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.
the proposed student housing on Lindsey street (much, much more to come)
San Marcos Civics Club, inviting Councilmembers to drop in.
In favor of turning the Mitchell Center into an African-American History museum, overseen by the Calaboose board. (This is an item on the Executive Session agenda, so I don’t have any other info on it.)
Five people spoke in favor of a council resolution calling for ceasefire in Gaza. (Discussed a bit last time.)
Items 1-3: Financial reports. All about Q3 2023, which is last June-September.
How did last summer go?
We came in under-budget and over-revenue. Great.
They also went through the special funds: Electric, Water/Wastewater, Stormwater, Resource Recovery, Airport, and Hotel Tax. It all seemed like normal fluctuations to me, but knock yourself out if you’re curious to know more.
Item 16: We’re knee-deep in next year’s budget. I haven’t watched ANY of the budget planning sessions, because they’re dull as rocks, and I say this as someone who finds council meetings riveting.
I think this is the key part of the Budget Policy Statement:
What does “Eviction Services” mean? We’re helping the tenant and not the landlord, right? We’re not the baddies, are we?
In part A, “Mental Health Diversion” sounds promising. None of this got any discussion at Tuesday’s meeting, though.
I’m not sure what distinguishes As, Bs, and Cs. Funding level? Different departments? Urgency?
We bought it, but it wasn’t inside city limits. So now we’re annexing it.
Google maps tells me that it looks like this:
Nothing I enjoy better than the derelict remains of former wealth, as it returns to the common good!
….
Item 18: LIHTC projects are low income housing complexes, where the developer gets some tax breaks in exchange for building affordable housing. (We talked about LIHTC projects last month.)
These guys want to build affordable housing right behind the high school:
Great!
How affordable is “affordable”?
What this means is that there are 348 apartments, and all of them will be priced so that they are affordable for people making $58,401 – $70,080.
What does “51-60% AMI” mean?
AMI stands for “Area Median Income”. In other words, the AMI is the middle income in the town. So then “51-61% of AMI” means these apartments are for people earning roughly half of the middle income, or a little more. On the poor side of the AMI though, for sure.
Hopefully you’re thinking, “Wait, what? How is $58K-$70K on the poor side, for San Marcos!?”
It’s not! Here’s where the hocus-pocus comes in. San Marcos is part of the Greater Austin-Round Rock Metro statistical area. The median income for a family of four in Austin is $122K. And therefore 51-60% of that gives you $58,401 – $70,080.
People earning $58K-$70K in San Marcos are above the median income. These households are on the richer half of San Marcos. Not actually rich, but relatively well off for San Marcos. It’s completely absurd to call this apartment complex “affordable” or “low-income”. These are regular, market rate apartments for regular, old San Martians.
But here’s the thing: they’re not applying for tax breaks from the city. They’re only applying to state tax breaks. So this isn’t costing the city anything.
Still, they’re getting tax breaks from the state. Are they at least providing services that go above and beyond?
Eh, not really. Pretty bog-standard.
City Council is happy with this because we’re not giving away any money. So they give it a thumb’s up.
Look, as far as San Marcos goes, this is fine. It’s housing.
But they’re still jerks! They’re diverting funding that would otherwise subsidize actual low-income housing. They’re getting a subsidy, without helping the people it’s supposed to help. It’s not technically illegal – we’re within the Austin MSA, so officially our median income is $122k. Just kinda shitty of them.
The developer wants to put student housing there. (The developer is Shannon Mattingly, former head of the San Marcos Planning Department, which is pretty shady, yes. She was hired by The Dremer Group out of Austin about two years ago.)
There were actually four decision points at the P&Z meeting:
Should downtown include that pentagon on the left? (No.)
Should the mishmash of different zonings all be consolidated to a single zoning? (Somewhat.)
Should they be allowed to have Purpose Built Student Housing? And is this the same as Rent by the Bedroom? (Yes.)
Should they be allowed to go to 7 stories? (No.)
This week, council tackled the first question. The rest of the questions are being saved for next time.
So today, we’re only talking about the yellow, striped pentagon:
Basically, if you start at Zelicks, and walk uphill past North Street, and keep going until you hit the university, we’re talking about the houses on the left when you reach Texas State.
I believe it’s these houses:
One of them burned down maybe five years ago. One of them was transplanted from Riviera Street about ten years ago. Two are bungalows from the 1920s, and one of them is considered a High Priority Historical Resource from around 1900.
This one is the high priority one:
It is very cute!
First off, Jude Prather recuses himself because his wife works for the university, in a building close to this spot. This is probably a reasonable recusal, but it affects the vote calculation coming up.
Second: today is just discussion. No vote until next time.
So: should downtown include that yellow, striped pentagon to the left?
If Council says yes, then they can apply for a zoning (CD-5D) that lets them build up to 5 stories and have 100% impervious cover.
If Council says no, then the developer might back out, and not buy the property. (Or they could build whatever they’re allowed to under the current zoning, which does allow apartment complexes.)
Public Hearing:
Against: Four speakers.
Similar to the P&Z meeting, they were concerned about student housing, expanding downtown to encroach on neighborhoods, and the preservation of historical buildings.
In favor: 10 speakers.
Some of these speakers made sense to me – the current owner, the developers, etc.
But a bunch were totally ludicrous. Lots of students spoke about how passionate they were about this housing complex. “Simple laws of supply and demand!” they kept saying, as if they’d all been given the same script. One collected 1200 signatures of students who are also super passionate. One of the hardcore Historical Preservation Committee people, who would usually spit on this sort of thing, instead turned up and openly raved about only having heart-eyes for this project.
I mean… come on. The developer must have paid students $15/hour to all read from a script. “We students are just madly in love with the application of supply and demand curves to the inelasticity of housing supply near campus! Please, ya gotta approve this Preferred Scenario Amendment, mister! For the kids!” Come again?
…
The developer is offering some new concessions, since the P&Z meeting. For the left hand yellow-striped pentagon:
they’ll cap at 4 stories now,
only have 1, 2, and 3 bedroom units,
no Rent by the Bedroom leases,
limit impervious cover to 80% instead of 100%.
Have the cute old historic houses relocated elsewhere, instead of demolishing them.
Would that sweeten the pot?
Matthew Mendoza kicks things off: he talked to constituents in traditionally Latino neighborhoods. They all say, “Keep students away from me. Why aren’t the students by campus? Why aren’t students staying on their side of town?”
He went over to the proposed neighborhood. The whole character of the neighborhood is university. This makes sense. Alyssa Garza agrees with him.
Saul Gonzales goes next:
I see it just a little bit different. I’ve lived here almost 62 years, and I saw the town when I was on P&Z many years back. It was only a few bars, and that’s all we were going to have. And before you knew it, it spread and it spread and it spread. Now there’s no stopping it. It’s too late.
With a property like this, I see the same thing. Where does this stop? This is still a neighborhood, as far as I can see it. People that I talked to tell me, “Saul, what happened to downtown? What happened? Look at all these apartments. Look at this, look at that.” And I’m going to tell them this time “well, we just put another one up.”
I’m just not in favor of it. There’s other reasons – the flooding, the parking, and I just don’t think… It has to stop. I’ll be voting against it, just because it has to start with me voting no.”
Saul, my good man, what the utter fuckare you talking about. Are you really trying to tell me that in your adult lifetime, San Marcos didn’t used to have a lot of bars? In the 1980s, this was a sedate little sober town? Dude, this town has been soaked to the gills since Prohibition. That is some wishful thinking.
More earnestly: Saul is making a slippery slope argument. He’s saying he doesn’t mind any one particular development, but over time, the neighborhood will hit a tipping point where it starts to feel like a university student housing neighborhood, instead of a traditional neighborhood of houses.
The problem is that this ship has sailed. This neighborhood is already university housing.
Literally, the university owns Sanctuary Lofts and the Vistas apartments now. Everything north of Lindsey street is campus.
Let’s pause to count the votes:
P&Z denied this motion. This means that council must have 6 votes to overturn P&Z. Since Jude recused himself, that means it has to be unanimous to override the P&Z denial.
If Saul really is a hard NO, then this whole item is sunk.
(The actual vote is not until next meeting. Today is just discussion.)
Back to Council discussion:
Mark Gleason talks next: I take each case individually. I haven’t made up my mind. But the bright line between downtown and the neighborhoods is not North Street. That’s absurd. C’mon, you all know that I will fight for the neighborhoods. This isn’t that. Clearly Moore Street is the bright line. I will need restrictive covenants to enforce the offer that the developer made, and I haven’t totally made up my mind, but I’m here for it.
Mark Gleason is making the most sense. He’s entirely right.
Jane Hughson asks about the flooding?
Answer: the reason there’s flooding in this area is that it’s coming down from Texas State in waves. This property would have to follow city code, which says you can’t make flooding worse. But you can’t fix flooding from Texas State with this project.
Jane: North Street is a bright line for downtown, for me. But maybe a lesser zoning?
Quick lesson: all the zonings have confusing names. CD-5D, CD-5, CD-4, ND-4, and many more.
As far as I tell, all anyone cares about (in this situation) is the number of stories and the percent impervious cover. Loosely speaking, the choices are:
Up to 5 stories and 100% impervious cover (CD-5D or CD-5)
Up to 3 stories and 80% impervious cover. (CD-4 or ND-4)
The developer is asking for the Option 1, and offering to only build 4 stories at 80% impervious cover. It sounds like Jane is going to try to build a coalition to get them Option 2 under a lesser zoning.
Maybe Saul will go for that! Maybe the developer won’t! Exciting times.
There’s no vote this time – it’s just discussion. Stay tuned!
….
Item 15: American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money is coming to an end. The first deadline is the end of 2024: you have to have contracted out all your money by the end of 2024, and it must be spent by the end of 2026.
San Marcos put $900K from ARPA money for homelessness initiatives. We then hired Robert Marbut to tell us how to proceed. We discussed it here, and I was not a fan of him.
In 2019, journalists just could not stop writing bad articles about this guy.)
After the study, $800K was left to actually carry out Marbut’s plan. You can read his San Marcos study here. It’s loosely stated enough that it has wiggle room – it all depends on whether it gets implemented humanely or not. The council homelessness committee determined that Southside is the best organization to implement Marbut’s plan.
Southside wants to use $50K of the $800K to hire two part-time people to write the implementation plan. One of them worked under Dr. Marbut before. Southside has to have this implementation plan written by June 2024, and so they’re under the gun to get it done quickly and well.
Jane Hughson is skeptical about what the city is getting for this $50K. Just an implementation plan? That’s all?
The counterargument is that we are investing in Southside and setting them up for success. Everyone goes with it in the end.
I’m not bothered by the $50K, but I am definitely nervous about whether Marbut’s worst instincts will show up in the details of the implementation.
Item 20: Short Term Rentals (STRs)
We saw this at a council workshop, back in January. Our current regulations are illegal: you can’t outlaw parties and you can’t require that the owner live on site. So we have to pass something new.
The new proposal states:
All STRs would need a permit.
Owners can only have one STR.
Only one STR on a block, or at least 600 ft apart.
Short-term tenants can have parties, but not excessively noisy ones, just like any other resident.
Everyone who lives within 400’ gets a postcard with a hotline number to call if you’re having any trouble.
Shane Scott and Alyssa Garza are opposed to the proposal, but they’re extremely cagey about why. Alyssa says the zones are weird. Shane is opposed on general libertarian grounds.
Look: hand-wavy arguments like that are lazy. Spell out your reasons. If you can’t spell out your reasons, go think harder about why you’re arguing your case.
Anyway: Jude Prather gives the impression that probably what’s bothering Shane and Alyssa is the bit about how STRs must be 600 feet apart.
Jane makes the same point as I made – Alyssa and Scott should specify what they don’t like in the ordinance, so that we can modify it instead of throwing the whole thing out.
Alyssa is kinda prickly in her response – she doesn’t have unlimited time or any staff to go work on this ordinance.
Confidential to all council members: you can always consult your friendly Marxist blogger for sound guidance, when you’re short on time! I got you.
….
Item 23: There have been a lot of opioid settlements:
We’re contracting with Cenikor to start spending the $325K-ish we’ve got:
That’s running us about $100K. Seems like as good a place to start as any.
We get our water from a bunch of different sources:
We’re actually in pretty good shape, because we invested in ARWA water about twenty years ago. That is water from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. It took a while to get the drilling and treatment set up, but it’s about to start coming online.
Here’s what our water supply looks like, over the next 50 years:
The main point of the presentation is our drought stages: right now we have five, and life would be simpler if we only had three.
The five:
The three:
Jane Hughson makes an excellent point: it used to be that Stage 2 was mild, and now Stage 2 is serious. It used to be that Stage 3 was Medium, and now Stage 3 is The Worst. It’s hard to get people to update their priors. This is going to require a high degree of messaging.
(Nevertheless, it’s probably simpler to have 3 stages instead of 5.)
Updated to add: Someone pointed out to me that the new proposal never bans sprinkler systems, even during the worst droughts. This seems like a bad move. Even if there’s plenty of ARWA water, it’s still resource-intensive to clean and treat it.
San Marcos! I got your zoning cases, your Buccee’s, and I gripe at the Neighborhood Commission. Also the Lindsey Street Apartments, recycling, and SMPD.
Happy Spring Break to those who celebrate. Here we go!
Hours 0:00 – 1:00: Gaza ceasefire, two zoning cases, and some criticisms of Buccee’s.
Hours 1:00 – 1:42: Power lines, and the Neighborhood Commission pushes my buttons.
Fourl people spoke, calling for City Council to issue a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Three people spoke against Buccees. I’ll save the details for the item on Buccees, below.
One landlord speaks against items 17 and 18. These are resolutions from the Neighborhood Commission. We’ll get to those, too.
On the topic of the Gaza ceasefire: clearly, the mass killing of the Palestinian people by the Israeli army is a humanitarian crisis. Now in general, city resolutions on international issues aren’t going to carry much weight. We didn’t issue resolutions when the Rohinga were being killed in Myanmar or the Darfur genocide in Sudan.
But Gaza is more relevant because the US supplies Israel with weapons, and it’s even more local because Governor Abbott actively supports the Israeli army. So you can make the case that cities in Texas should actively and vocally oppose Abbott on this. I support the speakers calling on Council to issue a resolution for a ceasefire.
……
Item 13: Some folks want to put a hotel on I35.
It would go here:
On the street level, it looks like so:
That’s the view from the southbound I35 access road, as you’re heading from Wonderworld towards McCarty.
It had been zoned Heavy Commercial, which does not allow hotels. So the developer is asking for regular commercial, where they can.
What does Council think?
(Saul is absent.) So it passes easily.
…
Item 14: Rezoning some land out by Redwood:
There’s a gas station and some senior apartments there already.
It has been zoned CD-5, which is supposed to feel like a walkable downtown area. Cute little two-story buildings along a sidewalk, where you can easily dip in and out from store to store. Zoning that farmland as something “walkable” is a little ambitious? But sure.
The owner hasn’t been able to get any developers interested in the spot. So he wants to change it to regular commercial. This is more like your strip malls or dollar generals. Big parking lot out front. No longer striving for walkability.
What does Council think?
Great.
….
Item 2: Buc-ee’s.
At citizen comment, there were several people who spoke against Buccees. I’m going to organize their concerns:
We cannot handle this. We don’t have the infrastructure to handle this.
Is the problem that Buccee’s is tacky? Do the good people of San Marcos only want serious, dignified gas stations, without cartoon mascots? What are we talking about here?
Concerns that at least make sense to me:
Buccee’s promotes oil-dependency and unhealthy food.
Keeps travelers from exploring San Marcos
Buccees generates less property tax revenue in NB than other I-35 frontage retail.
Jobs are closer to Kyle than San Marcos.
We should not be subsidizing retail jobs that pay below the median wage.
These are all legitimate drawbacks. Are they drawbacks that outweigh the projected $400K/year that the city will get in taxes? Eh, probably not.
Concerns that I share:
Contract is full of green-washing and light on details.
The work environment is toxic. They pay well because they work you to death.
I can’t evaluate whether or not the contract is green-washing. It’s certainly incredibly brief on the rainwater collection and oil-and-water runoff separators. I’d be interested to know what an environmental expert says.
One last piece of evidence came during the February 20th meeting. The Buccee’s representative said multiple times something like, “The job is tough, so we compensate you for it! No one said it’s an easy job!” That is not a great thing to hear from management.
What does council think?
Mayor Hughson: I just want to highlight the dollars that this will bring in to the community.
Alyssa Garza asks if there’s any representative here from Buccee’s, who can speak to the accusations of bad labor practices?
Answer: There isn’t. City staff weakly gives some anecdotes about staff retention. But there’s no data on turnover or anything
Matthew Mendoza speaks to the quality of the opportunities and why we need good jobs for people without college educations.
The vote:
Everyone reassures Alyssa that labor violations are a federal matter! Surely the Department of Labor will respond promptly to any issues.
That is some magical thinking right there. (Also I learned something new: federal law does not require lunch breaks or rest breaks. Unsurprisingly, neither does Texas. We should probably require breaks in our Chapter 380 agreements.) But generally, there is plenty of wiggle room to be an abusive employer without facing consequences from the DoL.
All new developments have to bury their power lines.
In other words, this is bad:
whereas this is good:
There’s a lot of reasons why this is good practice:
Ok, great.
Whisper South and Whisper South Industrial are here:
Whisper South has requested skipping burying their electrical lines. Staff denied the request. So they appealed to City Council.
City Council agreed with staff, and denied the request as well.
Good job, Council!
…
Items 17-18: The Neighborhood Commission
Maybe the Neighborhood Commission is my arch-nemesis? I disagree so hard with them that steam is coming out my ears.
They sent Council two resolutions, on Occupancy Restrictions and Purpose Built Student Housing.
Occupancy Restrictions
Back in April 2022, Council voted to loosen occupancy restrictions from a max of 2 unrelated people in a house, to a max of 3 unrelated people in a house. Unfortunately, the code wasn’t updated for another 18 months. By this point, Max Baker was off Council and Matthew Mendoza was on it.
It finally passed, officially, in October. So it has been in effect for six months. But in a sore loser move, a subcommittee was put together “to study the issue further”.
The Neighborhood Commission is pissed off.
They want the rule to revert to a max of two unrelated people.
Listen: a cap of two unrelated people is batshit crazy. They clearly hate students, but banning students effectively bans poor people as well. (I really don’t care if that’s accidental or on purpose.) This prevents poor people from pooling their resources and being able to afford the rent in a quiet neighborhood. That’s super gross!
Who actually thinks City Council should be in the business of policing who is married? Why are we micro-managing people’s private lives this way?!
Usually people will say “It’s about parking!” or “It’s about noise!” or “It’s about wild parties!” But there are other mechanisms for dealing with noise and parties. (Namely code enforcement and rental registries for landlords.)
What about the extra cars, parking on the street? Listen: your desire to keep street spots empty is less important than other people’s right to affordable housing. I don’t know why we allow “empty street spots” to be a weapon that existing home owners can wield against renters. Home owners do not have a right to keep street spots empty.
But let me be fair: surely the neighborhood commission gave thoughtful reasons, right?
Unless I’m missing something, they’re saying that three friends living together is causing all this:
Rising costs of home ownership
Impact on residents remaining in their homes
Impact of landlords attempting to put 3 unrelated students in a home
Negative impact on the neighborhood
Wow. That is high on blame and short on details. If something is going on, spell it out explicitly, because right now it looks unhinged. (Also home prices are currently falling.)
What does Council do?
Remember the subcommittee that was formed? It hasn’t met yet, mostly because it doesn’t have a purpose.
Jane Hughson calls for the subcommittee to meet within 30 days. The subcommittee is Matthew Mendoza, Mark Gleason, and Alyssa Garza.
Shall they meet?
Yes, they must meet!! Jane, Matthew, Mark No, it’s over, this is dumb: Alyssa, Shane, Jude
So the informal vote fails. They do not need to meet.
But wait! There’s more from the Neighborhood Commission!
They hate Purpose Built Student Housing and rent-by-the-bedroom leases.
There is an argument that RBB leases are predatory. (I don’t exactly agree, but we’ll talk about this extensively in the Bonus P&Z section.) But for now, it’s safe to say that the Neighborhood Commission is not upset because students are being exploited.
The Neighborhood Commission is saying this:
They do not want student housing complexes. I think this is clear.
So let’s summarize: they do not want students renting houses in neighborhoods. They also do not want apartment complexes to cater to students.
This is just delusional. Look, we have a university! With a lot of students! They are entitled to live in this town!
If students are throwing obnoxious parties, then we need to properly fund Code Enforcement to shut those down. If you have a problem with rentals, hold landlords accountable. This commission thinks that shutting off the actual supply of housing – this human right that we all deserve – will somehow lead to different behavior by students.
What does Council do?
It’s a little perplexing. Jane Hughson moves to postpone the discussion.
Her explanation is that they didn’t put Rent by the Bedroom (RBB) on the agenda, and so legally Council cannot discuss it. She wants to put both RBB and Purpose Built Student Housing on the agenda, so that Council can have the appropriate discussion.
But this is just wrong. Look at the agenda:
Rent by the bedroom is actually right there, on the agenda! How did no one correct her? They literally read that blurb out loud at 1:30:56, here.
(I mean, I truly don’t care. Let’s postpone. It’s not urgent.)
….
Council or city staff: if you’re reading this, I do have one practical suggestion:
If you’re going to regulate RBB leases, you should require that leases include an option to rent by semester, for a modest surcharge. Students need some flexibility to be able to take internships, or graduate in December, or move home for the summer.
Since the complexes are profiting off of being quasi-dorms, they should provide this benefit specific to students, like a dorm would.
We have to unpack this. The center of gravity has shifted on P&Z.
Let’s start with the end of the meeting: the committee voted on their new chair.
Jim Garber has been the chair of P&Z since 2016 (aside from one year when he cycled off P&Z). He’s literally been elected seven times. It’s been quite a run. Jim Garber was the main driving force behind the re-write of VisionSMTX.
But at this meeting, Garber lost re-election to David Case.
I am Goldilocks! I want us to land in the middle. I want us to have calm quiet neighborhoods, but they must include affordable apartments for lower income folks. I want us to have gentle densification and to have nearby stores, so that you don’t have to drive a long way for your basic needs. Jim Garber was blocking a lot of this with the VisionSMTX re-write.
However, back in the early 2000s, we were haphazardly approving all kinds of giant apartments complexes. The danger is that P&Z will start recklessly greenlighting every proposal again.
How do I feel about giant apartment complexes? They should be carefully scrutinized on a case-by-case basis.
There are good parts: they do not contribute to sprawl, they are more environmentally efficient than houses, you get some economy of scale, you can have amenities like pools and exercise rooms, and it’s easier to include wraparound services for low-income housing.
But they are also a mechanism to enforce segregation by wealth, which makes me very cranky. And the scale matters: it’s jarring to put a giant complex immediately alongside a quiet neighborhood. Location is a major consideration.
Anyway: the NIMBY old guard was voted out, and a new tide has taken hold. It’s just too early to know exactly how far it’s going to swing.
There was also one big, complicated zoning case:
Should we build student housing here?
This came up back in October. It was memorable because Shannon Mattingly was the director of the San Marcos Planning Department until 2022, and then jumped over to this developer. It’s a pretty clear conflict of interest.
Here is a close-up:
One more background issue:
The university recently purchased Sanctuary Lofts and Vistas Apartments, which are very close to this:
They are going to turn them into dorms. The city is pissed off, because we used to get a lot of property tax from those apartments, and the university doesn’t have to pay local taxes.
So this looms on everyone’s minds: in five years, will the university just buy this, too?
Onto the issues
There were a lot of citizen concerns, which I’ll categorize:
Complaints that student housing is exploitative:
Aspire (13 stories) charges $1k/bedroom
Rent by the Bedroom (RBB) means inadequate/subpar living conditions
Roommate matching is not legally binding
All roommates share liability for damages to common areas.
RBB is predatory
Student housing means subpar construction and craftsmanship
I find these complaints mystifying. Do these people think that the rest of the landlords are glorious noblesmen? All tenants need protection. Plenty of non-student apartment complexes are unsafe and unsanitary. All roommates always share liability for damages to common areas! All landlords will try to extract the highest rent they can.
I just am not clear why student housing is especially bad. Why not build a broader coalition across all renters?
2. Complaints about San Marcos housing in general:
We need diverse housing options
Downtown housing is solely being built for students, serious lack of other housing.
There is plenty of student housing available: 40 RBB complexes in San Marcos, with over 20K bedrooms.
We do need diverse housing options. Developers are not our friends, and they will not build diverse options unless it’s in their financial interests. This means simplifying the approval process and creating incentives for small-scale apartments and condos.
But those are all larger issues than this one complex.
3. Mostly legitimate concerns that are specific to this project:
This will make downtown encroach on nearby neighborhoods.
This will be a large corporate structure on an already congested street
The smalltown feel and skyline is being eaten up by big developments.
They should provide regular leases alongside RBB.
We will be tearing down existing affordable housing and displacing people in order to build more expensive housing.
I find most of these compelling.
4. Concerns that I don’t know how to categorize:
we should not destroy this town for the convenience of students!
It was a LOT.
So what did P&Z do? They basically landed somewhere in the middle. I thought they handled it well.
The request has four parts:
Extend “Downtown” to include the west side of their property, that pentagon piece west of North Street.
Change a mishmash of old zonings – multifamily 12, multifamily 18, multifamily 24 – to all match the standard downtown zoning, CD-5D.
Get a permit to have Purpose Built Student Housing.
Get an alternative compliance to go up to 7 stories.
Here we go:
Extend “Downtown” to include the bit west of North Street.
In terms of this picture:
we’re talking about the pentagon on the left hand side. Should that be part of the designated official Downtown District?
The vote: All 9 vote to deny. West of North Street is not downtown.
2. Change a mishmash of old zonings – multifamily 12, multifamily 18, multifamily 24 – to all match the standard downtown zoning, CD-5D.
First, the lefthand pentagon, west of North Street: No. This passes 9-0.
Next, the right and middle bits, east of North Street: there’s some good discussion.
Will this make flooding worse? CD-5D zoning is 100% impervious cover, like downtown. Currently they’re allowed up to 75% impervious cover.
Probably not: it’s actually 100% impervious already, because there’s a parking lot covering all the land. It pre-dates the 75% regulation.
What about the affordable housing already there? It would be torn down.
The vote: 5-4 in favor of changing the zoning to CD-5D.
(This is the first pro-development vote.)
3. Get a Conditional Use Permit to have Purpose Built Student Housing.
Important: this is not the same as Rent by the Bedroom. They can already do RBB leasing if they want. Purpose Built Student Housing lets them go up to 5 stories and have four bedrooms per unit, instead of 4 stories and up to three bedrooms per unit.
Arguments: We just passed the Downtown Area Plan. The Downtown Area Plan calls for no student housing downtown. We need to set a precedent of respecting the area plans.
The counterargument comes from William Agnew, who says, “I was on the Downtown Area Plan committee. I thought it was absurd to pretend we don’t want student housing downtown. That’s who lives downtown! I’m in favor of this CUP.” I love his bluntness.
The developer says they will offer regular leases alongside RBBs. For what that’s worth.
The vote: 7-2 in favor.
4. Get an alternative compliance to go up to 7 stories.
It gets pointed out that this is already uphill of Sanctuary Lofts, which is 5 stories. So if this were seven stories, it would loom even higher, due to the hill.
The vote: 8-1 opposed. They will have to stop at five stories.
In conclusion…
Approving this apartment complex has its negative trade-offs. It does make the area more congested. It does destroy some cheaper housing in exchange for more expensive housing.
That said, I think that overall, P&Z landed in a reasonable spot on the four items.
Two presentations, about Green Guy Recycling and SMPD.
Green Guy Recycling
We’re renewing our 5 year contract with Green Guy recycling. We’ve been working with them since 2009.
San Marcos residents get some free drop-offs per year, because of this contract.
Per year, you get recycling for:
24 hour drop off for common items
5 passenger tires
1 TV
2 CRT screens
2 appliances with Freon
2 mattresses or box springs per year
This costs you $1.85/month.
They also provide a ton of long dumpsters for recyclables at Community Clean Ups throughout the year, and other things, like nuisance vehicle recycling, for the city. It all sounds good to me.
….
Police Chief report
Congratulations! If you made it this far, you get a personal anecdote.
I actually come from a family of communists. Literally, Marxists on both sides of my family. At one point in the early 2000s, I was arguing with my uncle about the 2000 election. He did not live in the US, but he was saying he would have voted for Bush over Gore. I was outraged.
He explained to me why: he felt that the entire capitalist system is so rotten that the only recourse is a revolution. Electing Al Gore would placate everyone and delay the revolution by releasing steam, whereas electing Bush would make life worse, and thus hasten the revolution.
To an abolitionist, small improvements are counterproductive because they distract from the revolution. When things get worse, it lights a fire under people to fight for a revolution.
(I still don’t agree with my uncle: I think it would have been better to elect President Gore, and I’m guessing 150,000 Iraqis might agree with me. But here we are.)
At the same time, sometimes the abolitionists are right, and you need a revolution. This is the WEB Dubois and Booker T. Washington debate about civil rights: can you fix things incrementally? Or do you have to fight for revolution? There wasn’t really an incremental fix for Jim Crow laws – people risked life and safety to fight for the civil rights movement.
So now we’re talking about SMPD, and there’s a split in philosophy:
Small improvements to police departments are good, because it improves policing.
Small improvements to police departments are bad, because the whole system is rotten and needs to be thrown out. Small improvements prevent the fire from building that will motivate real change. In other words, an abolitionist approach.
Here’s where I stand: I’m okay with incremental improvements to SMPD. Waiting for a revolution leaves too many vulnerable people stranded in 2024.
Chief Standridge’s entire presentation is “Look at these positive incremental changes we’ve implemented, and the modest successes we’re showing!”
Here are Chief Standridge’s main talking points:
We did a huge amount of community events and outreach in 2023.
We have 60 active volunteers.
School marshall program for the elementary schools, officers for the middle and high schools. (bleagh, but that is a different conversation.)
Brought in a qualified mental health professional to respond alongside the mental health unit. (This is good!)
Accountability:
It sounds like they’re documenting and investigating any significant incident. Do I have the proper context to analyze this stuff? no, of course not.
We hired a bunch of new people:
Our crime stats are trending down:
Two comments:
Nationally, violent crime went down, because we’re getting further away from Covid life disruptions. But the drop in San Marcos does seem bigger than the national average.
Chief Standridge says something like, “You can’t credit the police for a drop in crime, and you can’t blame the police for an increase in crime. Crime is due to complex socio-economic factors.” I give him credit for framing everything in terms of grounded evidence like this.
There are a bunch of mental health initiatives, collaborations, and new hires made, both to support the mental health of the officers and to take a holistic approach to crime reduction in San Marcos. These are good things!
There was one interesting question: Shane Scott asks about reserve officers. Do we let volunteers be officers on the streets?
Chief says diplomatically, “I’m not comfortable with that. This city is still pretty …challenging.”
GOOD. I would be worried about George Zimmerman-style volunteers.
This week at City Council: it’s Buc-ee’s time! Should we accept them on their terms? And also the can ban makes it across the finish line.
Let’s do this:
Hours 0:00 – 1:00: In which we discuss Area Plans for Dunbar and the Historic District, and the River View apartments in Blanco Gardens.
Hours 1:00 – 1:57: It’s Buc-ee’s time! Should we accept them on their terms? And also the can ban makes it across the finish line.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: Someday, there will be a new city hall. Where shall we put it?
(I learned this week, over and over, that Buccees is actually spelled Buc-ees. Every time I see it with the hyphen, it looks weird and awkward, but here we are.)
The San Marxist 