May 18th City Council Meeting (Part 2)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

The next two most important items are probably the Charter Review Commission and the Cape’s Dam MOU.

Item 1: Charter Review Commission

So, the city charter is like our constitution, I gather. It gets reviewed every four years. I think it can only be amended by public vote at the ballot box. A committee was formed, met over six months, and provided their final report to Council. Then Council decides which issues go on the ballot in November. (I might have this wrong, but this is what I inferred.)

Former Mayor Thomaides chaired the commission. Lots of connected people on there: Esther Garcia, Travis Kelsey, Zach Sambrano, Chance Sparks, Paul Mayhew and [Someone] Taylor. I’m less familiar with Garcia, Sparks and Taylor, but recognize Garcia’s name. Kelsey and Sambrano are on the Planning and Zoning commission, Mayhew used to be on the school board, and Sparks has apparently worked with lots of city managers thoughout Texas. And Thomaides, of course, was mayor until 2016, when he lost to Hughson.

On the whole, their recommendations did not seem to have any ulterior motive. They seemed genuinely to be thinking about the city as a whole. I haven’t read the charter, so I don’t know what they might have omitted, but at this point I have no qualms with their process.

Their 13 recommendations, loosely clumped:

  • Term limits: Council members would be able to serve three consecutive 3-year terms, and then they’d have to cycle off for a term. Mayor would be able to serve two 4-year terms, and then cycle off.

Baker, Scott, Garza, and Gleason were in favor of term limits. First, to limit the power of encumbency. Second, to have time to reflect on your decisions in office and see how they played out.

Hughson, Derrick, and Gonzalez were opposed – let the voters choose who they want. So that will probably go to the ballot.

Note: these are limits on consecutive terms, not term limits. Interestingly, Thomaides, Scott, and Hughson all have experience with cycling off. Former Mayor Thom/aides, the chair of the commission, is currently in one of these alleged periods of reflection. Scott also lost his council seat (maybe 5-6 years ago?) and got back on this past November. Has he grown and reflected on his choices back then? You be the judge. Finally, Mayor Hugh/son was on the council in the ’90s. She took 10+ years off before running again, circa 2010.

Currently the mayor serves two years, not four. The argument for the change was to free up the mayor from campaigning, and to align that election with presidential elections. Four of them opposed this, so it probably won’t be on the ballot.

(The combination of these two votes is weird: originally it was proposed that the Mayor should have two 4-year terms, and inadvertently they’re now proposing two 2-year terms. I hope that gets cleaned up at the next review session.)

  • Loosening a bunch of residency restrictions and council appointees. These seemed fine. It’s good for city managers and judges to live in town, but it does reduce the applicant pool. Some will be on the ballot, others kept as is.
  • Codifying some current practices around ethics investigations, Citizen Comment procedures, deadline flexibility, and cleaning up inconsistencies. Nothing else seemed momentous.

That’s all, but it took about two hours for them to get through all that.

Omissions I might have advocated for:

  • City Council meeting weekly instead of biweekly
  • City Council earning a living wage, to enable a broader portion of the community to be able to run for office

Next Post: Cape’s Dam.

May 18th City Council Meeting (Part 1)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Well! The most interesting item turned out to be such a clear smackdown that it is more open and shut than expected. Item 28 was to re-discuss Cite & Release.

[Sidebar: if we’re having 6+ hour meetings every two weeks, when do we start thinking about meeting weekly for 3 hours, instead? This is dumb.]

Background: San Marcos passed a Cite & Release ordinance a year ago. Since 2005ish, Texas police officers have been allowed to give citations and court dates for certain nonviolent offenses, instead of arresting people and hauling them down to the station, and setting in motion the turmoil of having one’s life abruptly struck. People miss work, get fired, can’t arrange childcare, CPS gets involved, etc etc. It’s the kind of thing that tips people from “barely getting by” into “abject poverty”. Since then, C&R hasn’t been applied fairly – white people were getting cited-and-released, black and brown people were being hauled down and physically arrested. So after a HUGE campaign by Ma/no Ami/ga, we made it mandatory to use C&R for seven specific offenses, a year ago.

So, tonight? Councilmember Scott has put C&R on the agenda as a discussion item. It’s very nebulous: “Hold discussion on Ordinance 2020-18, Cite and Release and provide direction to the City Manager.”

First, Mano Amiga generated a ton of citizens to show up during Citizen Comment.

[Sidebar: Citizen comment is 30 minutes. Each person gets 3 minutes. 27 people signed up to talk. The Mayor asks the council if they are okay extending Citizen Comment Period. There was exactly one dissent: Shane Scott, who preferred to cut it off after 30 minutes.]

Anyway: the community members make many great points about the benefits of C&R, the inadequacy of the data after such a weird Covid year, and so on.

Six hours later, the council finally gets to Item 28. Shane Scott has to go first, because he put it on the agenda. He basically says “I’m getting a lot of phone calls about increased crime. We just need to give Chief Dandridge some breathing room!”

(Crucially, Scott mentions that he has not talked to Chief Dandridge about this.)

Everybody weighs in, in predictable ways. Derrick points out that the chief was hired after C&R, and said he supported it in his interview.

Finally Chief Dandridge weighs:

  • We need to be victim-focused. There is huge amount of victimization of violent crime in SM.
  • We are nearly 50-50 on violent crime vs property crime. That’s crazy. There’s way too much violent crime here.
  • Violent crime is NOT being driven by C&R. He quite clearly emphasizes and dwells on this point: He fully supports C&R. He has continuously supported C&R. It frees up his officers to make them available for more immediate concerns. A direct quote: “It would be a myth to suggest that our city is more dangerous due to C&R.”
  • He goes through the 7 categories, and gives 2019 vs 2020 numbers. (Drug paraphenalia, theft, disorderly conduct, pot, driving without a license, city ordinance, mischief.) All are steady or down. He gives a big caveat about how Covid complicates everything.
  • The SM/PD has a dashboard, available to the public, keeping track of C&R data. (I would link it but I’m not ready for a broader readership. It can be easily found via the city website.)

He will share a major plan soon. He has a lot of ideas. Two major themes for crime-reduction:

  1. Community Engagement
  2. Technology. Apparently we have a woeful 20 year old CAD system, and I can believe that it’s pitiful in terms of wasting everyone’s time and energy.

Basically, Chief Dandridge gave a statement that was perfectly clear and concise and laid to rest this issue completely. C&R is going to stay and is not up for debate.

The rest of the councilmembers weighed in, in predictable ways, and that was that.

Mayor Hughson did mention how she did NOT support C&R last year. I had forgotten that. She said that she wanted officers to have discretion. She says she still does, but she also supports the chief, who supports C&R, etc. So hers was a bit mealy-mouthed.

It was decided to postpone this topic until the Chief shares his business plan.

Incidentally, “business plan” for a police department is annoying. It’s not a business. Profit is not a consideration. “Strategic plan” would be better.

Previewing the agenda for the 5/18/21 Council Meeting

by The San Marxist, posted in Previewing the Agenda

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

Council meeting that evening: 31 items. Yeesh.

  1. Charter Review Commission presentation. IDK?

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

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

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

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

Executive Session
30-31: the stuff from the afternoon

May 4th, 2021 City Council meeting (Part 3)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Miscellaneous – what else was discussed?

  • Mobile Home park approved, north of airport, east of 35
  • Redwood affordable senior housing development approved
  • Fire department,
  • Tax contribution for downtown master plan
  • PID for Whisper tract
  • PD Victim of Crimes fund
  • Environmental Air Quality policy
  • Commercial Scooters are in.
  • Some other pro forma stuff.

There were like 34 items and it went till almost midnight, and that didn’t include the afternoon extra session, which I skipped. But finally I have completed one meeting!!

May 4th, 2021 City Council meeting (Part 2)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

The second most interesting item of the night was Item 32: Paid Parking in the City Parks.

This came from the Parks and Rec Board as a recommendation. It was basically swatted down hard. The conversation was handled very well.

First off, everyone was against charging in Rio Vista parks. There’s barely any parking there already. It would push cars to park in the neighborhood. So the conversation was quickly restricted to the parking lots right by the Lion’s Club.

Second, everyone was strongly against charging residents to park there. It was basically just a conversation about whether or not to charge tourists to park.

Jane Hughson made all the sane points against this:

  • it would be a giant mess to implement a city parking permit program and get the word out to residents. Residents would constantly be showing up and either get charged or turned away to do some paperwork, or their pass would be in their other car, or they’d be riding in the car with their out-of-town guest, and so on. A million headaches.
  • Furthermore, it’s not even clear that we have enough of a tourist industry to pay for the headaches caused.

Melissa Derrick made the best points in favor, namely that the river is overused and we risk eating our own tail if we can’t find a way to protect it. Many cities with important natural resources seem to use a permit system just fine, like Florida beach towns or whatever. Why can’t we?

I hear what she’s saying, but somehow there’s a much steeper obstacle here in terms of awareness. Maybe just because every Florida beach town grapples with that same issue, and here it’s spotty. But it would be a huge mess.

Hughson puts a plug in for us to charge for football parking, though. That seems like low-hanging fruit.

May 4th, 2021 City Council meeting (Part 1)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

The most interesting item of the night was clearly #29: Consider a Revised purpose statement for the Council Criminal Justice Reform Committee.

The CJR Committee was formed to address Cite and Release issues. Cite and Release has been adopted. Max Baker and Alyssa Garza are the two Councilmembers on the CJR Committee.

The CJR has been pursuing other topics that would fall under Criminal Justice Reform, and city staff has gotten prickly because the topics aren’t within the purview of the mission statement.

Tonight’s issue: to revise the purpose statement so that City Staff can carry out the supporting work. That is the text. As always, there’s a lot of subtext!

So how did the discussion go? Bert Lumbreras was arguing for procedure to be followed. It’s a committee that operates at the discretion of the council. City Staff serves the council. Therefore, the council needs to bless the new direction of the committee before City Staff can do its bidding.

Max Baker comes with a new proposed purpose statement. City Council tweaks it and seems on board with it. Hughson, Derrick, and Garza kick the wordsmithing around a bit.

Then Scott says, basically, why isn’t this committee over?

Baker and Garza explain that there are a lot more simmering issues still. Here’s where the subtext arises. Their take is that they’re being stonewalled by City Staff because these are controversial issues, and made to dot their i’s and cross their t’s with far more precision and wasted time than other committees.

The charitable take on City Staff is that they’re being CYA precisely because these are hot-button issues. They do not want to be perceived as acting without direction on controversies. Whereas when issues are boring, they can take more liberties without Council direction, because they’re not going to be on the hot seat defending their choices.

The uncharitable take is that yes, they’re stone-walling because they’re unsympathetic to the cause. 20 minutes later, on the next item, they ask for council members to come directly to them with Covid ideas because it’s simpler.

Scott asks the new Police Chief Dandridge what his thoughts are. He does not stay neutral. He explicitly tips his hand against the committee, saying this will take time away from the top items on his to-do list, a lot of which have to do with the recently killed and injured police officers, and the department trauma and repair. He also took issue with the merging of national conversations with local issues.

IMO, his failure to stay neutral when delivering his answer undermines his credibility on this topic. A bit of acknowledgement of issues of police racism and brutality would have really given him a lot more credibility when he listed the competing issues. Are the other issues real? Absolutely! Does he believe in them? For sure. But for his opening bid to be so dismissive of this committee is a giant red flag. He does not seem to buy into the idea that good reform is safer for officers as well as the community.

In the end:

  1. they approve the new mission statement for the CJR committee. I don’t have the exact wording, but it involved Cite & Divert, working with the county, and increased police transparency where allowed by law.
  2. Hughson lectured the committee about taking their priority list to the police chief and seeing where there are goals in common, and working with them instead of against them.
  3. Hughson lectured Lumbreras about needing to inform councilmembers on which items are quick to retrieve and research, and which items are time-consuming. Councilmembers don’t know how the databases and systems are set up, and can’t necessarily predict the workload involved.

Side note: To google-proof or not? Do people have alerts set up for their name? Do I want people to read this while I’m still getting the kinks out? I don’t know!! (I decided to play it safe for now and google-proof names.)

[Updated 8/8/22: removed google-proofing]

Let’s have some organizational thoughts:

by The San Marxist, posted in Blog notes

That is my first time sitting through an entire city council meeting. Yowch.

  • tonight’s meeting was 6 hours long. I spent maybe 2 hours working on the agenda ahead of time, and I didn’t even get through it.
  • I still need to condense it into a post.
  • What kind of detail is helpful? Do people want a dialogue blow by blow? Should there be expandable links with all that detail?
  • I didn’t watch the afternoon session yet. So this is total, maybe a 10 hour commitment? That’s a lot.
  • Will I get more efficient at it? Look and know which items need to be watched?
  • Do I need to worry about staying anonymous? I should probably keep it polite-ish. Even if my rude version is funnier.

New plan:

  • Watch from 6-10 pm. The next 2-4 hours can be gotten during commutes.
  • It’s not ideal – it would be better to single out the hot-button issues to watch live, and save the less important ones for the commute. But I don’t think I’m willing to carve out more time than that. That can at least be my summer plan.

Still Previewing Agendas for May 4th, 2021

by The San Marxist, posted in Previewing the Agenda

Continuing on from Agenda Item #8:

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

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

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

11. 80K for electrical.

12. Bike lane stuff, 174K.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Previewing Agendas for May 4th, 2021

by The San Marxist, posted in Previewing the Agenda

This week there are two agendas to preview:

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

Work Session:

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

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

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

Executive Session: This seems to have two parts:

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

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

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

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

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

City Council Session

Bleagh, so long.

Consent Agenda:

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

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

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

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

…

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

Plan for Summer 2021

by The San Marxist, posted in Blog notes

Well, it’s been a year. Let’s fire this thing up again, shall we?

My goals are:

  • Build up some archives before promoting this site.
  • Establish a habit of blogging City Council
  • Figure out where the time efficiencies are – do the long slog while I’ve got time, and then pare it down.
  • Figure out some less ugly fonts, etc.