Price Tag to the City: Will it bring in taxes that pay for itself, over the lifespan of the infrastructure and future repair? How much will it cost to extend roads, utilities, on fire and police coverage, on water and wastewater?
Great location. Fully covered in terms of infrastructure and services.
Housing stock: How long will it take to build? How much housing will it provide? What is the forecasted housing deficit at that point? Is it targeting a price-point that serves what San Marcos needs?
Probably? Sure would be nice if we had an ongoing housing needs assessment!
Environment: Is it on the aquifer? Is it in a flood zone? Will it create run off into the river?Are we looking at sprawl? Is it uniformly single-family homes?
Not on the aquifer. Environmentally reasonable.
Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?
Not mixed income. That’s the only drawback: I want to intersperse people from all different economic levels. But couldn’t be closer to SMCISD!
The San Marxist Special: Is it a mixed-income blend of single family houses, four-plexes, and eight-plexes, all mixed together? With schools, shops, restaurants, and public community space sprinkled throughout?
Nope. It never is. Bummer.
Overall, this is a reasonably good thing to build here.
Items 12-13: we need some equipment.
Specifically, we are leasing (1) 41′ Digger Derrick-Tracked Backyard, five (5) Ford F350 Supervisor Trucks, two (2) 47′ Digger Derricks (DC47), one (1) AM55 Overcenter Aerial Device, four (4) Articulating Telescopic Aerial Devices (AT41M), for the Electric-Utilities department.
As one of these Odes to Enshrined Sprawl, you can’t build too close to the edge of your property. The size of your setback varies, depending on your zoning.
You are allowed to park your car in your setback, but you can’t put a structure in it. So where does that leave carports? Carports count as a structure that’s not allowed in your setback zone, even though they house your car. So unless your yard is huge, you probably don’t have room for a carport.
So why? What’s so bad about a carport?
First off, setbacks are different from easements and right-of-ways. Easements and right-of-ways are needed for water lines and future sidewalks and things like that. You definitely can’t put structures up over those.
So what’s the reason for banning carports in the setbacks?
The polite version is “neighborhood character”. The blunt version is that people who care about status think they look trashy.
(Do I think they look trashy? No! They’re fine! Protect your cars from the hail. Who cares.)
Mark Gleason phrases it as, “Some neighborhoods are going to hate carports, while they’re fine in other neighborhoods.” Can’t argue with that. HOAs are the worst!
Bottom line: this will get discussed in the future. If you want a carport, try to live in the right kind of neighborhood.
You all, I cannot stop talking about the SMART Terminal. It’s not even part of City Council this week, but I still have a lot to say.
P&Z meeting, 3/27/23: I found out way more information from the P&Z meeting two weeks ago than I’ve ever gotten on the SMART Terminal from a city council meeting. So let’s talk about that.
Hours 0:00-2:03: A little empty plot next to Embassy Suite is going to stay a little empty lot, for now. And a vague tease about a 3rd HEB?
Hours 2:03-2:59: Some opioid settlement money, a fire truck, and some Gateway Signs. I’m a proud supporter of Team Heron.
Also, I hear it’s some sort of holiday today? Happy Easter, if that’s your thing!
2017: original SMART Terminal (880 acres) is proposed Heavy Industrial. P&Z denies it.
Brought back in 2018. It sounds like Council leaned on P&Z, and they approved it. Council also approves it.
The developer (Katerra?) backs out.
880 acres zoned Heavy Industrial just sits there for three years.
Here’s my rendition of it:
Just sitting there for three years.
Listen: developers bail on projects, or sell them off. The developer you talk to is not necessarily the one who ends up building on the land. But once it’s rezoned, you’re stuck with the zoning. Zoning lasts forever!
So: The current developer comes along in 2022. This one wants to increase from 880 acres to 2000 acres:
The blue is the same blue from my map above. The green and yellow are new.
But where is that, really? The city maps are always so terrible! Here’s my best guess, from squinting at tiny country roads on different maps:
Why wasn’t anyone mad when the development agreement passed?
Some were! People showed up and spoke at citizen council back in January. But way more people are angry now. And several said that they hadn’t heard about the SMART Terminal until after it had been approved.
So let’s look this up. Who gets notified, according the city code, for a development agreement? Here’s the relevant bit:
So there you have it: notifications weren’t sent out. All they had to do was post it on a website somewhere. No alerting the neighbors, and no physical sign out on the property. That seems…. unhelpful.
ANYWAY. The Development Agreement passes, and this brings us up-to-date.
The current developer has no plans to use the airport or railway. They plan on renting or selling lots off to companies, who will each do their own individual heavy industrial thing.
The new stuff starts here
The first 880 acres is already zoned Heavy Industrial. The developer is applying now to get the other 1200 acres zoned heavy industrial. As you can see from that same chart:
this DOES trigger a bunch of notifications. So now the community finds out that a gigantic, 2000 acre heavy industrial wasteland is imminent, on HW 80, heading east.
At the February 14th P&Z meeting, a lot of community members showed up to citizen comment. They were angry and concerned. So P&Z postponed the vote for a month, to give the developer time to meet and build goodwill with the community.
Tuesday, March 27th P&Z meeting
Which brings us to Tuesday, almost two weeks ago. About 20 community members showed up to speak at P&Z, another 7 wrote letters, and there there was an online petition with 600+ people. The in-person comments are really notable – that’s a huge turnout! They were furious and concerned.
The cut-and-fill is going to hit their well water
the river is going to be polluted
this thing is going to basically eat Reedville and Maxwell and these other little towns.
We’re underestimating the flooding
Sure does seem like the city of San Marcos is shitting downstream! No one would want this upstream of them.
The developers had held community outreach, but as weakly and limply as possible. Basically the developers held drop-in meetings, and then answered every question as mushy, gray, non-answers. “We’ll abide by the development agreement.” “We don’t know yet.” “We’ll see what the city says.” That kind of thing.
First, I’d like to point out that P&Z grilled the developer more closely than council ever did (at least on camera). Here’s some nice comments by Jim Garber about the sheer size of this thing – how big is 2000 acres, really?
9% of the total area of San Marcos
75x larger than the outlet malls
10x larger than 6 Flags Fiesta Texas
107x bigger than Amazon
4x larger than Disneyland
4.5x larger than the Texas State Campus
Elsewhere he notes that it’s 3 miles long. That’s really long.
Next: this thing is a money pit. Fire Chief Les Stevens goes into detail on how much it will cost to supply fire coverage alone, when it’s fully built out: it’ll take two fire stations to cover this land. The developer is setting aside two 3-acre tracts for future fire stations.
So how much will it cost to build and staff these fire stations? According to Chief Stevens:
$8-13 million to construct each station
Apparatus: $1 million for a fire engine, need 2 per station.
Staffing: $2.5 million annually for 12-15 people
So basically, San Marcos is on the hook for $25 million dollars worth of fire stations, and then an extra $5 million/year to staff these. And that’s not including SMPD coverage and any utilities or anything else that we agree to. That’s laughable. The entire General Fund budget is about $90 million/year.
(We’re already massively behind in spending for Fire and EMS. Last year, Chief Stevens asked for 32 additional positions. We added 7 of them. And we have several future fire stations already in the queue to be built.)
The plan is to split the tax revenue with Martindale. And this is not accounting for police coverage and any other services they’re getting from us. It feels like this SMART Terminal is a money pit.
So how is it that P&Z approved this Heavy Industrial?
The San Marcos River Foundation (SMRF) wrote a letter to the P&Z members about this. Now, letters to P&Z are generally included in the packet. You can find seven letters to P&Z on this topic here. (Go to “Written Comments”) But the letter from Virginia Parker (the head of SMRF) is not there.
So I can’t read the letter, and I generally have a lot of respect for SMRF. But how this letter got used was disastrous.
Several P&Z members said they were voting “yes” for Heavy Industrial, because of the SMRF letter. The argument goes that if we don’t approve Heavy Industrial, then the SMART Terminal will be built anyway. But it will be built under county codes instead of city codes, which are much more lax. So if you want to protect the river, you must avoid this scenario at all costs.
In other words, “Nice river you got there. Sure would be a shame if anything happened to it.”
It’s true that SMRF got some river protections in the Development Agreement. But it feels like a compromise level of river protection. Definitely better than nothing, yes.
But is that the choice before us? This development agreement, or the river will be polluted all to hell? If this is the threat on the table, I think the developer is bluffing, in order to threaten us into giving him whatever he wants. My guess is that the SMART Terminal would not develop under the county regulations, because insurance and utilities would be astronomical. I don’t think they’d be able to find tenants. I don’t think these are the only two options.
Jim Garber asks Chief Stevens about this: How much would fire insurance be for the developer, if they weren’t annexed into the city?
Here’s Chief Stevens’ answer:
Insurance rates are based on ratings. Most of San Marcos is rated a 2. (1 is the best). The land out there is rated a 9 or 10. (10 is the worst.)
Every time you go up one number, the insurance costs go up. If you go from a 2 to a 3, commercial rates will go up about 10%.
So their fire rates alone will go up by 1.18, which is a little over double. I haven’t looked into where they’re getting water, sewer, and electricity from, but I bet at least some of that is from us, too.
Dude. You’ve already got 880 acres
Garber makes one last key point: Why not develop the 880 acres first, and then come back for the other 1200 acres? Have you looked for tenants for the current parcel?
The developer gives one of those mushy answers: It needs to be one cohesive project with all the same zoning.
Garber says: “One cohesive property? I thought the whole point was that you’re going to have a bunch of little tenants and projects. Can’t some of them move in the existing 880 acres?”
Developer: “They could! We just haven’t marketed that property yet because we’re still in process of zoning everything together.”
That is smoke and mirrors. That is a worthless non-answer. That is stone-walling.
So P&Z voted to approve Heavy Industrial.
I think this was a mistake. Those who voted “yes” seemed to just trust and believe that the developer was operating in good faith. That the developer would be open to reconsidering the development agreement. I have not seen any evidence that this developer is willing to do anything they aren’t being forced to do.
Bottom line
The developer needs to establish themselves as good neighbors. Find tenants for the original 880 acres, and then come back for rezoning the rest, once the community trusts them a little bit.
Right now we’re giving the developer an unbelievably massive blank check. We need to verify that they are:
Actually good stewards of the environment
How the property handles the first few really big storms
What are their labor practices like
How environmentally disastrous are the clients that end up building there
I don’t understand the rush to give the developer the entire massive 2000 acres. They’re not planning on building one cohesive thing there – it’s going to be subdivided among a lot of companies. So let’s let them prove themselves first.
Footnote:
The city used to have PDDs, where the city could find out and negotiate all the details of a project before it’s built. But we threw those out in 2018 with the new Land Development Code. This was a mistake, and I assume we did it because developers hated them. This kind of project should be a PDD.
Citizen comment: Mostly community members talking about the SMART Terminal. None of us can stop talking about it! But I think I should go on to other topics.
Items 1-4: Quarterly financial reports and audits and investment reports, etc.
Everything looks fine.
Item 14: East McCarty and Leah.
Developers want to make something of this land:
That yellow L-shape.
This item first came up last summer. The developer applied for Heavy Commercial zoning. P&Z said yes, and then Council said no. Council was concerned about Embassy Suites and the conference center, our beautiful prized jewel of the city. (Which the city is still paying off for another 10+ years or something, by the way.)
In November, the developer applied for Light Industrial. This time, P&Z denied it. That means that it will take 6 votes at council to override P&Z.
So it went to Council in December. Rather than deny it, they formed a committee to try to work something out with the developer. And now the committee is done, and it’s back for the vote.
The committee and the developer made a lot of compromises, but they got stuck on one thing: nighttime truck traffic. Council wants Quiet Hours after 10 pm, because of the people sleeping at Embassy Suites. The developer was saying it’s too restrictive for their business model, because warehouses need to load and unload their wares overnight. Council pointed out that it’s annoying to try to sleep and hear BEEP BEEP BEEP all night long.
Finally the vote:
The vote: Should this be zoned Light Industrial? Yes: Jude Prather, Shane Scott No: Mayor Hughson, Mark Gleason, Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzalez, Matthew Mendoza
So it failed. The developer can try something else, or sell it off.
Let’s just marvel at the close compassion offered to the weary travelers at Embassy Suites, shall we? What tender thoughtfulness. You can understand that a business traveler might not want to sleep next door to a 43 acre industrial site. What were you saying about the SMART Terminal again?
One final note:
At 1:25:10, the developer is trying to say that we should approve this project because no one else will want to develop it. And he says this exact quote:
“No large grocery store chain will consider this property because of the new HEB which is across the street.”
UH WHAT NEW HEB ACROSS WHICH STREET?
Across I-35? Across McCarty? Across Leah Ave (towards Amazon)? What does he know that I don’t know?
The location of a 3rd HEB has been controversial. First, constantly we’re talking about how few resources there are on the east side. The east side needs amenities.
But also, there’s history here. Back in 2016, City Council approved an HEB going in on the corner of Wonderworld and Hunter. People were furious. The main reasons:
The 2015 floods were just a year earlier, and now we were talking about paving a massive bit of land along Purgatory Creek
this would require a bunch of curb cuts on Wonderworld, which violated the agreement when the greenway was developed.
Quick digression on the Wonderworld extension. Wonderworld used to stop at Hunter Road. You took Old RR12 to go west towards Wimberly. It took decades to design and extend Wonderworld west, because it’s cutting through Purgatory Creek, which is really sensitive area. There was a complicated deal involving donation of greenbelt land and promises to take care of this area.
“We couldn’t find a more environmentally sensitive area to go through,” said Sabas Avila , the city’s assistant director of public services. The area includes a flood control dam, caves, endangered species such as the golden-cheeked warbler and black-capped vireo, aquifer recharge zones and a Native American burial site, Avila said.
“Believe me, we tried! But this was the best we could do.”
(I’m being a jerk, taking the quote out of context. The speaker is probably an environmentalist.)
Anyway: it appears the proposal for the Wonderworld HEB is still on hold.
Bottom line: this developer appears to know about some new HEB, relatively close to Embassy Suites. Eeeeenteresting.
Obviously there is a massive opioid crisis right now, with severe addiction, Fentanyl overdoses, and all the rest of it. I’m pretty sure anyone reading this site is pretty aware of the scope of the crisis. (Hays County made the New Yorker, even.)
If you really want to go down a dark path, read up on the Sackler family and how intentional it was that pharmaceutical companies worked to ramp up addictions, in order to make grotesque amounts of money. (Or watch the three part John Oliver version.)
But if you don’t want to go down a dark path, just know: there were eventually national lawsuits, and now there are settlements which cover a tiny fraction of the destruction of the wake of the opioid crisis.
Which brings us to:
And
So we’ll get around $300K from this settlement. Alyssa Garza makes the case that this should go towards evidence-based treatment solutions.
Will this help the opioid crisis? Yes, in the sense that jumping up and down gets you closer to the moon. There’s a lot still to be done.
…
Item 15: We are buying a Pumper, Midship, 1250 GPM, Aluminum Body, Spartan Metro Star, 4-Door, Tilt Cab, Single Axle Spartan fire truck.
Shane Scott jokes, “Wouldn’t the $300K from the opioid settlement just about cover the shortfall here?”
Haha, it’s funny because fuck those community members wrestling with addiction and overdose! Shane is a funny guy.
…
Item 19: We talked about Gateway signs before. The choices before were…questionable:
To me, they were very corporate-lobby.
Today city staff presented four new options, and I think they’re all better!
I love the heron. Easy, done. NEXT!
Council is split. They argue over the “Est 1881” for a while, because that date is wrong. It should have been 1851 but maybe 1808, and if you look on our seal, it says 1877. Or maybe tens of thousands of years ago! So that will change.
Mayor Hughson doesn’t like any of the overhang bits – the tree, the words “San Marcos”, etc. And she also wants the rock to be more horizontal and less angled.
Mark Gleason advocates, “The simpler, the better.”
In the end: We ❤ the heron: Matthew Mendoza, Alyssa Garza, Shane Scott We ❤ the simplicity of Option B: Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason, Saul Gonzalez That tree, tho! Option D for Jude Prather
City manager Stephanie Reyes and Jane Hughson both worry that locals don’t actually identify those big herons with San Marcos very much. I suppose it comes down to how often you get to the river.
Here’s where the signs will go:
It’s always odd when they draw I-35 going left-right instead of up-down. (But who declared that North was oriented Up anyways? I’m not going to defend the Big North Industry. We can let North go to the right and West point up for a change.)
Hello everybody! Who’s ready to see what happened this week in your local city council?
Hours 0:00-1:13: SMART Terminal has no A or R anymore? And some strategic goals for next year’s budget.
Hours 1:13-2:22: McCoy’s, murals, and we talk about vacancy taxes a bit.
I’m getting more and more ticked off by the SMART Terminal developer. (And he wasn’t even really on the agenda this meeting.) I don’t know what’s going to happen there.
This is the same problem that happened with the La Cinema studio over the aquifer last year: by the time the public hears about something and has time to organize and respond, the development agreement has already sailed through Council.
With the SMART Terminal, the developer does still need more approvals. The new land isn’t yet zoned Heavy Industrial. So there are still intervention points. But the foundation has been set, and it’s very frustrating how quickly the basic agreement gets sealed.
In February, the SMART Terminal went to P&Z to be zoned Heavy Industrial. Because so many community members showed up and spoke at that meeting, P&Z delayed the vote a month, to give the developer time to meet with neighbors and gain their buy-in.
The speakers this week described how the meetings are going. It sounds like the developers are being giant pricks about meeting with neighbors, let alone gaining their buy-in.
When they finally met, the neighbors learned some interesting things. First, recall that SMART stands for San Marcos Air Rail Transit. It’s located right where the airport, railway – and unfortunately the river – all meet.
Anyway, here’s what the developers said to the neighbors:
There’s no rail. There’s not going to be any rail. The developers haven’t reached out to the railroad company and have no intention of incorporating the railroad into any of the five stages to be built.
There’s no air traffic, either. And no plan for any future airport tie-in.
So basically they’re planning a 2000 acre truck loading and unloading industrial site, right on the river? It’s gone from SMART to SMT? (Maybe the R was supposed to stand for River. The San Marcos All runs down to the River Terminal. Wheeeee.)
In response, the developers say, “Look, back in 2018, council told us this was the right place for heavy industrial.”
But let’s check that for a second: – First off, in 2018, it was 900 acres, and now it’s 2000 acres. – Second, clearly in 2018, the whole point was that the airport is right next to the railroad. Otherwise, you’re just building a massive industrial complex on the river.
So as best I can tell, that is the plan: a massive industrial complex on the river. This really seems to be a terrible idea. Unfortunately, this council (minus Alyssa) really has heart eyes for corporations.
…
Items 16 and 18: Starting on next year’s budget.
Council and department heads had a big two day workshop, where they envisioned the city for the next year in broad terms. This statement is the result, and it’s supposed to be the starting point for the new budget.
Here’s what they came up with:
Each of those has 5 or 6 sub-points, and then each of those has another 2-3 sub-sub-points. So for example, under Quality of Life & Sense of Place, it says:
The whole thing is pretty long. If you’re curious, read it all here. That document is supposed to be the scaffolding for the actual budget, which gets built over the spring and summer.
As for last Tuesday, there was not much more additional discussion. Max Baker spoke during the public hearing portion, and made some points: – Weren’t you all going to do an Equity-based budget through a DEI lens? – Annexing distant neighborhoods blows a hole in your future budget. As soon as they’re built, you have to provide fire/EMS/PD, as well as utilities, and it costs more to staff new far-flung firehouses than you’re bringing in with taxes. Sprawl is expensive for the city. – Budgets are moral documents.
These are all good points!
Alyssa asks her colleagues to consider a participatory budget process next year. Get the community involved. This would be great. Maybe CONA reps could solicit input from their neighborhoods, and then contribute ideas when Council puts together their strategic goals.
(Because I’m a pessimistic jerk, I can also imagine neighborhoods coming up with goals that I’d find awful, like “let’s keep poor people far, far away.” So there need to be checks and balances.)
Item 19: Sam Aguirre used to be the lawyer for P&Z, and Michael Constantino was the lawyer for City Council. (I’m sure they both did more than that, but that’s what they were on camera for.)
Sam got hired by Seguin, so he left in the last year or two. Then Michael Constantino retired, a few months ago, so we had a vacant attorney position.
And now we’ve poached Sam Aguirre back! Welcome back, Sam.
Item 21: You know McCoy’s, the local building supplies place on Wonderworld:
They’re actually a chain with 84 stores across Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. But their headquarters is here in San Marcos:
That’s on northbound I35, past HW 80, right by the DMV.
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole reading their little history blurb from their website, which I found weirdly fascinating. The McCoy great grandfather started off selling roofing supplies in Galveston in the 1920s, which is obviously lucrative every time a hurricane hits, although they make a point to say they didn’t price gouge. They switch to building supplies in the 1940s. They move the headquarters to San Marcos in the 1970s. They kept growing and did very well in the 80s.
But then in the 90s, Home Depot and Lowe’s show up on the scene. This is the part I was very interested to read. How do you handle it when the Walmart of your industry comes to town? McCoy’s took a hit and described it pretty unflichingly. They closed about 1/5th of their stores and scaled up their existing stores. They experimented with ideas that failed and they shut them down a few years later. But it’s now been 30 years, so I think they made it through. It’s still entirely private and family owned, and they also own a bunch of land and a big ranch operation in west Texas.
So back to that headquarters, on I-35. They actually own a really big tract of land right there:
They want to turn that land into a campus headquarters, here in San Marcos, for all their corporate leadership trainings and such. They’re picturing a campus with a lake and outdoorsy things where all the store managers can come be trained and hold retreats. Right now, they hold a bunch of these in Cedar Park. Wouldn’t it be nice to bring all that business home to San Marcos?
City Council is 100% sold. I’m not saying I’m opposed exactly, but this is catnip to good ol’ boys. Jude Prather and Mark Gleason were fanning themselves with delight at the idea of a giant McCoy’s World of Leadership here in town.
The current CEO, Meagan McCoy Jones, spoke in person about this. She made a compelling case for the campus. My favorite part was when she had to explain that there are homeless people currently camped out on this land, and this was going to end. She approached it fairly well: she started with her own efforts to combat homelessness and acknowledged the complexity of the problem, and then bluntly said, “but it will be a closed campus.” You understand.
Currently, this project is a long ways off. They were here today because they’re going to need to deal with these two light-red highlighter marks:
Those are roads on the transportation master plan, but McCoy’s is not on board with them, so they need to be removed. Sorry, roads.
I particularly like the one across from Big HEB, which isn’t on that slide show:
It always cheers me up. Also, I had to go take that photo in person. That’s how dedicated I am. I tried to grab a photo off Google Maps, but it’s out of date:
Anyway, the next one coming is going to be here:
That is the back of the Old Hays County Justice Center, which currently houses Industry and Aquabrew. That’s the view heading towards downtown on LBJ from I35.
A funny thing is that these photos are in the slide show on the Mural Arts website:
Isn’t that the same wall? I definitely have seen that mural. I like it, too! Here’s another shot of it:
I couldn’t remember if this mural was currently up or not, so my Staff Photographer swung by and took a current photo here, too:
So there you have it. As far as I can tell, there used to be a mural, and then the mural got painted over, and now there will be a new mural.
The Arts committee is estimating $100K to paint the mural. But they’ve been planning this for years, and it’s a giant project. It does not bother me to spend significant money supporting local artists and making San Marcos interesting and beautiful.
Item 24: Meta-committees.
True to her word, Alyssa Garza wants to tackle the issue of skewed representation on San Marcos boards and commissions. Namely: it’s really old, white, and male. Maybe not as entirely white and male as it used to be – which Jane Hughson often points out – but still way out of sync with the demographics of the city.
To that end, they’re going to form a committee-on-committees. Alyssa, Matthew Mendoza, and Mark Gleason all volunteered to be on it and study the problem.
Items 25/26 were Double Secret Executive Sessions on the Meet-and-confer renegotiations.
Two days later, on Thursday, the first Meet-and-confer renegotiation session was held. I can’t find a video recording of it, though, so I haven’t watched it. Mano Amiga was there in person, I think.
Q&A from the press and public:
Max Baker came back and raised a few issues in quick rapid-fire:
What happened to equity-based budgeting?
Answer: there was never a consensus from Council to do so, but hopefully when we hire a new DEI coordinator, they’ll be on top of things.
SMART, isn’t it an inland port?
Nobody really answered, so I’ll take a stab at it: wikipedia tells me that inland ports are on rivers and dry ports are just land. I suppose the SMART Terminal is on the river, although it would be pretty gross to use the San Marcos River for port purposes. I think Max was just pointing out that since Air and Rail are not part of it anymore, the SMART Terminal is just a SMT Terminal.
The real problem is that 6 out of 7 councilmembers are fine with SMT being an inland port or a dry port, and just want the neighbors to shut up about the whole thing.
Are we worried about how the McCoy’s are really big players on GSMP? Right now GSMP brings lots of conferences to Embassy Suites, which we are still paying for. What if GSMP switches to using this new McCoy’s campus for its events?
No one responds to this, either, as most of them are very smitten with the McCoys, and also the McCoys conversation has just barely begun, anyway.
Vacancy tax: this is the one I find most interesting. Can we look into a vacancy tax for landlords who just let their property sit derelict, while hoping that some fancypants will come pay higher rent?
This is largely about the empty storefronts downtown, which really depress the whole vibe of the place. Landlords want Austin businesses to come down and pay Austin rental prices for the space, and they seem content to just wait as long as it will take to find a tenant.
At first, Jane is hesistant, and seems to be saying that when they looked into this before, vacancy taxes weren’t legal in Texas. But Max says that he’s emailed in a bunch of different models for how to do it, like one where you charge them for extra trips by EMS/Fire Department/SMPD, which happen a lot more when a building sits vacant.
So: are vacancy taxes legal in Texas? Seems to be. There are two kinds of vacancy taxes: residential and commercial. I can’t find anything that says they’re illegal, but I can’t find many examples of cities implementing them either.
Here’s a useful pamphlet from UT Law, but it’s from 2010. It has a bunch of helpful info, plus examples. Eg:
Dallas Downtown Vacant Building Registration Ordinance The Dallas ordinance requires owners of downtown vacant buildings to register their properties and pay a registration fee of $75, an inspection charge of $185, and a small additional fee per square foot of the building. Owners must submit a plan detailing a time schedule for correcting violations, a maintenance plan, or plans for renovations or sale of the building. The owner is required to submit an updated plan at least once every six months. Violations of the ordinance can result in criminal penalties, civil fines ranging from $500 to $2,000, and administrative penalties. The owner must carry commercial general liability coverage with a minimum combined bodily injury and property damage limit of not less than $2,000,000 annually.
I’m in! Let’s do it.
In the end, Jane asks if there’s a consensus on Council for staff to research vacancy tax options and bring something forward. And there is! So this will come back.
Several people spoke about the HSAB money. We’ve seen this item several times this year; it finally gets concluded tonight.
Two people talk about the Pick-a-pet ordinance, also coming back around tonight.
Two people talk about the SMART Terminal re-zoning. Not up tonight, though.
One person talks about Joshua Wright and the Hartman reforms
I had a stray thought about the SMART Terminal. I was on Charles Austin, next to the baseball stadium, stopped at a train. The train was going slower and slower, headed east towards 35. I was doing the thing where you try to figure out if the train is going to come to a complete stop before it gets across your path and trap you, or if the last car will make it across and set you free.
It occurred to me that the train was probably headed in the general direction of the future SMART Terminal. And I remember that it takes a train 1-2 miles to come to a stop. So imagine if we have a new SMART train intersection just east of town? The number of stopped trains is going to go through the roof. Traffic is going to be hella gummed up by stopped trains, if the SMART Terminal delivers on what they’re claiming.
I mean, we should still focus on the river pollution and massive amount of concrete, and all the rest of the questionable parts. But let’s save a little angst for worrying about the future train stoppings of San Marcos.
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On to the meeting!
Item 6: Way up by Whisper Tract, some developers want to rezone this little blue piece:
It used to be partly zoned Manufactured Homes, and partly zoned Future Development. They want to make it all Heavy Commercial.
Here’s what’s at the eastern tip of that little blue rectangle:
That is, the Saddlebrook mobile home community.
So is it fair to build heavy commercial next to them? Let’s put it this way: it would never be proposed next to wealthier neighborhoods. At the same time, the western edge of that little blue rectangle is along I-35, and it’s reasonable to put Heavy Commercial along the highway. Finally, the folks at Saddlebrook might like some commercial services like restaurants or laundromats or whatever nearby. (But there’s no guarantee this will be restaurants or laundromats.)
Jane Hughson and Mark Gleason aren’t sure about the size of the project on the east side being so close to the community. A 40 foot building with 30 foot setbacks is still pretty looming, even with a privacy wall.
The developer talks in person. He and his partner are from central Texas, and they make little spec buildings that can later be configured for small businesses. So it’s unclear what would end up there.
In the end, council approves it unanimously. Hopefully it turns out the businesses that move in make good neighbors.
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Item 7: Two acres in Cottonwood Creek, off 123. This one kind of pissed me off.
Here’s Cottonwood Creek:
It’s down by the high school. Bowie Elementary is in Cottonwood Creek. (I realized I could get some useful maps off the planning department website.)
Here’s a close up. Today’s proposed rezoning is for that little red trapezoid, in the yellow circle:
This area has seen tons of development in the past 2-3 years. In fact, this little red piece in that blue circle:
is right where this new Chevron just went in:
So back to the subject property: right now it’s zoned General Commercial. The developer wants to re-zone it CD-4. In theory, you can still put commercial in CD-4, but that’s not what will happen. It will be townhomes or apartments.
Here’s the thing: the east side desperately needs commercial. They shoudn’t have to drive so far for grocery stores and basic retail. And that’s not just my opinion – the city planners are constantly saying that people on the east side tell them this.
And furthermore, many residents wrote in on this very item so say so! Apparently Council got letters from people in Cottonwood Creek saying to please keep it commercial. This is not hypothetical! They were told exactly what the neighbors want!
The developer is arguing that the property has sat there for 20 years and nobody has wanted to put commercial there, so therefore he should be able to re-zone it. But he’s being a twerp. He knows that commercial lags behind residential, and residential is finally just now getting built. If you don’t set aside land and earmark it for commercial uses, an entire area will get zoned residential and by the time someone might like to put a restaurant in, there won’t be viable places left.
Mark Gleason seems to be toting water for the developer. He knows the neighborhood wants commercial there. First, Mark asks what commercial is allowed in CD-4. He’s told that all kinds of commercial is allowed – offices, restaurants, etc. Could be a lot of possibilities! (But it won’t.)
Next, Mark asks the developer directly: “Are you looking to build housing? Or are you looking for more flexibility?”
Here’s what that means, “I have constituents that don’t want housing there. I want to be able to tell them I voted for flexibility. Could you supply me with my excuse?”
The developer cheerfully agrees that he is all for flexibility! We love flexibility!
Jane says dryly, “Clearly they are going to reduce the amount of commercial and add housing. Otherwise they’d just stick with the existing commercial zoning.”
Mark says, “I’m a yes on this one. I hate to lose commercial, but I trust the developer!”
Gentle Reader, listen to me: do not trust developers.
Alyssa Garza weighs in: she’s opposed, because of all the letters they’ve gotten from residents who are opposed to this. They all want commercial services to be built there.
Mark and Jane tut over how it’s a weird place for commercial, because it’s not on 123 directly. It’s a little off 123.
The vote: Should the little red trapezoid become apartments/townhomes? Yes: Mayor Hughson, Mark Gleason, Saul Gonzales, Shane Scott, Matthew Mendoza, Jude Prather No, keep it commercial: Alyssa Garza
This is really hypocritical. Right now, the VisionSMTX comprehensive plan is working it’s way through P&Z and City Council. The historic district has turned out in large numbers to complain. Several members of P&Z and Jane Hughson are going through the proposed plan closely, with an eye to preserving neighborhoods and preventing anything from happening to them.
The most sacred thing in the world, based on all language being used to criticize VisionSMTX stuff, is the voice of a neighborhood for self-determination. Neighborhood plans! Neighborhood character studies! Ask the neighborhood if Zelick’s should get a CUP! Neighborhoods are sacred.
But this vote tells the lie: we didn’t mean all neighborhoods! Sorry for the confusion. We just meant that we should pander to the noisy, wealthier neighborhoods west of I35. Cottonwood Creek wants to preserve that red trapezoid of commercial on the corner? Sorry, suckers!
Finally: we do need housing. There are multiple, competing needs here. But you shouldn’t pit one need against another. The whole city needs housing, but it doesn’t need to come out of Cottonwood Creek’s limited options for commercial development.
The San Marxist 