world, where the only two options are this:

  1. For The Haves:

The Haves get massive sprawl, high prices, and car-dependency

and 2. For the Have-Nots:

The Have-Nots get massive utilitarian apartment complexes.

Group one believes there is absolutely no other possibility. (Weirdly though, you need a lot of rules to pretend this.)

The problem is that there is a 3rd possibility: gently densify your neighborhoods.
– Allow accessory dwelling units (ADUs)
– Allow housing that the have-nots can afford, like duplexes, triplexes, or other smallscale affordable housing. You want the neighborhood to still feel like a quiet neighborhood, but just not be such a jerk about keeping poor people out.
– Focus on ways to reduce car-dependency, by providing necessities nearby. In other words, people like having a corner store where you can pick up some groceries or a sandwich.

So: Is Group 3 actually a bunch of well-intentioned idiots? Is that fantasy impossible?

No! It’s very, very possible! It’s the Historic District. There are actually a ton of mini-complexes hidden throughout. Pretty much every single house along Belvin has an ADU. Isn’t that great? And they can quickly reach little HEB and all of downtown without driving.

It is great for them! Just not for anyone else.

Here are the specific major changes from the subcommittee:
– Remove ADUs from being allowed in single family neighborhoods.
– Remove smallscale multiplex from being in low intensity areas.
– Measure “walkability” by what you can drive to. Like, in your car.
– Declare that all existing low-intensity neighborhoods only contain houses. They don’t, but we’re declaring it!
– Infill must match existing housing types. In other words, if there are only houses as far as the eye can see, then that’s what you’re stuck with. Forever and ever.
– Remove language that helps people bike around town for transportation. (Seriously, what are you, a grinch? You can’t enjoy yourself if someone else is able to bike to work?)

The list of changes is 74 pages long. Just the changes!! Many of them are minor, but it’s a nightmare to wade through. ( I got to page 26 and gave up.)

But now I’m going to step back and try to see things from a bird’s eye view:

How much does a comprehensive plan matter? I don’t know. I can see it both ways:

1. Not that much: Developers will continue to build single-family sprawl and massive complexes, because fundamentally they’re not in it for social change and progressive rallying cries. They play it safe, because they want profits to be safe.

2. Matters a whole lot: Incremental change adds up over time. These little nudges towards affordable housing and against car-dependency wouldn’t solve problems, but they’d help keep us from making things worse as quickly as possible.

Ultimately I think it matter quite a lot, or else I wouldn’t spend my Saturdays writing all this out, over and over again.

The Council Debate:

Jane starts off with her apology tour, which I found wholly unconvincing. Basically:

  • The shadow P&Z committee was supposed to be a good thing! The point was transparency! If she’d saved her concerns for Council, fewer people would have had a chance to see all the changes.
  • She just wanted to protect existing neighborhoods.  (She seems to think this is an unassailable good thing, instead of the utter heart of the issue.)
  • She talked to a wise person who explained the accusation of “watering it down”: the issue was this word swap from “objectives” to “considerations” and so Jane has changed it back. 

Jane is truly missing the point.  She’s unable to consider that the content of her changes is why people are mad. 

…

Side note: I don’t know if city council reads this blog.  They are all aware of it, because I’ve emailed them as The San Marxist, and included a link (and also because San Marcos is small and gossipy).

If a councilmember claims they want as much community input as possible, then they should be reading this blog. 

If a councilmember chooses not to read this blog, I am going to infer that they don’t actually want to maximize the amount of community input that they hear. 

Jane seems wholly unaware of the arguments I’ve made over and over and over.  In fairness, she also seems unaware of the public comments that were made 10 feet away from where she’s sitting, 15 minutes earlier. So who knows.

…

Let’s dive in!

Jude: So how big are these changes exactly?  Why are we taking out ADUs? Why not incentivize diverse housing types? Why so many 4th quarter changes?

Answer from staff: We were focused on transparency! 

Jude: I feel uncomfortable with making all these changes by the seat of our pants. We should respect the process.

Jane: I made these changes back in March. Hardly the seat of our pants.

Alyssa: You’re saying the subcommittee rewrite was justified because it was open to the public and transparent. But look, the subcommittee really does not reflect our community. When considering these issues, I try to use two questions as guideposts:

  1. Who is this leaving behind?
  2. Are we doing something that we’ll have to undo later?

People feel like they’ve been dismissed. We can see who we’re leaving behind based on the composition of P&Z. When we are taking suggestions from a tiny body, we can expect to have to rewrite things.  I support the original plan.

[Note: I like these two questions. We are leaving behind most of San Marcos. We will definitely end up having to undo this comp plan eventually. ]

Shane: I’m not ready to vote on this tonight. More research is needed.

Mark Gleason: I don’t have a problem with the changes, philosophically. I’m ready to move forward.

Saul: I’m okay moving forward.

Matthew Mendoza didn’t weigh in at this point, but he’s so obviously pro-neighborhoods-in-carbonite that it’s unnecessary. 

…

So at this point, the game is over. The new plan has the four votes it needs.  Its fate is sealed. Here is the status of all the existing neighborhoods now:

The thing that’s absolutely wild is how little time Council spends discussing any of this.

  • The original community group spent 2 years on this.
  • P&Z took eight months and a workshop, and a re-write to wade through all of this.  
  • The above conversation takes about 20 minutes.

After this, Jane has a bunch of worthwhile amendments on other issues – after all, the entire thing is 300 pages long. But they’re on new and different details.

All those changes described above? ADUs, walkability, definitions, etc? Just absolute radio silence.

Why not take these large issues one at a time, and discuss them? Why not offer up an amendment, or hunt for a compromise, or at least make the majority defend their reasons? Why not do something? 

Obviously Jane, Mark, Saul, and Matthew all like the new plan. (I disagree with all of them.)

But Shane, Jude, and Alyssa all don’t like the new plan! My dudes. You could dig in and try to repair it. You’ve been spoonfed two mild, palatable amendments by Dr. Rosie Ray, on two separate occasions! The very least you could do is offer those up.

Jude even explicitly asked about ADUs and diverse housing types, but then lets it go! (Which is his signature dance move, of course.) And Shane – “I need to do more research” – Scott is also being absurd.  He was on the actual steering committee for two years! Be a councilmember, make an amendment, hammer out a compromise. 

The actual final vote is next meeting. Maybe one of them will surprise me.

Should LBJ and Guadalupe Stay 1-Way Streets?

Next Jane makes a series of amendments.  Most of them are minor and fine.  The one that’s more notable is about LBJ and Guadalupe downtown. In the Comp Plan Appendix, they bring up converting them to be two-way.

Jane’s take:  Over the years, we’ve debated this thing until we were blue in the face. We voted and laid this issue to rest. Plus, the price tag to reverse course now is super steep, and it would mess up the bike lanes.

Saul: It used to be 2 way.

Jane: I remember! It switched in 1971, right before I got my license.

Jude: Longterm, we all know they will have to be 2 way.

Note: We do? Why is it a foregone conclusion that eventually we’ll have to have two way streets? 

I do remember the debates on this, but I wasn’t paying close attention.  My memory is:

  • Businesses prefer two-way because it’s easier for people to locate their store
  • People seem to like one-way out of preference for the status quo
  • Possibly traffic moves better with one-way?

I personally am used to one-way and it seems to work pretty smoothly, and so I stand with those who prefer the status quo. Plus, I don’t want to undo the bike lanes. But I’m open to hearing the arguments for two-way, especially if it’s supposedly “inevitable” and all.

The vote on one-way streets:

Keep ‘en one-way: Jane, Saul, Matthew, Mark

Two way is the future! Shane, Jude, Alyssa

Alyssa stated earlier that she’s a “no” on all of this, protesting the process. So she is not necessarily weighing in on 1-way vs 2-way streets here.  

… 

Jude ends by saying he’s still super concerned about the process. Not concerned enough to make any actual amendment.  Just concerned, y’know, in general.

The first vote on the whole VisionSMTX++:

Lock down the sprawl! Jane, Mark, Saul, Matthew, and Jude

I’m protesting the process! Shane and Alyssa

Like I said, this will come back one more time, in November. (Feel free to read the whole thing yourself – all the versions, and the summary table of changes. Go nuts.)

Hours 1:58 – 4:01, 10/17/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 15: The Downtown Area Plan

The Downtown Area Plan is more than just the CM Allen District, but that’s definitely the part that sucks up all the oxygen in the room.  (Discussed here last time.)

Still, let’s take a moment to pay attention to the rest:

And here are the major points:

The thing is: downtown is already owned and zoned. You can’t demand or legislate hardly anything. All you can do is entice and form partnerships and collaborate with the people who run the things located there.

So let’s move onto the CM Allen District, which we discussed last time:

There was a Downtown Area Plan committee, who came up with Option 1:

Option 1:

Five Story Loaves of Bread:

Similarly to VisionSMTX, the shadow subcommittee of P&Z plus Jane Hughson was horrified, and rewrote it.

Hence Option 2:

Given that the city doesn’t actually own all that land, the Planning Department tried to thread the needle and come up with a compromise option:

Option 3:

Colorful, vibrant, smaller loaves of bread:

At P&Z, we heard about the unaffordability of Option 2. P&Z voted for Option 2 anyway.

This time the staff presentation spends even longer on the complete unaffordability of it:

  • Basically, downtown land is worth much more than anywhere else in town. 
  • Right now, the 6.25 acres are mostly undeveloped, but they bring in this much taxable revenue:

The whole thing is 6.25 acres, so I’m going to ballpark the yearly revenue at $456K for the three lots marked.  A community member says that if they were developed, they’d pull in $3 million/year for the city.  Maybe?

No one can really say how much it would cost to acquire the parks, but if we had to say, staff puts the market value at $27 million dollars.

The city staff are always so professional, and so they presented all options neutrally, but I definitely got whiffs of Springfield Monorail from Option B:

Besides the magical thinking of the price tag, there’s also serious equity issues here.

Here is how the current parks are distributed throughout the city:

You may notice that there’s barely anything east of 35. People who live east of 35 have noticed this too, and are not amused. (They’ve also noticed a bunch of other patterns of systematic disregard. Isn’t that something!)

So what does the public think?

MO-NO-RAIL! MO-NO-RAIL!  Ahem.

  • Giant student housing will make parking way worse downtown.
  • There’s a shallow water table under CM Allen, and drilling into the rock wil fracture it.
  • If Texas State buys this land, we’re hosed.
  • The procedure was not democratic. Option 2 preys on emotions.
  • There are serious accessibility issues downtown for people in wheelchairs. This plan doesn’t address any of that.
  • The college students run downtown and grown ups don’t feel welcome.
  • We can find much better ways to spend $27 million dollars than this.
  • Car dependency is bad, it’s better to put more housing in walkable areas like downtown.

In actuality: there are three in favor of Option 2, five opposed, and one speaking on accessibility issues.

Council discussion:

Mark Gleason goes first:

  • He loves the vision of #2. He wishes we could afford it.
  • There’s absolutely no way he can go face constituents on the East Side and tell them he voted to spend $27 million on more West side parks.
  • It’s already zoned, it’s not undeveloped like the Woods
  • This won’t stop flooding.
  • Not ideal, but #3 is best. We must to something to help the rest of town.

I certainly agree with all of that! He also talks about how there’s going to be a trail around the whole city, which is a reference to the Elsik Tract.

(I can see the marketing now! “A River Runs Through Us, That Historic Trail Also Runs Through Us, and a Loop Runs Around Us.” Practically a spaghetti bowl of significance!)

Jane goes next: She literally says “I need to do some ‘splaining,” which is endearing.

  • Her ‘splaining: The graphics freaked her out, and she wanted some green space. Never pictured golf course style mock up. Never said “Eminent Domain” or millions of city money. 
  • The idea was that if you don’t explicitly ask for green space, you’ll get zero. If you do ask, maybe you’ll get a little.

Jude: There are better places to turn into parks than this. Could City Hall move here? Hotel, civic space?

Alyssa: I don’t like any of them, but I agree with Jude and Mark. 

Shane: What about a splash pad downtown? I’m here for families! Families first! These are the last tracts along the river. Option 2!

Saul: I’m born and raised in San Marcos. There were no skyscrapers back then. Whenever I talk to anyone, they say “Why are there so many skyscrapers downtown? Why is there so much student housing?” That’s not San Marcos. Plus, it’s a slippery slope. What’s next, high rises all the way to 35? What if Texas State buys it? They don’t pay taxes or fees!  It’s for the kids. Bring back how it was!

[Side Note: “Why is there so much student housing?” Because the town loses their goddamn minds if students live anywhere else. Students are actually people, and they’re entitled to live in this town.

Sometimes students act like jerks! But so do rich people, and also middle-class people, and also poor people. People are jerks.]

Matthew: I had been a big fan of #2. Rio Vista Relief! But paid parking is coming. Where would this park’s parking be? 

We had a community meeting with Blanco Gardens on crime. Wasn’t well attended, and just me and Mark. They kept saying, “Why does the west get EVERYTHING?” Park distribution is not fair. East side is always neglected.

Matthew gave this huge impassioned speech about the plight of the east side, and then finished by saying, “And that’s why I’m on the fence!” which made me laugh. Way to undercut your own passion. 

Saul: Cape’s Dam is coming to the east side!

Matthew: But not, like, anytime soon.

The Vote on the CM Allen District:


Love me some Option 3!: Mark Gleason, Jane Hughson, Alyssa Garza, Matthew Mendoza, Jude Prather

Option 3 Gives Me a Sad: Shane Scott, Saul Gonzales

So there you have it.

The entire downtown plan will get revised to incorporate Option 3, and then will come back on November 6th for a final vote.

…

Item 12: Sights & Sounds

Apparently people ask Alyssa every year to keep an eye on S&S.  The former city manager gave her the runaround when she asked for documentation.  She asks if she could please get some straight answers. She’s told “no problem!”

…

Item 16: Land Development Code:

Last meeting, we were going to kick this back for two months, to give committees a chance to meet.  Now the planning department is asking if we could please just pass it, since it’s holding up a bunch of stuff, and they promise the committees will all meet promptly.

Sure: 7-0. So that’s that.

TSM Official Take on City Council Candidates, Fall ’23

by The San Marxist, posted in City Council Elections

Shane Scott and Atom Von Arndt are facing off for Place 4.

(Never forget: San Marcos Elections are Problematic.)

Executive summary: Shane isn’t the absolute worst, but he’s not great either. I think I’m Atom-curious.

Shane Scott, the known quantity

He is a very serious grown up. Let’s all remember the time he brought 3 oz of weed to council, in order to make a some convoluted point about decriminalization being on the ballot:

Someone go make an animated GIF of that for me! It’s still so funny. And look at everyone else’s expression:

Eight different ways to say, “What the fuck, Shane?!” with just your eyes. I love it.

More seriously: should you vote for Shane?

He was on council around 2010 for a while, and then was voted off, and then was voted back on three years ago. I’m going to focus on the past couple years, since that’s what I’ve paid closest attention to.

The good: We sometimes share a common enemy:

  • He has an anti-authoritarian streak, so he votes against the curfew and often looks askance at the police
  • He loves businesses and hates regulations, which often pits him against NIMBY types. I am interested in affordable housing and helping vulnerable populations, which often pits me against NIMBY types, as well. So, the enemy of my enemy is my friend?

For example, he voted against curfews, and voted to repeal Meet-and-Confer. (On the other hand, he voted to approve the new contract when it came back.) He voted against VisionSMTX++ this evening.

The bad: Often I disagree with him:

  • He’ll choose businesses over the environment
  • He’ll choose businesses over vulnerable people

Whereas I like the environment and vulnerable people.

Looking over my yearly summaries, these are things that jump out at me: Voting against the transportation master plan because of the bike lanes. Being rude to SMRF on multiple occasions. Voting against the lobbying ordinance. Voting against the eviction delay a full year earlier than its repeal, while the rest of council was still in favor of it. Voting for every single development that has come around, even the ones that end up being denied. He’s generally the most guaranteed vote for business interests, at the expense of anything else.

The ugly: Shane never seems to do anything. I can recall just a few things he’s ever initiated:

The first three are all from 2021. That’s over two years old! And scolding Max Baker was in March of 22. He hasn’t initiated anything else I can remember, for most of his term.

He doesn’t make amendments or improve policies or try to incorporate multiple points of view into a compromise. He just shows up, votes, gets annoyed when things drag out, and goes home. That’s a real waste of a position of power.

Atom Von Arndt, the unknown quantity

What is Atom like? He seems more prepared than last year. Last year, he had shallow answers like “How dare we spend so much on street lights down Hopkins!” This year, he seems to be thinking more strategically about the connection between vulnerable populations and policy. He sounded basically progressive!

He also said that he’s just going to keep on running until he’s elected. I actually admire that a lot.

My opinion: I’m leaning towards Atom for Place 4.

Also: Alyssa is unopposed for Place 3. Fortunately, she’s great. Vote for her!

The Debate

The League of Women Voters held their debate over zoom, on October 12th. The whole thing is very short – only 26 minutes.  Opening statements, eight questions, closing statements, done!

The questions:

  1. What motivates you to seek this position?
  2. What would you strive to accomplish during your term?
  3. How can council create opportunities for citizen input at the earliest stages of  the review process for new commercial and industrial developments?
  4. What steps should San Marcos take to prepare for extreme weather events?
  5. How should San Marcos work with agencies to ensure the environmental health of the river?
  6. What will you do to support a vibrant economy in San Marcos while also controlling rampant growth?
  7. Explain the status of the San Marcos water supply, and what should be done to ensure future supply is adequate.
  8. Fire danger in Texas is increasing due to hotter summers, drought, and development. Please discuss your position on the city’s present fire fighting resources, and any changes you’d suggest.

I don’t love this set of questions?  Questions 4,7, and 8 are all technical issues. The only respectable answer is, “Well, I’d listen to the experts since they know way more than me.”

So we wasted three questions on important-but-wonky issues. But there was nothing asked about:

  • Sprawl
  • Affordable housing
  • SMART Terminal
  • SMPD
  • Cape’s Dam

In short, I want questions that could potentially distinguish how candidates will vote on issues.

However! The LWV are a bunch of hard-working volunteers, who are running debates and volunteering because they believe in democracy. I’m not really going to crab at anyone who is donating so much time and energy towards democracy.

The rules: Each candidate gets one minute for anything, no rebuttals.

Debate Summary: I think they tied, debate-wise. Neither one sounded much stronger than the other. I basically transcribed their answers below, but it’s kind of jumbled, since they only had a minute to make their case.

Opening statements: 

Shane Scott:
– Council for 3 years,
– 5 year term about 5 years earlier.
– Glad to be here!

Atom Von Arndt:
– Regular guy: renter, dad,
– Got the same problems that everyone is having.

  1. What motivates you to seek this position?

Shane: The community, the issues that are coming. The growth we’re going to see. The jobs we need to create. Transportation issues.  Wanting to serve in general.

Atom: Housing issues, affordability issues, lack of transparency with the roads. I face all these same problems and I want to help.  I’m concerned with the people on the bottom of the food chain. Getting resources for the homeless and people in need.  Service.

  1. What would you strive to accomplish during your term?

AVA: Get better resources for mental health issues. If you’re on disability, there aren’t resources and you get forced out of town. How do you move to a bigger place if this isn’t affordable? Increase resources. Second, housing. Rent-by-the-room is hurting our economy.

SS: Same things! Affordability, housing, homeless. List goes on. Transportation is coming in the future. I see the traffic. We work for homeless and people with mental health issues. We do a lot. We lower rates. I did the debt forgiveness for utilities.  We do a lot.

  1. How can council create opportunities for citizen input at the earliest stages of  the review process for new commercial and industrial developments?

SS: All plans for any kind of development should be out and open for the community to observe and have input! Too many times it’s done before it even gets to council.  Committees can help decipher! But the community needs a birds-eye view of any development that’s going to come to San Marcos.

AVA: Community outreach. I hear that this is difficult. People need to know. How do we get their attention? More town halls. More block parties. Use businesses to bring people in to announce decisions and upcoming things, especially P&Z.  Make town halls exciting! Give them some pizzazz to get people to show up and make people feel like council is operating on their behalf.

  1. What steps should San Marcos take to prepare for extreme weather events?

[Kinda unfair as a question!]

AVA: It’s been a drought, and then we’re worried about floods. Need emergency plans in place. Need to worry about all this new development and how it will affect the flood plains.  Preparedness and emergency plans – focus on that. “I’m no weatherologist, but eventually we’re going to to have the rain again, we’re going to have the water, and it’s going to need to be an issue we get out in front of.”

SS: Is this the winter storm you’re asking about? We’ve done a lot! Hardening our water and utility lines to protect during freeze. Federal funding for flood mitigation, we went to Washington. Bypasses are getting built, underground drainage is getting built, GPMRS system just got up, will let people get on the channel if you have no cell ability.

  1. How should SM work with agencies to ensure the environmental health of the river?

SS: That’s one of our key issues! We’re talking about a can ban. Removed styrofoam from parks, moved BBQ pits away, we do river clean up 2-3x a year. Educate people about the river and let them know about the endangered species and why we love it.

AVA: Love the can ban.  Boils down to enforcement. Gotta make sure people do that. But development is happening by the river. Gotta enforce rules on development as well, though.  Enforce the rules and regulations around the river and pass more things like can ban to keep people from flooding the river with garbage.

  1. What will you do to support a vibrant economy in San Marcos while also controlling rampant growth?

[What does “controlling rampant growth” exactly mean? It sounds like “try to prevent” which is nonsense.]

AVA: This is tricky! Businesses open and close downtown a lot. Seasonality of economy, poor college students. Grants to support small local businesses. Work with small local businesses. Make downtown beautiful, open up boarded up shops.  Encourage growth with larger businesses, grocery store chains.

[May I humbly suggest that we strongly look at a vacancy tax?]

SS: With covid, small businesses were hit. We did a lot as a city, but many did close. I’m focused on bringing the jobs – Amazons #1 and 2. A place to live, work, and play, with a job that pays enough to live here.  Looking for ways to help people.

[HRM. Have we been concerned with minimum wage jobs, SHANE?]

  1. Explain the status of the SM water supply, and what should be done to ensure future supply is adequate.

SS: I know this one pretty well! I voted for the water rights from Gonzales. GMRA and us bought 50% of it and literally purchased our water security for the next 50 years. So we’re not going to run out like Kyle does.  In fact, Kyle didn’t want to join originally, and so I was like ‘we’ll purchase your portion and sell it back to you later on, to make money and lower utilities for our citizens.’ So I’m always trying to get someone else to pay for our lifestyle, because we were here first. [off-putting chuckle.]

AVA: The majority of our water we don’t pull from the Edwards aquifer. Most of us are coming from another source. The college is using a lot more aquifer water than the city does. Selling off water to Kyle is great! It’s income. Obviously let’s educate them to keep them from blowing through their limits though. I want to look into more of this college vs city stuff another time. 

  1. Fire danger in Texas is increasing due to hotter summers, drought, and development. Please discuss your position on the city’s present fire fighting resources, and any changes you’d suggest.

AVA: Having a well-funded, well-equipped fire department is essential for any city in Texas. We can and should spend more money on it, especially with the record heat.  More firefighters over police officers, not to start any fights. Houses catch on fire all the time, we don’t have any crime waves going on in SM right now. [Note: I can’t tell if this is straight or kidding.]  We need to be prepared and equipped.

SS: We keep increasing the Fire Department needs as the chief presents them. Also education what the fired department can and can’t do. We have to call air supply to the hill country. We’re always paying attention to that. Community engagement and people paying attention so that fires don’t happen.

[A good answer here would be to connect it to sprawl. The more sprawl, the more expensive your fire department becomes.]

Closing Statements

SS: Thanks you! It’s been a pleasure. I hope I’ve answered questions that help you understand. I’m a small business owner, been here 30 years. My kids go through the school system. We’re part of everything. I love serving, problem-solving, forethought for planning, 50 year water supplies, 3% that we bought into the electric utility that earned us 25 million during the Uri Snowstorm*. Those are things I enjoy putting together as a councilmember, and I enjoy the business side of that. Lower the rates, lower the taxes!

[Wait. The city earned $25 million from electricity during Snowvid?! That’s super gross!]

AVA: Thank you! It would be an honor. I’m in sales. I’ve always worked for other people, rented from other people, so I feel the effects of when this all happens for the working class. My superpower is communicating and talking to people, it’s what I’ve always been good at. Finding common ground.  So many different people with different people, and I think I can be the voice for them. It’s a great city, there’s a lot we can do. I’m not going anywhere! I’ll run again next year! I think I have a good head on my shoulders, and I’ll talk to anyone who wants to talk to me. 

And…SCENE! My guess is that Shane is so well-connected that he breezes to re-election. But it wouldn’t hurt to at least make him sweat a little.

October 2nd City Council Meeting

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Another big meeting: Airport zonings, occupancy restrictions, and two downtown student complexes are brewing.

Hours 0:00 – 1:55: Mostly we talk about the airport, and what should and shouldn’t be built around it. 
Hours 1:55 -2:55: The Land Development Code, and the zombie occupancy restriction discussion that just won’t die.
Hours 2:55 – 3:36: Special Events Permitting, and not one, but two potential downtown student complexes.  
Bonus Council workshop: Boarded up, derelict buildings are maybe getting a glow up? Lots of good pictures to marvel at.

This is a great meeting for showing how “Democrat” and “Republican” stop making sense at the local level.  There are at least two issues where I think Shane, Jude, and Mark are seeing things more clearly, and Jane and Matthew are delusional, but at the national party level, all five of them probably vote pretty similarly. 

Election talk:

October 12th is the League of Women Voters debate: Shane Scott vs Atom Von Arnt. Stay tuned!

Hours 0:00 – 1:55, 10/2/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Citizen comment:

Here’s what the community has to say:

  • Please don’t let city staff approve restaurant alcohol permits. (Item 9.)
  • There are some apartments being proposed on Lindsey, between Academy and Comanche. (Item 17.) This gets a lot of traction:

Against it: Three students/former students represent a recently formed group called “Tenants Advocacy group”, to fight on behalf of tenants. (Be still my heart.) They’re strongly opposed to this complex.

Love it: The developer is all in favor of the Lindsey street apartments, and Shannon Mattingly – former director of San Marcos Planning Dept – is now working for this developer.

We’ll get into the details of all this, in due time!

  • Finally: one of the speakers (Kama Davis) brings up an item from Executive Session (Item 20):

A developer wants the title of this alley, in purple:

The speaker wants it to stay with the city.

This taps into a much larger conversation about What To Do Along CM Allen. Should it be parks? Should it be apartment complexes? You just sit tight, we’ll get to all of this.

…

Item 1: We get CDBG funding from the federal government, specifically from HUD.  We qualify on a few different points:

Tonight’s presentation is an internal audit, by Deloitte and Touche, on the $34 million we got after the 2015 floods.  They’ve looked us over, and say everything was fine. Hooray!

Items 2-3: We get Q2 reports on the budget and our investments. Both seemed unremarkable.  We’re a normal-amount of the way through spending and bringing in revenue. Our investments are doing middling-well.

…

Item 8: New airport zonings

So, the FAA and TxDot Aviation both want you to regulate two things:

  1. Stay out of the airways where planes might be flying
  2. Don’t build things right by airports that are going to cause problems later on.

However, neither the FAA nor the state actually control zoning, so they incentivize it. It’s a precondition for various grants and funding opportunities.  The state of Texas also gives cities some extra leeway to regulate airports, beyond their city boundaries.

Over the summer, in Georgetown, a plane really did crash into someone’s house. So airport safety is a real thing. We’re all clear on the concept of plane crashes and why they’re bad, yes/yes?

So now it’s time to nail these things down.  

  1. Height Hazards:  The city staff rep described all these abstract shapes in the air. There were pancakes floating 150’ in the air, cones beyond that, etc.  You get the feeling that it looks like a giant invisible stadium around the airport. No one can build into the giant invisible stadium, but you can build below the bleachers, so to speak. 

Here’s the bird’s eye view of the invisible stadium:

I don’t think anyone is too fussed by this part. Everyone understands that you need to stay out of the flight path of planes.

2. Compatible Land Use: this is the controversial part. 

The main problem is houses and runways: you don’t want houses near your runways.  But people already own this land, and no one likes to be bossed around. (Existing houses are grandfathered in.)

Here’s what’s being proposed:

Obviously all those rainbow-spokes are designed around either end of the runways.

So basically:

  • Bright green means absolutely nothing can be built.
  • The city owns almost all the bright green, but are some teeny green bits sticking out past the purple line.
  • The rest of the blues: feel free to build commercial, industrial, or anything else besides homes. Homes are restricted.

Like I said, anything that’s already built gets grandfathered in.  The problem is: what if you own the land in those stripes, and you want to someday sell it to a developer?  Or you wanted to build apartments yourself? Once those stripes are zoned, you’re out of luck.

Generally, the city is not allowed to downzone your property. If you own some land where you can build 7 stories, and the city wants to change the zoning to 2 stories, they may have to compensate you for the loss of potential revenue. 

Here, they don’t, because airport zones are specifically carved out by the state of Texas for protection.  Texas wants cities to make airport zones so that there will not be people living in a runway flight path.  Makes sense.

So this decreases your land value, and land owners are mad about it. (On the plus side, your property taxes will go down.)

I’m trying not to sound like a total ass, because my initial reaction is, “You’re mad because you wanted to build homes that would be dangerous to the tenants and now you can’t? Fuck off.”  (I guess I am a total ass.) But I mean, you can still build things. Just not homes.

Jane Hughson is more sympathetic to them than I am.  She’s worried that we’re doing something to land owners, above what’s required by the state or federal government.  She asks that the staff speak directly to the speaker who showed up.

Shane Scott says that he is a pilot, which I did not know, and he is pro-airport safety.

If one of these landowners wants to build something not allowed, they can ask for an exception! There’s a procedure for this:

  • Apply for a variance with the Zoning Board of Adjustments
  • If you don’t like what they say, you can appeal the decision to district court

The question is, is this sufficient? Or should we feel so bad for them that we do something additional, to show we care about the landowners who want to build homes in front of runways?

Jude Prather’s take: “I’m okay with the ZBOA and appeals procedure. Let the boards and commissions function like they’re supposed to.” 

Alyssa Garza’s take: “I feel like there are more details I should understand.”

Saul: Property rights 4-ever!!

Matthew Mendoza: Can we say no to the feds?

I mean, sure. But it’s only going to get harder to make these airport zones, the longer you wait.

Look, this is common sense. The best time to prevent homes from being built is before the homes get built. Shane and Jude are the only ones willing to say this outright, and everyone else comes off as mealy-mouthed.

The vote:

I truly don’t know why Saul and Alyssa voted against it. I mean, I vaguely understand PROPERTY RIGHTS!! But allowing people to build houses in a runway path is a pretty big abdication of the whole point of government. 

Hours 1:55 -2:55, 10/2/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Next up! 

Item 9: Updates to the Land Development Code.

We discussed this in August and in September. There are just a few remaining issues to hash out. Here we go:

  1. Should staff be able to approve the most mild, least controversial restaurant alcohol permits, or should they all go to P&Z?

For now, all restaurants and all bars will go through P&Z to get their permit. (Discussed here before.)

A subcommittee will look at carving out some exceptions. For example, hotel bars generally aren’t close to neighborhoods, and aren’t generally rowdy. Maybe City Staff can just renew those on their own.

2. Developers have to donate land for parks, or pay a fee instead. If you’ve got just a little infill development of 4 to 8 units, should you have to pay a fee towards the park system?

No one on council really felt strongly about this. They compromised at 6 units: if you’re building a little development with 6 or more units, you need to pay a fee towards the park system.

3. If houses are only allowed to be 2 stories in your neighborhood, and you’ve got a little rooftop patio, does that count as an extra story?

It used to be 25%. If 25% of your roof has a structure on it, it counted as an extra story. Now it’s any structure at all counts as an extra story.

(Discussed here and here before. I accused them of being killjoys.)

4. Should we continue beating a dead horse on this occupancy restriction thing?

Yes, yes we should.

Quick background: San Marcos has restrictions on how many unrelated people can live together.  It’s been two. Back in May 2022, Council agreed to loosen them from 2 to 3.  

Matthew Mendoza balked at this in August, and then tried to roll it back to 2 in September.  The vote failed 4-3.  But he’s still all heated up about it, and makes another motion to amend it back to 2.

So first, some facts:

  • In San Marcos, it’s only certain housing that has occupancy restrictions. Basically, single family neighborhoods. 
  • In these neighborhoods, you can have any number of people, but only up to two unrelated people.  
  • Here’s how we define unrelated: “A family is defined in the Land Development Code as any number of individuals living as a single housekeeping unit who are related by blood, legal adoption, marriage, or conservatorship.” 

Here’s what city staff say:

Whenever neighbors complain, they’re not actually mad about the number of unrelated people.  It’s always noise, or parking, or the trash, or yard not being kept up.   We can deal with the noise/parking/yard complaint.  It’s not literally the marital status of any of the tenants that’s the issue, so this ordinance is not needed.

Here’s what Matthew and Jane Hughson say:

Landlords want to be able to rent to three tenants. So if you increase this, landlords will buy up housing stock and let it crumble into shitty, ill-maintained housing that exploits tenants.  It’s bad for renters, and decreases the available housing stock for people who want to purchase a home. 

Here’s what I say:

Actually, I want to say two things. I want to refute Matthew’s argument, and I also want to make a separate argument on why you should get rid of occupancy restrictions all together.

Look at Matthew’s argument:

When your chain of cause and effect becomes really long and stretched out, that is often a sign that you are writing bad policy.

If you’re worried about those Bad Consequences – low housing stock and shitty landlords – this would not make it onto the top 100 of effective things to do. 

What you’d do is:

  1. Build more housing. (All sorts.)
  2. Hold landlords accountable. Enforce code violations and fund a city lawyer to send letters to landlords on behalf of tenants. 

Furthermore, his facts aren’t right.  Letting bedrooms go unfilled reduces available housing.  Occupancy restrictions decrease housing, which is the opposite of Matt’s Bad Consequence #1. 

So I have yet to see a compelling argument for these restrictions. 

Arguments against – and here’s where I get pissed off:

  1. Why is the city meddling with whether people are married or not?  A married couple can take in a tenant, but an unmarried couple cannot?  Three friends can’t rent a house? This is gross.
  2. There is a serious housing shortage.  You should be able to put people in bedrooms. You should be able to flexibly problem-solve to provide housing on the fly, when someone you care about is in a pinch. 
  3. We just talked at length for two meetings about the burden of property taxes on Grandma.  Grandma should be allowed to take in her friend’s grandkids as tenants.  Grandma’s primary asset is her house, and she doesn’t want to move, but it’s more house than one person needs. Let her share.

The common thread is non-traditional living situations.  Why should non-traditional living situations be banned?  A few people want to live together, and they can’t, because the city can’t crack down on shitty landlords? That’s dumb as fuck.

Bottom line:

  1. Hold landlords accountable for providing safe, well-maintained housing.
  2. Build a variety of housing in neighborhoods, not just 3- and 4-bedroom houses. Build four-plexes alongside houses so that people can rent apartments in quiet neighborhoods.
  3. Stop micromanaging who is married and who isn’t.

One final point: Yes, landlords buy up housing stock. But listen: being a good landlord is a lot of work. Make bad landlords be good landlords, and some of them will decide it’s not worth it. Hold landlords accountable for maintaining safe and well-maintained properties, and their profit margins will go down, and they’ll be less likely to buy up your housing stock, and it’s better for tenants, and neighbors.  Win-win-win.

Here’s how the conversation goes, after Matthew makes his basic argument:

  • Shane Scott points out that letting someone rent a room may help them afford their property taxes.
  • No one knows the occupancy restrictions in other cities more generally, but College Station sets it at 4 unrelated people.

(I went hunting, and couldn’t find much. Austin puts it at 6 unrelated people.)

  • Jude Prather: I’ve been in this situation. I know plenty of respectable, good neighbors who have had three unrelated people living together at various times. How do you tell people they can’t do this, when housing is unaffordable?
  • Matthew: but Minneapolis got rid of their occupancy restrictions and they went to hell in a handbasket!!
  • Jude: Actually, Minneapolis went the other way. Their housing costs actually resisted inflation. What about a compromise, where you can take in extra tenants if it’s owner-occupied?
  • Alyssa: Let’s remember that occupancy restrictions are rooted in racism and classism.
  • Jane Hughson: NOT IN SAN MARCOS, IT’S NOT! The history here is NOT racist!

 In San Marcos, its origins are mostly anti-college students. But the folks in power did not shed a tear that it was also disproportionately impacting poor and non-white community members.

Also, confidential to Jane: I wouldn’t go betting the farm on San Marcos being a bastion of anti-racism.

  • Matt: I’m trying to protect renters!

(Ahem. Establish a tenant’s council, then.)

  • Mark Gleason: My worry is keeping people in their homes. So I’m in favor. I think people should be able to rent out a room or two.  I don’t think it affects whether or not investors buy up houses.  I’m okay with owner-occupied only, though.
  • Jane: Let’s postpone the whole thing for two weeks!
  • Matthew: I’m just sad about the historic district.
  • Jude: San Marcos is clearly an outlier. We’re not trying to get rid of the rule altogether. 3 unrelated people seems like a good compromise.

The vote:

Jane keeps talking about creating a subcommittee and postponing it for two weeks.  It feels like she’s just unwilling to recognize that she’s lost this vote.  Both Jude and Alyssa gently say that they would be fine just letting it go.  

She forms a committee anyway – Matthew Mendoza, Alyssa Garza, and Mark Gleason – and Alyssa says if there’s a committee, she at leasts wants to be on it.  

When actually forced, 6-1 vote in favor of committee.  The committee will consider whether three unrelated people should only be allowed when one of them owns the house. (We really only want to micromanage the marital status of renters, I guess.)

…

5. Should the notification radius for a giant ungodly thing like the SMART Terminal be bigger than for a dinky little development?

Yes. The notification radius should be proportional to the size of the development. We’ve been over this multiple times.

Staff says no, and gives this as their reason why not: “If we made the cutoff at 500 acres, then developers will just come it at 499 acres!”

In other words: it can’t be done because developers will game the system.

Give me a fucking break. How about this: “For every 25 acres, you have to notify 400 ft out.” Not to brag, but that took me all of ten seconds to write down. I bet someone can spend 10 more seconds and come up with something even better.

Thankfully, Jane is also not satisfied with staff’s lame evasion, and says, “I don’t know the best way to do it, but there’s gotta be a way.”

So this will go to committee.

…

In the end, the whole set of revisions will be postponed until December 5th, to give all these committees time to meet

Hours 2:55 – 3:36, 10/2/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 13:  Special Events Permitting 

Right now, if you’re wanting to hold a special event, you have to go to a bunch of different departments to figure out what permitting you need.

Potentially any of these:

Now they’re going to put together a single front-end, tacked onto MyPermitNow and walks you through getting the permits you need.

Everyone is stoked about this.

….

Item 17: Lindsay Street apartments. Ooooh, this one is interesting.

So, Shannon Mattingly was the director of the San Marcos planning department from 2015 to 2022.  Then she went to work for the Drenner Group, which are some Austin developers.

Tuesday’s item is just informational. It turns out that developers are allowed to do this – request an informational item at a council meeting.  Who knew? (Shannon Mattingly would know!)  So you can come in and give a presentation about your exciting new venture.  

Here’s where they want to do iti:

And here’s what they want to do:

That is, make it student housing.

I think they said that they want it to be 7 stories and rent-by-the-bedroom student housing. 

There are a couple problems, and a couple things that are fine with it. It’s not actually entirely bad.

  1.  The left hand part, in the red dotted area, has some historic houses that people think are cute, like this one:

I think it’s pretty cute!  Maybe it can be saved.

Jude Prather speaks up about maybe finding a way to put commercial in a little historic house like this. Maybe it can be made into a restaurant or something.  (I think we all miss Cool Mint Cafe.)

  1. Three people from the newly-formed Tenants Advocacy Group came to speak against it.  Their argument went “Rent-by-the-bedroom apartments are predatory and there is plenty of student housing.  We don’t want this at all.”

I am so thrilled that they’ve formed this group.  This is outstanding. 

Their argument against rent-by-the-bedroom is that these leases are more exploitative than regular leases:

  • You can get stuck with someone awful and have no recourse.
  • Making students rent “as is” without having seen their actual unit, and then units have broken furniture, mold, etc.
  • Not having a clause allowing for a way to break the lease

The only thing that I’d quibble is that plenty of regular leases are also exploitative. But a Tenant’s Advocacy Group is exactly the right place to start! Next I’d like to see the city fund a lawyer who will send letters to landlords and argue for fairer leases. 

Side note: Rent-by-the-bedroom itself is very weird, and I can’t decide how I feel about it. Without it, you get an apartment with your friends, and if one friend falls behind on their rent or moves out abruptly, the rest of the group is financially liable for the whole rent.  So there really is a sense in which students are protected by signing individual leases. 

The usual argument against them is they allow rents to skyrocket. But I can’t see how it’s the lease structure that does that. Landlords are always going to charge the maximum that they think people will pay, and if you have insufficient housing, then people are forced to pay it.

Rental companies definitely act in predatory ways. Tenants need protection. It’s just not obvious to me that this one detail of the lease structure is the heart of the problem.

The students in TAG were against the entire complex, full stop. They argued that we have enough student housing and we don’t need any more.

I don’t buy this part of their argument. Housing is like musical chairs: if you add more student housing, students who like fancy new complexes will move into it, and free up their old housing, and whoever moves into that frees up their old housing, and so on. There is not a bright firewall between student housing and non-student housing when complexes get old enough.

  1. Is 7 stories too high?  Jane Hughson thinks so, especially for the portion in red. She’d like to see it be a transition area, so maybe 3 stories?

Honestly, I think 3 stories is fine as well. This town does not like high-rises, and I don’t see any need to antagonize people.

So what are the good parts? Well, it’s housing, and it’s not sprawl. Those are good things!

But again, this was just informational. It will come back.

Item 18: Tightening up the rules of city council meetings.

Most of these are codifying the way we currently do things.  There’s one change that’s mentioned explicitly: changing “Citizen Comment” to “Community Perspectives”.

This is a good change! I’ve definitely felt weird writing this blog, trying to avoid the word “citizen” when I don’t actually care about someone’s immigration status. 

To Any City Staff Who Read This: I have two suggestions!

  1.  Sometimes letters from the public are included in the packet, other times not. I want to know what people care about! It is helpful to me to see what the community is mad about! I’d like a consistent practice of including letters to council in the packet.
  1. Often when someone goes up for Q&A, the answer is, “Staff will get back to you.” I’d like to know these answers, too! They should get posted to the message board, please! 

….

Item 20: Top Secret Executive Session

Two interesting items:

  1. “receive advice of legal counsel regarding pending litigation concerning the title to an alleyway located near the intersection of University Drive and CM Allen Parkway”

I wouldn’t have noticed this if it hadn’t been brought up during Citizen Comment. The speaker (Kama Davis) said that the company is called SM Block 21, and that they had renderings online.  So I looked it up.

Lo and behold, they are!

The lot:

The rendering:

The alley in question:

At least, that’s the only alley I see.

What makes this an EXTREMELY hot potato is the backdrop of last week’s P&Z meeting.  So, remember the Comp Plan?  It has splinter parts, and in particular there is a Downtown Area Plan.

This hasn’t passed yet, but it’s cooking. It involves this part of town:

Here’s the part that everyone’s worked up about:

They call this part the CM Allen District.

It’s pretty big.  And notice that the one in the back is the same thing we were talking about above!

The Downtown Plan Committee said:

  • We want people walking back and forth between downtown and the park
  • Right now, it’s all parking lots. Those are the worst: smelly, hot, dangerous. Parking lots shut down walking. (This is borne out by data.)
  • Businesses can’t survive there (clearly)
  • So what’s remaining? We should put some housing there.

Staff provided a visual of what it might look like if giant buildings were made out of sliced bread:

Pretty unappealing! They called this option 1.

Jane Hughson and the P&Z subcommittee kinda lost their minds looking at that photo.  It’s pretty atrocious!   Here’s what they counter-proposed:

The city staff cringed and squirmed and said, “There’s no way in hell you can afford that.  That land is super expensive and you’d lose especially valuable tax base.” They proposed option 3:

Those photos are apparently from El Paso. It does look appealing!

But there’s also the “smaller loaves of bread” visual for Option 3:

A ton of people heard about this, and the community came out heavily for Option 2. P&Z recommended option 2 for the Downtown area plan, on the premise that you might as well swing for the fences, even if it’s a long shot.

My two cents:

I’m mostly neutral. A park sounds super lovely, I see the appeal of it. At the same time, those lots are never going to be used very heavily. They’re kidding themselves. The river gets used very heavily, but the parts of the river parks that aren’t close to the river do not. Like, the land along CM Allen between the tennis courts and the railroad tracks – people don’t want to be that far away from the river. And here, you’re on the far side of CM Allen. Are you going to lay down a picnic blanket with a busy street blocking your kids from the river?

Maybe this is a good place for targeted park space – move the baseball fields, or tennis courts, put pick-up soccer fields there. Free up the land that is actually close to the river.

But again, it’s wildly expensive, there’s no obvious way to acquire it, and we’d lose a high-revenue tax base right now. So given the hand-wringing over property taxes last time, it seems kinda counterproductive to take this on. 

At the same time, you never get a second chance to grow your parks. I love the river parks so much, I can’t bring myself to be mad about the idea of growing them. Maybe in 50 years, the grandkids will be really glad if we set that land aside.

Bottom line: 

Clearly these two things are incompatible:

So when Council debates what to do with the alley that the developer wants, they’re inevitably also saying something about the green fields on the right.

  1. The second interesting item is this:

 “[T]o receive advice of legal counsel regarding pending litigation regarding Eric Cervini, et al. vs. Chase Stapp, Brandon Winkenwerder, Matthew Danzer, and City of San Marcos; Civil Action No. 1:21-CV-00568-RP; In the United States District Court, Western District of Texas; Austin Division.”

That would be your Biden Bus incident.  It is still simmering along, making its way through the court system. The San Marcos lawsuit is mentioned at the end of this article, but mostly I can’t find anything current about it.

Bonus! Council Workshop, 10/2/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Workshops!  These were just too fun to omit.  

Right now, if you have a vacant structure, you have to board up all the doors and windows, to keep people from getting in.  

It looks sad.

And kinda trashy.

The raccoons have definitely taken over.

But what if we made people paint doors and windows on the wooden plywood?

Better! Maybe!

It’s a thing cities do, apparently!

It kind of reminds me of when the stadiums put fake fans in the audience during Covid.

via

Sure, why not.

You can even get all trompe l’oeil about the whole thing:

Council liked this, so staff is going to draft some policy and bring it back.

…

But wait! There’s more!

We already partner with ACC to give workforce training courses.  Think things like HVAC training, plumbing and electric, etc, where you can get out and immediately start earning a decent income. 

Right now we offer courses at the library, but if we had more space, we could offer even more.  So we’re going to renovate some city buildings for this:

So the city is proposing using $240K of the Covid money to renovate and create some classrooms.

Everyone’s stoked about this. It’ll come back in some form to council.

September 19th City Council Meeting

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Good lord, you all, this week is DENSE and MEATY.  We’ve got your budget. We’ve got your property taxes. We’re selling water to Kyle. We’re updating the development code. We’re banning cans, goddamnit!  There is just so much to cover. 

Also, I spent a lot of this week’s write up yelling about everything. Sorry about that.

One over-arching observation:

  • The first half of the meeting is spent wringing our hands over the high taxes.
  • The second half of the meeting is spent preventing measures that might reduce the tax burden.

The cognitive dissonance hurts my brain!

Anyway, here we go:

Hours 0:00 – 3:19: The budget, the tax rate, the utility rate hikes, and lord, the fighting.

Hours 3:19 – 4:07: How to actually reduce the tax burden, plus VisionSMTX, and selling water to the city of Kyle.

Hours 4:07 – 5:45: Updating the Land Development Code, and revisiting occupancy restrictions. Also SMPD body cams, and a future ban on single use containers in the river.

One final note:

This council – except Alyssa Garza – loves the status quo. The new budget cements the status quo, because fundamentally that’s what council wants. Very little legislation ever gets introduced that transforms any problem in a significant way. They see presentations on homelessness, housing costs, sustainability, and other big problems, and then a year or two later, they see another one.

There are some exceptions – Mark Gleason initiating the can ban, for example, getting the transit agreement completed, banning puppy mills – but those are rare. Mostly, this council likes to keep it business as usual.

Hours 0:00-3:19, 9/19/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Uncategorized

Citizen Comment:

There was a big turnout tonight!   21 speakers total, and more speaking at public hearings later during the meeting. The whole citizen comment lasted over an hour.

The main topics were:

  1. The can ban, by far. People who do the work of pulling trash out of the river have a lot to tell you about why we need to ban single use containers.  16 of the speakers talked about this, including the mayor and some councilmembers from Martindale.

Some notes:

  • It would actually be a ban on all single-use containers.
  • New Braunfels and Martindale both have bans, and they’ve made a huge difference. Plus you save money on trash clean up.
  • The key is to educate and get buy-in from residents. Not just ticketing people.

2. Selling our water from the Edward’s Aquifer to Kyle

  • For the second year in a row, Kyle has run out of water and wants to buy some from us.
  • Virginia Parker, from the San Marcos River Foundation, talks a lot about this: their conservation efforts are shoddy. Sell them the water, but make it contingent on tighter water conservation.
  • The city doesn’t agree with SMRF’s criticism. We’ll talk about this when we get there.

3. The taxes are too dang high

  • There weren’t actually a ton of people who showed up in person, but council comments give the impression that they’ve been swamped with complaints behind the scenes.

4. Notification radius for development agreements – it should be appropriately large

  • This is mostly about the SMART Terminal, and how no one knew ahead of time that it was a thing, until it was too late. But it’s also happened with other issues, too.
  • The city is going to start sending notifications to neighbors in these situations. They’re offering a 400′ notification radius. The problem is that the SMART Terminal is supposed to be 2000 acres, which is 87,120,000 ft2. The 400′ notification is the tiniest sliver around something that big.
  • As we’ve said before, the notification radius should be proportional to the size of the project.

Finally, Dr. Rosie Ray offers some good improvements for the Comp Plan, but I’m going to save those for the VisionSMTX discussion so that I can put them in context.

… 

Items 5-8, 16-18:  The budget, the tax rate, and the rate hikes.

We talked a lot about the budget here last time, and I was an insufferable blowhard about the virtues of paying your taxes. (I still am! Sorry!)  So I don’t think we need to recap all of that. 

The short version: the tax rate is steady, but housing prices went up, and so the amount everyone pays is going up. Also utilities are going up.

Clearly councilmembers got an earful about property taxes and the appraisal process. I can’t tell if people are mad that appraisals are so high, or that appraisals are done poorly. If it’s incompetence, that’s a different problem than skyrocketing costs.

This is a useful slide, which is totally illegible:

Would you like it to be clearer? ME TOO. Unfortunately, this slide is not in the packet, and so I had to take a shitty screenshot. 

If you promise that I’m your favorite blogger, I’ll transcribe the damn thing for you:

2022-2023: Average monthly bill2023-2024: Avg monthly billMonthly increase
Electric$93.01$94.72$1.71
Water$56.47$59.29$2.82
Wastewater$48.26$50.67$2.62
Stormwater$14.90$14.900
Resource Recovery (ie trash and recycling)$28.80$29.55$0
Community Enhancement$1.50$2.35$0.85
Property Tax$160.53$182.42$21.89
Total$383.47$414.01$30.54

All of those are based on a $338K house and average usage.

Listen: $414 is a lot of money per month.  I don’t want to be flippant about that.  In addition, you’re paying SMCISD and Hays county taxes, at a rate of $1.133782 and $0.3125, respectively. So that’s another $3832.18 to SMCISD and $1056.25 to Hays County, which works out to a monthly total of $821.38 per month.

That stings! BUT.

1. The first problem is that we’re bringing the sting of paying $821.38 to a conversation which is really only about the property taxes part, which is $182.42.

2. The next problem: there’s actually not much to cut. Core services are really important. The city actually runs a lean budget. You are getting mostly-maintained roads. You are getting smart people with degrees to make sure that the buildings are safe and conform to what we have all agreed that we want buildings to do.  You’re getting libraries and librarians. You’re getting a phenomenal park system and park staff that work there.  You’ve got cops that will (mostly) show up if you’re in danger and (hopefully) arrest the right person (that’s a conversation for a different day.) You’ve got firefighters to show up if you have a fire.  And you’ve got to pay all these people fairly. That $182 is going to really important stuff, and I’m sorry that it’s invisible, but it’s as important as keeping the lights on in your house. 

3. We can reduce the tax burden through city planning – increase density in gentle ways.

Listen: single family neighborhoods do not bring in enough tax revenue to pay for themselves. Cities compensate by taxing apartments and business at a higher rate. If you live in a house, you are already being subsidized by apartments and businesses.

We’ll talk about this a LOT later.

4. You should absolutely be angry, because the rich should be paying so much more.

Both locally and statewide, taxes are super regressive – 2nd worst in the country, in fact! The poorest 20% of Texans pay 13% of their income in taxes. The middle 60% pay 9.7% of their income, and the wealthiest 20% of Texans pay only 3% of their income in taxes.  This is utter bullshit.  

This is because the main tax at the state level is a sales tax. Sales taxes are the most unfair taxes. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you get taxed on your entire paycheck because you spend everything you earn. But the wealthier you are, the more buffer you have between the money you spend (and get taxed on), and the money you put in investments, tax free.

San Marcos also has a 2% sales tax. Obviously this is in order to cash in on the outlet malls, but it’s also another flat tax hitting our poorest residents the hardest. In fact, we actually bring in more money from the sales tax than property taxes: the sales tax brings in $42 million, the property tax brings in $37 million.  

Remember the part about how poor people pay 13% of their income in state and local taxes? They are only earning $14,556 a year. The state makes $2037.84 off that poor guy.

Whereas the top quintile paying 3% of their income? They earn $228,924 on average. The state makes $6,867.72 off the rich guy.

If you taxed the rich guy at 13%, Texas would get $29,760, and he’d still have almost $200K left! We could do so much more to alleviate poverty and help communities, if we taxed the rich fairly.

5. Property taxes are not as unfair as sales taxes. They’re not great, but they’re not the worst. But you know what’s the ACTUAL WORST? The state proposal to use a surplus from sales tax to refund property taxes. Texas is literally going to redistribute money from the poor to the rich. This makes me lose my goddamn mind.

(If you think that landlords will lower rents with that money, you are high on your own supply.)

And the state needs that money! Might I suggest using it to REPAIR THE GODDAMN FOSTER CARE SYSTEM?

You guys, this conversation is making me sweaty. I need to bring it back to local issues again.

…

Sorry. I got really shouty. Ahem.

…

Let’s start from the beginning.

Utility rate hikes: water, wastewater, trash/recycling, and community enhancement are all going up a little. On average, you’ll pay $8/month more.

The Vote (tucked inside the consent agenda)

Raise them rates! Jane Hughson, Shane Scott, Jude Prather, Matthew Mendoza, and Mark Gleason
Don’t you dare: Saul Gonzales and Alyssa Garza

I strongly disagree with Saul and Alyssa on this vote. These are four areas where responsible use can drive down costs.  We need to be mindful when we’re taking a long shower, or lowering the AC, or watering the lawn.  Don’t subsidize people being wasteful.

These rates should be priced so that each fund is self-sustaining. Separately, we should fund utility assistance for those who can’t afford the cost. In other words, we should keep doing exactly what we’re doing.

…

Next, the budget conversation.  

The public hearing:

  • City staff made some 3 minute videos to explain the budget process to the public. They got like 50 views total. [Scroll down here if you want to see them.] That’s not successful. None of you shared those videos on social media or anything. None of you held town halls.
  • We pay money to contractors to do big surveys and we don’t use the results.
  • City staff is paid too much under this budget.
  • We’re taxing people out of their homes!
  • There’s no transparency and no environmental accountability!

Let me single out one speaker, Noah Brock, who is making a very different, specific point:

  • The Highway 80 Utility project only connects to two properties: some city property and the SMART Terminal property
  • The water and wastewater funds directed to this project have spiked hugely:
    – It’s going to use $10 million /60% of the water fund. This was 1.5 million last year.
    – It’s going to use $15 million /49% of wastewater.
  • Why are you raising rates 5%, and then directing $25 million for the SMART Terminal?

I have no answers.

Council discussion

Saul Gonzalez asks about freezing property taxes for anyone over age 65.  He brings this up several times throughout the night. Do other cities do this?

Answer: Yes, cities like Killeen do this.

Saul asks how they make up the revenue?

Answer: their tax rate is higher. 

(I don’t think Saul likes this answer.)

Next up is Alyssa: She is a no on this budget.  We’re not fixing our problems. Incremental change is not meaningful change. There’s a lack of transparency and participation. We need a more equitable process and we need to provide tax relief.  We’ve got big problems – we need good paying jobs, we need affordable housing, we need to help the homeless. We’re doing nothing on those problems.

Jude Prather: This budget achieves those five goals we laid out! It’s great.

Mark Gleason: I wouldn’t be voting for this budget if we weren’t going to get all this property tax relief from the state.

(Yes – that sales tax surplus from all Texans that will go to just property owners. How nice for some.)

Shane Scott is totally in campaign mode. He hasn’t given a speech all year.  But here we go:

  • Since he was first on council, the budget has gone from 1.5 million to 3.5 million
  • He fights for the lowest costs.
  • “They should be paying for OUR lifestyle – we were here first!” I have no idea who he has in mind with this, but sure.
  • Cost of food, single moms
  • He doesn’t want to risk lowering our bond rating.
  • Safety, hooray!
  • Participation, hooray!

And my favorite part: voting on this budget literally makes Shane Scott puke… but he’s a yes.

Jane Hughson: Look, the property taxes are going up $22/month.  I’m a yes.

Matthew Mendoza: I want to puke too, just like Shane! But I’m a yes.

So everyone has staked out their basic positions on the budget.

…

The conversation then turns meta

What went wrong that everyone is so unhappy at the final stage? We’re going to have a big conversation on this. Here’s the positions that everyone stakes out:

  • There’s an 9 month process and we’ve given you tons of opportunities to share why you’re unhappy. This is bullshit to bring it up now.  (Jane, City Manager Stephanie Reyes)
  • We’ve said that we’re unhappy at every step of the process! And we have an obligation to represent the unhappiness of the community, and the community is freaked out by property taxes. (Saul, Alyssa)
  • It’s no one’s fault – it’s the appraisal calendar and the tight turnaround, and how difficult it is to communicate with the public. We feel great shame. (Mark Gleason, Matthew Mendoza)
  • Wait, I thought we agreed that everything was great. (Jude)
  • I already gave my one speech, why are we still doing this (Shane)

Here is how the conversation unfolds:

Jane Hughson says to council, “Save these speeches for January, when the next budget process starts up again.  Voice these issues during the Visioning Process.”

In other words, if you all are mad about different things, use the budget process. Bring this up from day one.

Alyssa counters, “The Visioning Process does not work. It has nothing to do with the actual needs of San Marcos. It’s tone-deaf. Stop romanticizing the strategic goals and using them to accept the status quo.”

This is true – the budget process takes last year’s budget, and tweaks it incrementally, according to Council direction. It cements the status quo for another year. It’s never going to produce transformational change, which is what Alyssa is here for.

Alyssa believes sincerely and deeply in citizen participation – this is how she’d fix the budget process.  This is where I disagree. First, I’m a little more cynical: everyone’s busy.  I don’t think there’s an outreach effort on the planet that will engage a real number of citizens until they see the price tag, at the very last minute. (And frankly, people can be idiots about how to run a town when they do show up.)

But note: Alyssa is not proposing a concrete, alternative budget with different priorities that she can point to. This is why I’m interpreting her vote as a protest vote against a complacent status quo, and not a counter-proposal for a realistic alternative.

This next exchange is really crucial:

City Manager Stephanie Reyes:

“This is disheartening. This did not happen in a vacuum. We rely on each of you, as elected officials, to talk with our neighbors. You represent your constituents within the community. We expect to hear a diverse set of thoughts and ideas at every meeting. Every budget meeting has been in an open forum, with citizen comment and Q&A afterwards.

“You hear a lot about the things that city staff does not-so-good, and there’s not a lot about the things that we are doing that are going very well within our city. And that is very frustrating, because that is what staff hears. Staff gets a lot of bad raps, but they’re carrying out Council direction that you all make as a group.

“I also hear “hey, we can’t tax our neighbor out of their home” but I also hear “oh we don’t want commercial development” or “oh we don’t want these things”. We can’t have more and more and more and not have anybody to pay for it. Somebody’s got to pay for it. So either expectations need to come down, and what gets asked of city staff to do more, or we need to temper our expectations in a way that is within what we can afford.

“Staff is not formulating this budget in a vacuum. It’s a conversation, it’s been a dialogue, there have been different junctures, we’ve gotten direction from each one of you, every step of the way. And now at the end to make it look like it’s just our budget? I just don’t think that’s necessarily a fair way to portray that.”

(I shortened and edited her words, but I don’t think I misrepresented her. It’s at 1:53 if you want to listen for yourself.)

Alyssa replies:

“I hope you’re not trying to imply that my discontent is news to you or anybody else. I hear your frustrations. Let me take a second to share mine. I feel that staff feelings are constantly weaponized to foster this sense of guilt about speaking up. That’s my perception. I think the way I treat staff every day speaks to the fact that I value staff. I try to give kudos whenever kudos are merited, I try to have grace, I try to advocate for better things for them. Staff works hard, strides have been made on this process. That’s a fact.

“But multiple truths can exist at once. They don’t have to be in contradiction of each other. All that’s true. But it’s also true that it’s very little and these concerns from our community are not new. It sucks that you guys inherited this. I’ll just share this: when you know the caliber of what you’re working with and you know the possibility of what could be delivered , you just have really high expectations, and I think that’s what our neighbors are expecting with this whole new leadership and leadership style.

“So if it’s coming across as being dismissive or trying to intentionally hurt staff’s feelings, that’s not my intention. It’s my responsibility to echo my constituents’ frustrations. And it’s not just the ones I see, it’s decades worth of historical frustrations. And again, it sucks that you guys inherited this, but that’s just the way it is.”

(Not really edited at all. Alyssa’s very eloquent.)

They really are both right, and it’s not a contradiction. Staff solicits council input. Council ignores Saul and Alyssa and votes to stick with the status quo. Staff takes council direction and implements it. The community gets mad and blames staff.

[Here is one more truth: you will never escape “the community gets mad and blames staff.” No matter how amazing your process is, that’s how it will always end.]

Their exchange was so powerful and raw. It kind of cracked me up to hear everyone else chime in after for a piece of it:

Mark: omg omg! I’m so sorry. It’s just the calendar of when numbers become available! You guys get so many kudos. Covid AND inflation! Huge kudos. Teams. It’s just communication.

Jane Hughson: hooray for staff!

Saul: I too heart the staff! My constituents are broke. Let’s freeze taxes for those over 65.

Matthew Mendoza: We all failed. We didn’t fight hard enough. I blame me. 

The vote on the budget:

Yes: Jane Hughson, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Matthew Mendoza, Mark Gleason
No: Saul Gonalez and Alyssa Garza

…

But wait! There’s more!

Next, they have to vote specifically on the property tax increase. By Texas state law, this has to pass by 5 votes. (Last year, Saul, Alyssa and Max all voted against it, and almost blew up the process. In the end, Saul switched his vote. Alyssa and Max were protesting all the extra cops.)

More public hearings
Max Baker packed 50 ideas into three minutes. LMC channeled Milli Vanili. Former councilmember Lisa Prewitt and former school board member Juan Miguel Arredondo both showed up to talk.

I don’t know how to boil it down, so I’m just writing it out.

Max Baker:
– We don’t have it’s own economic development person. We rely on GSMP.
– Maybe there are technology solutions! Why don’t we fight for those solutions to the budget?
– Why wait for January? Start now.
– Community blames staff because staff are the experts. We’re stuck with what you give us, and you get defensive.
– People also ask for FEWER Cops. The Cops are the ones that ask for more cops. Other conceptualizations of safety.
– when do we stop giving big corporations all these tax breaks?
– Appraisal problem, cover for “not raising taxes”
– why don’t we make sure people get their appraisals, and why don’t we help people protest their appraisals?
– Y no accountability? Burt Lumbreras said we should stop giving tax breaks, because it will blow a hole in the budget, but GSMP said we need it, so we did it.
– year after year, you claim you’ll fix it next year.

(This is generally what I mean when I say Max puts 50 ideas into 3 minutes. It’s a lot.)

LMC
– Sings Milli Vanilli. Staff uses a big city consultant to give themselves a 5.5% raise. And we have to cut costs. Waste in the budget. You all don’t read your packets.

Juan Miguel Arredondo
– Tax rate: I represent people who live on the margins. Those who have trouble fixing their car and buying groceries. They don’t get to decide that they are going to get pay raises to keep up with inflation. There’s no fund balance. They just have to do more with less. That’s what you have to do, too. Your choice will cause poor people to make hard choices.

Lisa Prewitt
– ditto everything. everyone is right from their own perspective and we can’t judge. But I did the Visioning workshop for six years and we did talk about freezing seniors. We’re all in this together. We’re all trying to budget ourselves at home. Medical, medicine, groceries, utilities. Our seniors are vulnerable. They can’t get a second job or come out of retirement. When do people get a break? Another 5-10K per year? You can’t tax people out of their homes!

…

Look: clearly I disagree with these speakers. I don’t think that we should slash the budget to give people a tax break.

I know times are tight. But you absolutely cannot lift someone out of poverty with a tax break. You can break poverty by raising the minimum wage to keep up with inflation, and implementing well-designed social programs, affordable healthcare and housing, and wealth redistribution. But not with a $500 tax cut.

City staff deserve to be paid fairly. The budget is lean. Nevertheless, we’ll talk in the next section about how to reduce the tax burden.

Spoiler: no one wants to do it.

Council conversation

It’s more of the same:

Saul

Saul goes back to his thing about freezing taxes for seniors: I want to ask Juan Miguel Arredondo about how the school board freezing taxes for seniors. Did you all do that?
JMA: I wasn’t there, and it’s complicated, and we went into debt. 

Saul: How do appraisals work, anyway? 

Answer: Houses are appraised on January 1st. And remember, there’s a 10% cap. And remember, you can protest your appraisal and get it adjusted downward.

Saul: All my appraisals went up and I had to raise all my rents.

Jude

Jude: Look at all these good things! Tax rate is steady, homestead exemptions, state tax relief will be retrospective!

Alyssa

Alyssa: What should I say to our neighbors when they say that we should use the general fund to close the shortfall?
Answer: Tell them it’s not sustainable. The general fund is for one time expenses, not recurring expenses. 

Alyssa: How are we helping renters? I’m concerned about utility increases, which disproportionately impact renters.

Note: this is not entirely true. Living in an apartment is much more environmentally efficient than a house. You get some savings on heat and AC because you’re insulated by other apartments. You’re not playing dumb games trying to keep your yard green in a historic drought. You’re presumably sharing the trash/recycling bill in some form.

Mayor Hughson

Jane: Appraisals are legally required to rise and fall with what people are actually paying for houses. The sales prices skyrocketed last year. Nothing sneaky happened.   They seem to be cooling, they could come back down.

Mark

Mark Gleason, being smart: I’m not in favor of freezing property taxes for those over 65.  Instead, we can increase their homestead exemption on a regular basis. That helps the poorest homeowners more than it helps the wealthiest homeowners.  

Note: I agree 100% with this. Some seniors are rich and have million dollar homes, and you don’t need to freeze their taxes. Homestead exemptions help house-poor home owners more than wealthy home owners.

The Exciting Conclusion

Alyssa: Can we change the tax rate?

Answer: Yes. It would blow a hole in our budget.  But we’re under a time crunch – if we don’t pass a budget by September 30th, we automatically revert to the 0.503 tax rate. This would cost us $6 million. 

Stephanie Reyes: THE TIMELINE. THIS DID NOT HAPPEN IN A VACUUM!

Alyssa: OUR NEIGHBORS. THEY ONLY JUST HEARD ABOUT THIS AND ARE VERY MAD!

Shane Scott: Can we make it up in sales tax? 

Answer: We’ve gotten a $1.6 million surplus recently, but we really can’t use that for recurring expenses. 

Alyssa: I’m a no. I’d take vacation and do whatever it takes to rework the budget by October.

Mark Gleason: The time for this was two months ago. I know the public doesn’t become aware until the 11th hour.  When we have overages, it goes to public safety, like I wanted. We just literally can’t change it at this late an hour.

Saul: My constituents want more services for less tax.

Jude: Political instability is bad for fiscal stability! This should be a 7-0 vote. We should have hammered this out all year.

Alyssa: I’ve been saying this ALL YEAR. And these are my neighbor’s concerns, not mine.

Matthew: How would not-passing the tax rate work? 

City Manager Stephanie: DON’T YOU DARE. Please.

The vote:
Set the tax rate to pay for the budget we already passed: Mayor Jane, Shane, Mark, Matthew, and Jude
Blow it up to smithereens! Saul and Alyssa

…

One Final Note

The thing that kills me about this conversation is that no one connects it with the VisionSMTX conversation.   Single family housing sprawl is a wildly expensive way to run your city!! Every single aspect of your city costs more!  Running infrastructure down to Trace, out to La Cima, up to Whisper, and out east to the new Riverbend Ranch is what’s stretching our resources so thin.

You must put more people in these areas. Gently densify things – allow duplexes and triplexes, allow ADUs – you share the tax burden among more people, and tax rates can go down. 

(Also, quit just putting giant apartment complexes on the edge of single family sprawl. Economic integration is important.)