In 2018, we updated the Transportation Master Plan. We noted a bunch of dangerous intersections, and put in a bit about safe biking lanes. Since then, you’ve seen all sorts of bike lanes pop up.
Academy and Sessom was flagged as one of the dangerous spots to improve. This is the stretch we’re talking about:
It’s always seemed super dangerous to me! Drivers are so zippy through this:
wheeeee!
Here’s what was done:
Here’s a little before and after. Four skinny zippy, windy lanes, in 2021:
I worry for all the bikers!
After:
A light, bike lanes, single lanes, a left turn lane: so much safer.
Here’s another before-and-after:
Hopefully bikers don’t feel like they’re going to be run over anymore!
…
Did it work?
Looks like it worked great! (“Level of Service” means how much traffic can you handle.)
The bikers have concerns, though. What are “vertical delineators” that the cyclists want?
These things. You’ve seen them all over town.
The city was trying out different kinds, and it seems like the armadillos work best. (The other kinds require extra maintenance – they don’t pop back up after awhile, or they get torn off and leave bolts sticking up in the road, etc. The armadillos are just glued down.)
….
So this brings us to the next question! We’re going to be improving Sessom down to Aquarena:
We just completed the yellow part. We are about to work on the blue part to the right. We have some choices:
Go back and undo the bike lanes and safety measures in the yellow part.
Keep them, and extend them to the blue part.
[Updated to add: I got this part wrong – there’s no option to extend the bike lanes to the new part. They’re just deciding on the yellow part, and if they should add armadillos. Also fixed below.]
Jane Hughson reminisces about when they agreed to try bike lanes on the yellow part. (This was the very first meeting I blogged publicly, back in 2022! – Shane, Mark, and Saul all voted against the bike lanes on Sessom and Craddock. – Jane, Alyssa, Jude and Max Baker all voted to try the bike lanes out. Jane was reluctant, but she decided since it’s just paint and easily reversible, we might as well try them out.)
So what should we do?
Undo the old bike lanes: No one Keep the bike lanes and add armadillos: Everyone
Hooray! That was a test, Council, and you passed. Good job.
Until 2000, San Marcos exclusively got Edwards Aquifer water. Then we signed on to get some surface water from Canyon Lake, and in the mid 2000s, we joined ARWA water. (More on ARWA in a moment.)
“MGD” means a million gallons of water per day.
…
What is ARWA?
ARWA is kind of crazy. Basically, in 2006, San Marcos, Kyle, Buda, and the Canyon Regional Water Authority got together and tried to figure out a longterm plan. They formed ARWA, the Alliance Regional Water Authority.
The crazy part is that this started in 2006, and they knew they wouldn’t be delivering water until 2023. This was a very longterm plan! That is really good foresight by the councils that agreed to this.
There was all sorts of infrastructure that had to be built. I think this is the whole project:
So we’re getting all the water from the green oval on the far right. Then it has to be treated, at the blue dot, so that it’s drinkable. All those red lines are pipe that had to be laid down, and it gets run out to Lockhart, Buda, Kyle, San Marcos, and New Braunfels. That’s why it took so long.
But now it’s here! This is great!
….
So we’ve got all this water – Edwards, Canyon, and now ARWA. Is it enough?
It depends! How many people are trying to use this water?
This is the population projection, based on 2017 data:
In other words, the black line is the projected population, and the red part is how much water we’d need. So in 2055, we’re expecting to have 140K people and need about 16K acre-feet of water each day. (An acre-foot means take an acre of land, and fill it with water that is 1 foot deep.)
Here’s the water supply, according to when each of those sources kicked in:
So this looks great! So in 2055, when we need 16K acre-feet of water, and we’ll have access to about 27K acre-feet of water. Through 2075, we’ve always got more water than we need.
This is great!
But then…. we had to update our projections. Between 2017 and 2024, this region grew even more than expected. So we had to ramp up our projections, accordingly:
So if we’ve got the same amount of water planned, but a ton more people, the graph now looks like this:
Whoops. Now we are scheduled to run short on water in 2047.
So what do we do?
The good news is that we’ve got plenty of planning time, and we’re putting it to good use. There are basically two ways to address this:
Find more water
Use less water
We’re going to do both.
First, more water:
Apparently Buda and Kyle are even shorter on water than we are. Everyone is interested in collaborating and shoring up supplies. An ARWA Phase 3? Maybe a different source?
Second, reduce water usage:
The second two bullet points are huge: reclaiming used water. We’ve already got some reclaimed water already:
(That slide is from a 2022 presentation, here.) All that purple is where we can send reclaimed water to. We currently have about 5.5 million gallons per day of reclaimed water.
The problem is that it’s not drinkable. So you can use it to water the golf course at Kissing Tree (which they do!) but you can’t send it to people’s houses.
The holy grail will be when we can get reclaimed water clean enough to drink. Then we can really ramp up our water re-use.
(I read once that one of the grand failures of midcentury America was not double-piping all the houses, so that we weren’t mixing our toilet water with our sink water. Then we wouldn’t be watering our lawns with drinking water, and we wouldn’t be trying to clean and re-use toilet water.)
Here’s what we think we can get to:
Notice that the water supply hasn’t changed. But the red part – our water use – is smaller. The red part dips down again around 2050 because we think we’ll be able to get the reclaimed water clean enough to drink by then.
What does Council say?
Amanda asks if we have a problem with water leakage from pipes? Answer: We’re actually pretty good on this. It happens, but we’ve got one of the lowest rates in the state.
Amanda: Can we get a graph of the top ten biggest water users? Answer: Yes! We don’t have it on hand, but we’ll email it to you.
(I love this question. Amanda said she’ll send the graph over when she gets it, but she hasn’t gotten it yet.)
Amanda: Do we still do rebates for rain barrels? Answer: Yes! Details here.
The City Manager Stephanie Reyes also mentions this: San Marcos water rates are a little higher than those around us, but it’s because of all this advance planning. We are in a much more secure longterm position that most others.
You did it! You’re here in this new year. So is Council, and they’re talking this week about HSAB grant money, shooting ranges, demolitions, and their wishlist for the Charter Review Commission.
Here we go:
Hours 0:00 – 2:25: HSAB money gets allocated, the lease with Ruben Becerra is finalized, and we buy a TOTAL BULLET CONTAINMENT TRAP.
Hours 2:25 – 4:26: Demolishing some old barracks in Dunbar, and Council’s wishlist for the Charter Review Commission.
(I didn’t write up the 3 pm workshops this week. The San Marcos Chamber of Commerce gave a presentation about their strategic goals, and answered some questions. Feel free to watch it here.)
The Human Services Advisory Board grant money. (HSAB)
Demolition of a little blue building at 734 Valley Street
Let’s take these one at a time.
HSAB grants: These are San Marcos city grants to nonprofits. Back in December, there was a bit of a stand-off between councilmembers supporting Salvation Army and councilmembers supporting HOME Center. Yes, it’s totally weird to pit nonprofits against each other.
It was postponed without resolution. So people showed up to this meeting, to advocate for their nonprofit. By the numbers:
Advocates for Salvation Army: 2 speakers
Advocates for HOME Center: 9 speakers
Nosotros la Gente, ACCEYSS, School Fuel: 1 each
The chair of HSAB (Yancy Arevalo) also spoke. She made the most important point: $550K is peanuts for social services. There were over $1 million requested in the applications, and the need in the community is far greater than that. We need to be allocating far more money to this cause.
(She is exactly right. This is the heart of all these problems. We should not be pitting HOME Center against Salvation Army – we should be increasing the size of the pie.)
If you want the most compelling speaker of the meeting, you want to listen to the man speaking at 17:48 here. He is a formerly homeless man on the brink of death, who was helped by HOME Center and now is in a stable home. It’s really incredible.
The other big issue is the demolition of a house at 734 Valley Street.
A speaker from the Historical Preservation Commission (HPC) talks in favor of delaying the demolition
The owner speaks against the delay
A representative from the Calaboose Museum says, “Please don’t use our name as a reason to delay the ordinance. We are fine with whatever the owner wants to do.”
We’ll unpack all this when we get there.
One final comment worth noting from the 3 pm workshop:
3. At the workshop, Max Baker spoke about the San Marcos Civics Club: they’re putting together a Tenants Bill of Rights.
They want to collaborate widely on this, so if you’re interested, let them know. And they want Council to incorporate this into their upcoming Visioning sessions.
…
Item 12: The HSAB Grant Money Saga
Brief background:
HSAB stands for Human Services Advisory Board. This is a committee that meets weekly for four months, and scrutinizes nonprofits who are applying for grant money from the city.
In December, council got the HSAB recommendations and started tinkering. First, they moved $10K from ACCEYSS to Salvation Army.
Then Jane Hughson tried to move all of HOME Center’s funding away. She reduced this to 75% of their funding. This was the issue that blew up.
The whole thing looked really, really bad. It looked partisan. (Full details here.)
This meeting:
Jane drops her motion about changing HOME Center’s funding.
She justifies the attempt like so: “I went back and watched the HSAB meetings. Originally Salvation Army was given $10K, and that was moved over to HOME Center since they were local. My feeling is that our local chapter of Salvation Army is also local, so I wanted to move that back.”
Amanda responds: “I also watched the meetings. You’re oversimplifying what they said. They didn’t just give it to HOME Center because they’re local. They noted that HOME Center has a 90% success rate and is one of the few organizations doing high quality longterm casework.”
There’s some more discussion, but things fizzle out pretty quick. So the only amendment that stuck is the one from last meeting, to move $10K from ACCEYSS to Salvation Army.
There will be a discussion about the HSAB grant process in the future, where Council can do some more tinkering. It’s a work in progress.
Amanda: If you want to get to the root, we – as a city – have created a system that relies on nonprofits to provide critical social services, right? We created that.
Jane: I don’t know that I agree that we created it, but I’ll agree that we have it.
Amanda: I mean, thank god someone’s doing it, to the level that they’re doing it. But I think all of the “thank yous”, the “we’ll work on the criteria”, and all of that – it’s really empty. One of the things that has been reiterated both in this meeting and in the previous one is that $550,000 was never going to be enough. If so, if we really want to address the issue to its core, we know budget season is coming up.
I mean we’re about to – probably later in this meeting! – approve $684,000 for something probably with no discussion, no pushback. That to me is a shame. And so if we really want to address the issue, it needs more money. They need capital.
Jane interjects about Covid money – one year we were able to double the HSAB budget, but only because we could use Covid money.
Amanda: That’s great. But we can find the money. We can find the money because we’ve found the money for so many other things. I don’t think it’s a plausibility issue. If we wanted to do it tomorrow, we could fund it. But it’s a matter of desire.
All I’m saying is if we want to really address the issue, this is the conversation we should have in budget season. We should put our money where our mouths are.
(lightly edited for clarity)
I AM SO EXCITED!! This is my new battle cry: “$550,000 was never going to be enough.” Rally the troops, we’ve got budget season coming up!
The vote:
$550,000 WAS NEVER GOING TO BE ENOUGH!
…
Item 3: The lease with Ruben Becerra
Back again to talk about this cute little building!
on LBJ, at the railroad tracks, across from Toma Taco.
Background:
Like we said last time, Council bought the property from Union Pacific in 2013, in order to maybe put a railstop there someday.
Ruben Becerra owns the building, but not the land. The building sits half on city land, and half on Union Pacific land. It’s very confusing!
You can see the little building there – it’s half on red land (San Marcos) and half on blue land (Union Pacific Rail Road).
Last time, I wasn’t clear on the full backstory of why there is tension, but this time, city staff had a presentation that sheds some light on it:
Staff recommends tightening up the lease terms a bit:
In addition, Jane Hughson reads a carefully scripted main motion and amendment:
That is legalese for “We met behind closed doors and are scrupulously following the advice of our lawyer.”
The vote:
Lorenzo is our brand new councilmember! The rumor mill generally holds that Lorenzo is Becerra’s candidate, in case you were looking askance at that vote.
On Thursday, Becerra sent a written statement to the Express-News accusing the city of “targeted interference,” and said that litigation is “the course that will likely be pursued.”
“This project seems to be unjustly targeted due to political motivations,” he wrote. “The city’s refusal to honor prior agreements or pursue reasonable business solutions underscores a deliberate effort by political adversaries to obstruct progress.”
So Becerra might sue the city over this? That linked article has way more details than I was able to find, so you should trust them over me.
…
Item 5: The SMPD shooting range
Here’s SMPD, located on I35:
SMPD has a shooting range. It was built in 1991.
I’m guessing it is here?
because they described it as a sand berm, and when I zoom in, it looks like this:
Which looks like a sand berm to me!
Here’s what it looks like on the inside:
That was built in 1991. Back then, they needed to be able to shoot pistols at 25 yards.
Since then, you now have to be able to shoot rifles at 50 yards. So officers were going offsite to shoot at ALERRT Shooting range at Texas State. That is free, but it’s often busy.
In 2021, they converted the SMPD range from 25 yards to 50 yards. They also put a roof overhead, to keep the sand from getting washed out and to prevent bits of projectiles from going all over the place. Great!
But the roof also contained all the dust, which has a lot of lead in it, from the bullets. So it’s now super toxic. Also, they have to mine the sand for the bullets every now and then, or else fragments start to bounce back at the officers.
And then the bullets get trapped in that round drum on the right:
Plus there’s a whole HVAC thing to help control the toxic dust.
How much does this thing cost?
The unit is $643,800.00. The total installation will be around $800K.
So what’s the issue?
This item was on the consent agenda. This means no discussion was planned. The only reason we’re discussing it is because Amanda requested that we pull this item off the Consent Agenda.
Remember how 15 people showed up to plead with Council on whether Salvation Army or HOME Center is more deserving of $10K? And ten minutes later, we are green-lighting $643K for a bullet containment system.
It’s even worse than that: it’s already been approved. The whole $800K was buried in the CIP list that got approved in 2023. There was a workshop in June of 2023, which covered the entire CIP list, and then the CIP list got approved in September 2023, along with the rest of the budget. Today is just authorizing the actual purchase.
It just happened automatically! There was literally never any discussion about this $800K, because of the sheer number of projects being addressed. No one single person is the bad guy – this is how systems operate on auto-pilot. But the outcome is unjust.
Look: officers should not be breathing lead-dust. Of course we want them to be safe! The point is the contrast: we greenlight $800K for SMPD without noticing it, and wring our hands over $10K for the homeless.
[Council has some dull side conversations on whether or not the lead and brass can turn a profit, when scrapped for resale.]
Amanda makes her key point: This is her fourth meeting. Over those four meetings, we’ve spent $1 million on SMPD. We can afford to double the HSAB budget – the money is there. We just have to choose to do so. Even people who are paying attention – like herself! – had no idea that $800K got set aside for this TOTAL BULLET CONTAINMENT SYSTEM last summer. It just happens invisibly.
The vote:
C’mon, Lorenzo. I’m rooting for you here, but this isn’t knocking my socks off.
It’s really impossible to see from the street, but it’s this blue L-shaped building:
At least, it used to be blue. This is what the building looked like in 2019:
I’m unclear on the following order of events:
Squatters moved in and were kinda trashing the place
The owners purchased it and began demolition without getting proper permits.
In some way, we end up with it looking like this now:
Definitely not blue anymore. Not much left.
How does demolition work in San Marcos?
In order to know what’s going on, you have to know a little about demolitions of historic buildings in San Marcos.
In 2019, the old telephone building was demolished:
to make way for The Parlor apartments.
People were told 3 days ahead of demolition, and they were upset. Protests, etc.
(I personally think the little telephone building was extremely cute, and felt sad over the whole thing.)
After that, the city put a demolition ordinance in place. The ordinance builds in delay and notification, but it doesn’t really prevent anything from being demolished:
For buildings with potential historical significance, there is now a 90 day demolition delay. This gives people time to research the building and figure out if it can be moved, or saved somehow.
If someone is trying to save the building, the Historical Preservation Commission can delay for another 90 days. But that’s it. After that, the owner can go through with the demolition.
“Saving the building” means making a deal with the owner. The owner can say no.
Basically, Texas state law means the city’s hands are mostly tied. There’s usually not much way to actually prevent a demolition. You can just stall a little bit.
…
So the owner applied for demolition, and the first 90 day clock started.
Here is the historical merit, as far as we know:
So this blue building was probably barracks from Gary Air Force base? It sounds like it was moved to Dunbar by the Armstead family to rent out as apartments.
It went to the Historical Preservation Commission, and HPC decided to extend the demo delay for another 90 days.
Which brings us up to speed!
The owners are appealing the demolition extension. They’d like to tear it down now, instead of waiting until April. They plan on building a small apartment building there, maybe 4 or 8 units.
Matthew Mendoza had some useful points. First, he reached out to Ms. Armstead. Apparently her parents are the ones that brought the barracks over from Gary Air Force? He asked her about the historical significance of the building.
She very clearly told me she does not feel that this particular complex needs to be associated with that family. In the last six years that they were in possession of this, they were only able to rent out a third of the rooms there, because they were so dilapidated…She feels that that her mom and dad bought this property just for making money. She made that very clear. They didn’t purchase it for any historical significance. They bought this because they wanted to make some money off it, and that’s also why they sold it. They got so far into debt as far as being able to replace the flooring, be able to add sprinkler systems, to make it up to code, which is when they said “We can’t do this.” And again, we all know the Armstead family and how strongly respected they are in this city of San Marcos. And for them to say “hey we don’t want this property” and not wanted it associated with their name says a lot. She was insistent that there is no historical value at all to this building and no historical value at all to this property.
(lightly edited for clarity)
And then Matthew gets to the best part:
And I can tell you: I partied in that place for like ten years back in the early 2000s. I fell on my fat ass right through that floor. I’m sorry to say it, but I fell through that bathroom floor in that place, and now I’m not the smallest guy in the world, but I shouldn’t be falling through there.
Honestly, that’s the most endearing thing I’ve ever heard Matthew say. He even lowered his voice and half-whispered “fat ass”, and I melted a bit.
He went on for awhile more, but that’s the gist of it. At the end, he said, “I will sit here and say that I am a huge preserver of historical anything here in this city, but this unfortunately this is something the owners are telling me we don’t want it. And that’s the reason why I was on the fence until I spoke with her.”
Overall, I basically agree with Jane Hughson on this one:
As much as I like historical preservation, I’m going to vote to not extend and let these folks who are trying to do something with the property move ahead. If this were something with a more historic appearance and in a place that people could actually see and appreciate, but in this particular case, I’m not seeing that there’s an upside to 90 more days. There’s been 90, and you say there’s not been any activity, nobody has come in with the superman cape to save the day, so that’s why I’m going to support not extending the delay.
The vote:
The argument for voting no – Amanda and Lorenzo – is that it doesn’t hurt anything to wait three months and let the local community get their due process to save the building.
In this particular case, I’m with the pro-demolition folks.
…
Item 15: Charter Review Commission
Every four years, council appoints a committee to go over the City Charter with a fine tooth comb. This is that magical night!
First off, do any council members have any pet topics that they want the committee to discuss?
Note: none of these are guaranteed. Council is just asking the committee to discuss these items.
Jane: drop the minimum required number of council meetings from 22 per year to 20 per year.
Sometimes it gets hairy trying to have meetings working during election week and New Year’s Day – this would build in some flexibility.
Everyone likes this.
Shane Scott: You should have to be a resident for at least five years to be on council.
(Saul, Jane, and Matthew are all enthusiastic about this.)
Look, this is clearly about newbie Lorenzo Gonzalez. Seems a little rude to me!
But more importantly, it is super undemocratic. The whole point of an election is to let voters choose! If they don’t want a newbie, they don’t have to vote for that person.
I do not like this one!
Alyssa: We should have single member council districts.
This is a complicated topic. How should voters elect councilmembers? Right now, every council seat is an at-large seat. Should we carve up the city into sections, and have each section vote for its own single representative?
There are arguments for and against this.
For:
It takes fewer resources to run a campaign in a district than in the entire city. This means that more people can afford to run for council.
Historically, at-large council districts have been used to block minority groups from having representation on city councils. If a city is 30% black, for example, and if white people won’t vote for a black candidate, then a black candidate can never win a city-wide election.
Historically, single-member districts have been the solution. Lawsuits would be filed and judges would force towns to switch from at-large seats to single-member seats. (This is what happened to SMCISD in the 90s.) The idea is that you must draw minority-majority districts, and then within that district, minority groups form a majority and can elect a candidate of choice.
Against:
Single-member districts only somewhat solve the problem of underrepresented minority groups. Drawing the boundaries becomes a politically contentious issue, with people weaponizing it to work in favor of specific groups.
At times, there can be issues that pit a district against the whole city. Amanda reports this happening at the state level: representatives vote against a program that is good for the entire state, because their district doesn’t want to pay the taxes for other people to benefit. Right now, all councilmembers answer to all of San Marcos.
I’m pretty torn. I wrote a whole thing in favor of single-member districts in San Marcos, back in 2022. But I’m also sympathetic to the idea that single member districts can pit parts of the city against each other.
Council floats the idea of having a non-binding referendum on the ballot, so that they could find out what people think.
Amanda: Suppose council passes a shitty ordinance, and you’d like to petition to repeal it. Right now you have 30 days. Let’s extend this to 60 or 90 days, so that people have a little more time to organize.
Sounds great!! Would this only apply to ordinances, or also things like Chapter 380 agreements? (I’m thinking of things like the SMART Terminal/Axis developer agreement.)
5. I think Saul brings up rolling back the drinking hours in San Marcos again. It’s very hard to hear him.
Backstory: it used to be that bars closed at midnight in San Marcos. This means that all the kids got drunk here, and then at 11:30, drove up to Austin, and drank for two more hours on 6th Street. Then at 2 am, they all drove home. This always seemed like a terrible policy for keeping kids alive!
It got changed in 2009. Now bars can stay open until 2 am, and hopefully fewer kids are driving drunk on I-35. Great! (I’m sure the local bars prefer it this way, too.)
I think Saul wants to change it back to midnight? What a terrible idea! Keep kids alive. Don’t give them reasons to drive drunk.
This is not a charter item, so it will come back as a discussion item. Stay tuned.
6. Lorenzo: the language around petitions is inconsistent between initiatives and referendums.
Jane Hughson reminisces about the Great Fluoride Debacle of 2015, when the good citizens of San Marcos got a little muddled on the science, and voted to stop adding fluoride to the water.
The citizen wrote the initiative in a way that made it impossible for the city to carry out. Something like “no fluoride in the water!” when there’s some level of fluoride that occurs naturally in all water. The city had to negotiate in court with the author to get better wording. (They settled on “no added fluoride”.)
Basically it’s really difficult to write clear ordinances. This makes things tricky.
7. Amanda mentions reversing the fluoride charter amendment in passing, but no one stops and weighs in.
But guys: the ban on adding fluoride to the water is terrible. The science is really clear. We’ve got a lot of people in this town who can’t afford to see the dentist, and we could be helping save their teeth.
8. Shane: Mayor and council should move to 4 year terms, and council elections should be held in odd years, so that they’re not drowned out by presidential and governor elections.
This is about who your base is. Are your voters the old guard in town, who will reliably show up to vote when nothing else is on the ballot? These are the voters that have held the power in San Marcos since always.
Or are your voters less plugged in, because they are younger, or newer, or less well-connected, or generally low-information? These are the voters that generally don’t have power, and are less likely to show up to vote in odd years.
9. Amanda: Right now, P&Z terms are 3 years long. After two terms, you have to take a year off. Amanda proposes reducing P&Z to 2 year terms, and extending the length of the break before you can come back again. The goal is to increase turnover.
The rest of council does not buy into this. Part of the problem is that all the boards and commissions are on the same set of rules.
10. Matthew: zoom and attendance options for all boards and commissions
This gets ditched due to not being a charter issue. Also, Amanda and Alyssa are hard NOs, due to accessibility issues.
11. Amanda: Right now, P&Z gets the final vote on plats. A plat is the paperwork where a developer carves up a neighborhood, and says where the streets will go and where the boundaries of the properties will go. Amanda wants people to be able to appeal the decision to Council.
We’re kinda stuck with the current system, for a few reasons:
State law mandates 30 day approval for plats. If you add in City Council as a second appeals procedure, you’re going to run out of time.
There’s not actually any decision or judgement when it comes to platting. Legally, you’re not allowed to deny a plat, if it checks all the boxes. It’s not like zoning, where you’re allowed to make a judgement call. This is more black and white. So it doesn’t matter very much.
So this did not get traction.
12. Revoke or suspend CUP may not be appealed: remove this.
Yes: Shane, Jane, Lorenzo,
[I wrote this down in my notes, and now I can’t find it in the meeting anymore. So I can’t remember who proposed it or any other details. whoops]
Final note: These are all just suggestions for the Charter Review Commission. Nothing is binding here.
…
Item 16: Each councilmember picks their special person for the Charter Review Commission.
The picks: Michelle Burleson, Jim Garber, Rob Roark, Daniel Ayala, John Thomaides, Yancy Arevalo, Amy Meeks
I will just note that three of those – Michelle Burleson, Jim Garber, and Amy Meeks – are on P&Z. There’s nothing exactly wrong with that, but it’s most likely going to preserve the status quo.
…
Item 17: Boards and commissions
Now that Jude Prather and Mark Gleason are off council, there are a bunch of vacancies to fill. I’m not going to go through this, because it’s tedious and you can find most of the subcomittee memberships here.
I mostly just want to include this bit:
Jane: I’m going to volunteer to be on the Alcohol Committee. The reason being that I’ve got more experience with this than probably all y’all put together. I was on one once before, and I think I can provide a lot of benefit to this committee.
Shane: Plus you’re a solid drinker.
The room erupted into giggles. Jane didn’t sweat it, and just said mildly quipped “Yeah. That’s the important part.”
I mostly include it because it made me laugh. The vibe of this new council is much lighter and jokier than the last one. I’m here for it.
Last meeting of the year! New flood plain maps, giving out HSAB money, the old Dixie Cream Donuts building, and we unpack that mess in September with the housing vouchers waitlist. And Lorenzo wins the run-off election! Congrats to him.
The Council Run-off Election
Well, well, well! Lorenzo Gonzalez squeaked through!
As of Saturday, he was ahead by TWELVE VOTES. Then 40 more votes arrived in the mail this week. (They just have to be postmarked by the 14th. And you know how local San Marcos mail gets re-routed up to Austin and takes twice as long as it should. Why is that?!)
Those last 40 votes were counted on Friday. Roland would have needed to win them 26-14 in order to pull ahead. But in the end, Lorenzo prevailed, winning the election by 9 votes. Wowza. Congrats to Lorenzo!
Now it comes time to closely watch and see how he actually does up there on the dais!
Onto the meeting!
Hours 0:00 – 1:56: New flood plain maps, and a deep dive into the old Dixie Cream Donuts building, next to the railroad tracks.
Hours 1:56 – 3:47: Human Services recommends how we give out $550K in grant money, and council starts chopping. Also, what do we want the Texas Legislature to do this session?
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: What exactly happened in September, when so many people waited for hours, hoping to get housing vouchers from the Housing Authority, and no one did?
Note: when this meeting occurred, those last 40 votes were still arriving in the mail. There was a real possibility that the council seat was still open. This matters because Roland Saucedo was actually at the meeting in person, advocating for one of the HSAB applications. Hijinks ensued.
And that’s a wrap for 2024! See you all next year!
Topic 1: Two speakers (Noah Brock and Annie Donovan) unpack part of Item #16 for us.
Item #16 is about the Texas State Legislature. San Marcos lobbies the state government on various municipal issues. So we have a list of guiding principles.
Here’s one of those items on the list:
I’m going to start with quoting Noah, because this is gold. First he reads that bullet point above. Then he says:
“This is a very specific location that’s called out in this guiding document. The wording sounded familiar. So I looked up what the last principles document said, in November 2022:
“Is it the city’s goal to develop an intermodal freight facility at this location? It appears that the original idea was to support light industrial manufacturing with a connection to the airport. Now we have a heavy industrial park that can stack containers 80 ft high, with no connection to the airport.
Why does the wording keep changing to fit a developer’s current project? Isn’t a guiding principle supposed to come from the city, and not a developer?
Do you remember when the city council voted unanimously to approach the developer of this project and change the development agreement, because the people did not support it, on May 2, 2023? I would like to see a motion to remove this item from the document in its entirety. Thank you.”
So yes! In our packet of “what’s best for the city” we have a line item which is carved out specifically to be “what’s best for SMART/Axis Logistics”. Verrrrrrry interesting. Stay tuned.
Topic 2: HSAB is the Human Services Advisory Board. The city allocates $550K in grants to nonprofits, and the HSAB awards the amounts. There are a few comments here: – The chair of the HSAB pleading that this amount of money is nowhere close to the need in the community – A speaker on behalf of the Salvation Army, about how they weren’t funded as they’ve been in the past.
This will be unpacked in Item 15.
Topic 3: This place:
It’s on LBJ, at the train tracks, across from Toma Taco.
The city leases the property to Ruben Becerra, the Hays County Judge (which is not a “judge” so much as being like the mayor of Hays County.) This speaker is super angry about this!
We’ll get to the backstory on this property – Item 10 – but I still have questions.
…
Item 5: Return of Evoke Wellness, for the final $50K of Covid Money.
This last bit of Covid money is going to the mental health program partnership between SMPD and Evoke Wellness, for people needing substance abuse treatment. (The county also works with Evoke Wellness. This is part of a larger, semi-coordinated program to keep people with mental health crises and/or substance abuse out of jail.) We discussed this last time, too.
Amanda: How does this program work? Walk me through it.
She basically wants to know all three parts: 1. how do people in crisis end up at Evoke Wellness? 2. What happens when you’re there? 3. What happens after discharge?
Part 1: how do people in crisis end up at Evoke Wellness?
First, SMPD responds to a call for someone in crisis. First, if they need medical help, SMPD will take them to the hospital. (Probably Christa Rosa).
If the person is stabilized but having a mental health crisis, SMPD tries to try to find out if the person has insurance or not. If so, then we try to find a facility that accepts their insurance. They’ll take the person to the treatment facility. It might not be in San Marcos – could be Austin or San Antonio.
If they have no insurance or financial means, then once they’re stabilized, we give a mental health evaluation, and figure out what they need. Then we take the person to Evoke Wellness (for substance abuse) or Hill Country Mental Health.
Part 2: They’re at Evoke Wellness
No one from Evoke Wellness was on the line at the meeting, to talk about the services they offer there. Amanda asked if we could have a workshop from them to hear about what their services are. Everyone is on board with this.
Part 3: Discharge after Evoke Wellness
When they get to the treatment center, they start meeting with a case manager. They’re working on a discharge plan from day 1.
There are a few options for after they’re discharged:
Reconnect with safe support system, if that exists. Either the center, family, or mental health officer will give them a ride there.
Longterm treatment: may discharge to Sober Living, they may go to partial in-patient, several different places to go.
Amanda asks: What if someone has zero support services and zero resources?
Answer: Then the case manager has to get to work. Find shelters available. For example, Hill Country has an in-patient crisis stabilization unit in Kerrville. They’re in-house and have a big list of resources. We make sure there’s a bed available at a destination shelter. The case manager is going to put together a plan to try to make sure the person does not end up homeless.
…
How many people are we helping?
Total, San Marcos is putting $150K towards Evoke Wellness, and Evoke Wellness is also providing 5 scholarships this year.
Chief Standridge says that costs vary wildly, depending if the person needs in-patient or out-patient treatment. But on average, $17K/person is a reasonable estimate.
So we can ballpark this: $150K plus the 5 scholarships helps about 10-15 people per year.
Alyssa asks: What kind of metrics do we have to assess how this is working?
Answer: We’ve got tons of internal statistics, but we’re not yet coordinating well on the county level, in order to get stats on the full scope of the issue. This is one of our big goals, though.
….
Just a quick soapbox: It is a moral obligation to help the most vulnerable people in society. It does not matter if they made bad choices. Someone living on the streets with mental illness and/or substance abuse problems is being failed by society. And big problems cost a lot.
But big problems can also be prevented! If we invested more heavily in prevention – early childhood support, family support, increase the living wage, increase housing, effective addiction prevention programs – it would be cheaper than working to solve big problems once they take root, on an individual basis. (And that’s not even counting the value added to people’s lives, for not being derailed by catastrophe.)
Now, Union Pacific sold the land to San Marcos in 2013, but not the physical little building. The building was owned by Dixie Cream Donuts.
Furthermore, look at that red border – the border runs right through the building! So weird. They carved the Dixie Cream Donuts building, half on Union Pacific land, and half on San Marcos land. (We even asked them about it at the time: “why not run the border around the building? It can be all UP, or all SM. We don’t care.”
Union Pacific said, “nope. We do this all the time.” Okay then!)
At some point, Dixie Cream Donuts sold the building to Ruben Becerra. So Becerra now owns the building, and leases the land underneath it from both Union Pacific and San Marcos. He then sublets it to Las Dos Fridas.
…
No one is very excited about extending this lease to Becerra. This would just be a mini-extension, to match the sublease to Las Dos Fridas. It would expire in January 2026.
Council decides this is very thorny, what with Becerra being the Hays County Judge and all. Council says cryptic things like, “I need to be able to give an answer when my constituents ask me what on earth is going on.”
They decide to postpone until January.
What happens if we don’t renew this lease? It’s not clear! Becerra still owns the building, he could in theory move it, although it’s probably not structurally sound.
The vote:
Yes, postpone until January: Everyone except Matthew Mendoza.
No! Let’s settle this now! Matthew.
I have no idea why Matthew wanted to settle it now. I don’t even know which way he wants it to go!
…
Item 14: New flood maps.
Ok, FEMA has been working on our flood maps since the 2015 floods. The old flood maps were based on 1990 data, so this is very much needed. The new maps are called Atlas 14.
Here’s how much city land is now in a flood plain:
So about 800 new acres of San Marcos are now in the floodplain. We don’t know how many homes and businesses that is, though.
So if you’re now in the floodplain, what changes? There are two main things:
Building codes: the city has stricter ordinances if you’re building in a flood plain.
Old buildings don’t have to be retrofitted, but any new buildings or additions have to meet flood plain standards. (Like being raised off the ground.)
This isn’t actually a new change – the city has been using the Atlas-14 data since 2017 in our ordinances.
The problem is that floods are really, really expensive. So flood insurance rates for people in a flood plain are very expensive. Many people can’t afford it, and go without. This causes two more problems:
Rates go up even more for everyone else
NFIP still doesn’t have enough money to give out in case of flooding.
It’s a giant mess. It’s even worse when you think of the historical context in a place like San Marcos: wealthy people built their homes uphill, and left the downhill places for poorer neighborhoods. So it’s the people in Blanco Gardens and Victor Gardens and Dunbar that live in floodplains and have to debate flood insurance, not the University or the Historic District.
So how much are rates going up?
Amanda Rodriguez cites a study from Rice University about flood rates rising. (I think it’s this one.)
So rates in Hays County are projected to go up 137% increase. (Legally, the increase is capped at 18% per year. So over the next 5-10 years, your premiums would step up to cover the increased risk.)
Mark Gleason weighs in. He has a lot of lived experience with floods, particularly because he got hit hard in Blanco Gardens in 2015.
His main points:
The National Flood Insurance Program is broken.
San Marcos is a member. This gets us a 15% discount, but subjects us to FEMA rules about rebuilding.
Premiums are unaffordable so people go without. Then disaster hits and they can’t afford to rebuild, and sell at low prices, and fancier housing gets built. (Yes.)
If you’re in the floodplain now, you don’t have to retrofit your current home or business. But anything new, or an addition, has to conform to floodplain development standards
If you own your home outright, you’re not required to purchase flood insurance.
But everybody SHOULD get flood insurance. It’s very cheap if you’re not in the flood zone
Mark’s solution: Feds need to come in and fix the Blanco River. It needs some sort of flood control. It’s cheaper to fix the Blanco than it is to raise homes.
Jane: What about the San Marcos river and Purgatory Creek? Historically, those flood, too. It’s not just the Blanco.
Basically, no one could possibly have any good answers. Mark certainly doesn’t know what it might take to fix the Blanco. None of us know what it would take to fix the flooding. None of us know the extent to which climate change will make things worse. We are all just kind of holding our breath and hoping.
Every year, we give money to nonprofits. The HSAB sorts through the applications and gives out money.
This year, they are giving out $550K.
HSAB has a tumultuous past. In addition, they used to have a bunch of Covid money to give away in 2022 and 2023, and now they don’t. So this is a tough spot to be in.
This year, they got 37 applications for a total of $1.1 million dollars requested. So that’s also a tough spot to be in!
The HSAB Process
First, some useful guiding principles:
The whole decision process takes months.
Here’s how they evaluate the applications:
(“Council priorities” always drives me fucking nuts. It’s all about Council ego, and not what’s best for those in need.)
Here’s how HSAB ranked the applications:
(I know that’s tiny, but I think you can click on it and make it bigger.) Green is highest score, yellow is medium, pink is lowest.
Then the board discusses each application individually. They consider:
Rankings
Amount of money requested
Need in San Marcos
At the end of all that, here’s what the board recommends:
They talk a little bit about why they chose not to fund the agencies at the bottom. Some of them are hard to measure, and they wanted programs that can measure results. Some of them were not aligned with which needs the board wanted to focus on this year. Some are not local.
Summary by category:
What does Council have to say?
OH LORD, YOU GUYS, THIS WILL GET INTERESTING.
Matthew Mendoza kicks things off. He wants to remove $10K from ACCEYSS, and give it to the Salvation Army.
What is ACCEYSS?
Ok, summer camps and after school programming in Dunbar. They were awarded $20,000 to do this.
Here’s what the Salvation Army wants to do:
They were awarded no money.
Jane asks why? The answer is that one of Council’s priorities is to support locally grown organizations. Since Salvation Army isn’t local, they lost points for that. [Jane deeply sighed, “Ok.”]
Jane explains this away: this is a local chapter of the Salvation Army. They are extremely local.
Note: Roland Saucedo – the council candidate that Jane campaigned for and supports – shows up to speak on behalf of the Salvation Army. That’s how local they are!
Council talks to the Salvation Army representative for a long time, about the Salvation Army budget, and whether or not we could partner with the Salvation Army on utility assistance, which is also an ongoing conversation. Maybe we could direct some utility assistance money over to them?
The vote:
Move $10K from ACCEYSS to Salvation Army: everyone
Keep things as they are: No one
So that money is shifted over.
…
Next, Jane brings up the HOME Center.
HOME Center is these guys. They do individual case management with homeless people to get them into stable, longterm housing. It is exceedingly difficult work and they do an outstanding job.
I frankly don’t know how to sugarcoat this: the city has a history of being vindictive and retaliatory towards HOME Center. This is because historically, the city has not always been on the up-and-up regarding the homeless community, and HOME Center advocates on behalf of the homeless people who have gotten the raw end of things.
Jane proposes moving $15K from HOME Center, and giving $10K to Salvation Army, $5K to Nosotros La Gente. This would bring the Salvation Army up to $20K, and put HOME Center down to $5k. (Actually, her first proposal is to bring HOME down to zero. Matthew gently chides her to leave HOME Center with $5K.)
Keep in mind that Jane openly endorsed and campaigned for Roland Saucedo, who is loosely affiliated with the Salvation Army. He was present at Tuesday’s meeting and advocated for the Salvation Army.
I like to stick to cut-and-dried facts, but you absolutely have to know that this is a very tense topic. Jane is not a neutral party here, and her proposal feels like a shot across the bow.
Jane’s stated reason is that HOME Center is requesting money for a case manager salary. She says, “We don’t want to fund salaries, because we don’t want someone to be laid off if we don’t fund them.”
The staff member says, “In the application, we said Board can allocate up to 20% of a fulltime position or fully fund a part-time app.”
Jane argues this point, but she is wrong here. Here is the policy from January 2023:
And in the actual discussion, they settled on 20% of a fulltime position is okay, and funding a parttime position is okay.
So first, Jane is technically wrong. But more important, she’s morally wrong. The staff, Alyssa, and Amanda all point out to her that many of these applications asked for staff funding, and yet she’s singling out HOME Center to slash.
Jane: We have given a LOT of money to Southside. They are hiring. So that’s an issue that I have with HOME Center in particular.
She is referring to the $800k of Covid money that the city recently gave Southside Community Center, to implement our Homeless Action Plan. She is somehow making the case that Southside’s funding works against HOME Center?
Alyssa comes in hard: Absolutely not. We gave Southside an obscene amount of money. Initially, there were community concerns and Council concerns about Southside’s capacity. We had grace and did a trust fall. We need to extend that to HOME Center. They do boots on the ground hard work. The service and case management they do is unmatched.
She continues: “I know this is not your intention, Mayor, but I need to name this. Within different groups that do homeless outreach, there is a perception that HOME Center continues to face retaliation because they use their platform to bring to light some historic concerns and trends regarding homeless outreach in general in our community. And so I know that’s not your intention, but the community had a very thorough process with feedback and open meetings. It is not a good look, without any process or notification, to be making these moves.”
There’s some continued hectoring from Mark and Jane – they could have asked for money for different costs! They could have shown up to this meeting and defended themselves!
Amanda is furious: “This is not the only organization that asked for staff funding! So many of these organizations are funding staff! I’ll be honest: I’m losing my patience, because as someone who has volunteered with HOME center, as someone who has spoken to the clients that receive what they do: our community benefits in ways that we will never understand…. The reasons you’re giving are not strong enough for me, and this just feels wrong.”
Jane, sweetly, “Then you can vote against it!”
Amanda, coldly: “I will.”
Jane: “I just wish they’d asked for money for something else!”
Alyssa, “Well, I wish you weren’t nitpicking, but sometimes we don’t get our wishes granted. We need to meet the moment where it’s at.”
(I’m abbreviating all this hugely. Feel free to listen yourself. HSAB item starts at 2:00, and Council discussion starts at 2:19ish.)
Eventually Alyssa makes a motion to postpone. She says, “We need space for community feedback. We’re overstepping and moving things around without rhyme or reason. We need to let our neighbors know.”
The vote to postpone:
Yes: Alyssa, Amanda, Shane, Saul No: Mark, Jane, Matthew
So the postponement squeaks through. This will come back around in January.
…
Let’s zoom out for a moment on the HSAB funding:
The committee spends months on these applications. All of the agencies provide metrics and ample documentation of how they spent previous money – literally over 2000 pages of applications in the Council packet this week. Council argues passionately about whether $5000 is better spent on kids in Dunbar, or emergency funding from the Salvation Army.
Here is a list of things that received zero discussion on Tuesday:
$45,000.00 to McKimm & Creed, for Leak Detection Services
$241,036.36 to Cunningham Recreation, for various playground and outdoor fitness equipment
$573,458.79 to Nueces Power Equipment, for the purchase of a Wirtgen Asphalt Milling Machine
$2 million (annually) for McCoy Tree Surgery Company, for tree trimming
$6 million for Techline, Inc, for materials and supplies for San Marcos Electric Utility
$8.6 million for the Lower Colorado River Authority, for various goods and services concerning electrical transmission, control and substation facilities
$765 reimbursement to Tantra
Was Jane Hughson worried about us paying someone’s whole salary at McKimm & Creed? Was she worried that the company might become too dependent on us?
Did a committee meet for months, and have a scoring system? Why do we scrutinize $20,000 to HOME Center, and not $6 million to Techline, Inc?
We also give homestead exemptions of $15,000 to all homeowners, and $35,000 to seniors and people with disabilities. We have an estimated 10,295 owner-occupied homes in San Marcos. The tax rate is 60.3 cents per $100. So ballpark, we’re giving homeowners $904,500 yearly in homestead exemptions.
Why don’t we include this $900K in an application to HSAB? We could call it “Subsidies to Home-owners Program” and see if it scores higher than ACCEYSS on the evaluation criteria. We don’t think of this as charity, but we should. And we don’t even make the home owners provide metrics, measurable outcomes, nor turn in performance reports for how they spend their extra charity dollars each year. Isn’t that nice?
(And finally, I will never get sick of reminding you that we’re giving $1.2 million yearly to Kissing Tree. No metrics, no scrutiny, no gnashing of teeth. Just a nice, gated community that’s not for you.)
…
Item 16: Guiding Principles to lobby the Texas Legislature.
The Texas legislature only meets once every two years, for 140 days. This is to minimize the damage that they can do.
Or as Molly Ivins put it, “The Texas Legislature consists of 181 people who meet for 140 days every two years. This catastrophe has now occurred 63 times.”
Or, as the old joke goes: “The Texas legislature meets every two years for 140 days. Many citizens believe that the law was incorrectly transcribed and that the legislature was meant to meet for two days every 140 years.”
Anyway! San Marcos lobbies the state legislature on behalf of our interests. So we have a Guiding Principles document, to determine what we’ll lobby.
Amanda comes in with a ton of amendments. Keep in mind that she’s worked with the state legislature for the past few years. It quickly becomes clear how much expertise she’s bringing to the table.
The first batch is all under the mental health section. Here’s the original:
Amanda #1: Suggested add: Support legislative action to establish a school mental health allotment fund.
Why? The Legislature passed a School Safety Bill last time, but it doesn’t fund mental health. So this asks the state to create line item funding to address mental health funding.
Everyone loves this. The vote: 7-0
Amanda #2: Support legislative action to increase in funding for Local Mental Health Authorities (LMHAs) to provide early intervention services to prevent crises.
The vote: 7-0
Matthew Mendoza is so happy. He says, “Yes, because it will go to SMPD!!” when he casts his vote.
Amanda #3: Support legislative action to expand access to maternal mental health support throughout pregnancy and the post-partum period.
The vote: 7-0
Amanda’s on a roll! Everyone loves these!
Amanda #4: Support legislative action that expands eligibility for Medicaid.
Mark has finally had enough of this nonsense! “I’m going to be a no on this. Those are conversations for the state and federal government to have.”
He has a deep moral conviction about staying neutral on healthcare coverage. Should uninsured diabetics die for lack of insulin? Mark refuses to have an opinion, and you can’t make him!
The vote:
Yes, the state should accept Medicaid funding: Everyone but Mark No, this is none of my business: Mark
Amanda #5: Support legislative action to increase funding for permanent supportive housing programs. (Housing First programs.)
There is a fake-debate among homelessness experts. Should you provide housing and then treat the mental illness and/or substance abuse? This is Housing First. Or, should you withhold permanent housing until the person gets their issues solved? This is Treatment First.
Mark: I’m a no. Housing First isn’t always the best!
Mark is wrong. (If that link gets scrubbed under Trump, then we can use this one.) Housing First works better, and it’s more humane. It’s better all around.
The vote:
We support Housing First: Amanda, Alyssa, Jane, Shane, Saul
We don’t: Mark, Matthew
Amanda #6: There is no section on Housing in our Guiding Principles. We should have a Housing section.
In the Housing Section, Amanda recommends:
That we support legislative action that prevents unnecessary evictions
To promote housing stability and protecting tenants from undue hardships
The vote: 7-0
Mark is deeply suspicious, though.
Amanda #7: Support legislative action that seals a tenants eviction records in the event that a court rules in their favor
Mark and Matthew are both gobsmacked that this is not already the case. A tenant can win in court, but landlords can still use their eviction against them? Yes, currently.
The vote: 7-0
Mark is so suspicious! He literally says, “How is this not already the case?! WHATEVER. Yes.”
Amanda #8: Support budgetary measures to increase state funding for low income housing in Texas, especially for the most cost-burdened households that are at or below 50% of the AMI.
The vote: 7-0.
Amanda #9: Remove the whole carve-out for SMART/Axis.
Mark: Hard no. We have to increase and diversify our tax base! People don’t realize what that development could mean to this community! All the jobs! This is PRIME for development! I-10, Toll road, railroad, and airport! JOBS! JOBS! Major mistake! In 50 years, this will be the most important bullet point in this whole document!
Matthew: We just postponed due to second-guessing HSAB board and here we are, second-guessing this board! There aren’t smokestacks. This is environmental protection! Do you really want SMART/Axis to go to Caldwell county? Plus Gary Job Corp is right there.
(This is the weakest argument I’ve ever heard.)
Amanda: I’m not opposed to diversifying and growing our tax base. This is a very specific major development that arose through shady means. The entire city is not behind this development. Nowhere else in this document are we so specific.
Mark: Because it’s 3000 acres! Nowhere else in the COUNTRY has this opportunity! DC wants to hear how we’re diversifying. This is amazeballs!
The vote:
Remove the carve-out for SMART/Axis: Alyssa, Amanda Keep it: Jane, Shane, Mark, Matthew, and Saul
So that stays.
That’s all of the amendments!
…
After this, we have a series of little items:
the $2 million on tree-trimming
the $6 million to the LCRA
we officially the money back to Tantra
an appointment to the Animal Shelter Advisory Committee
You might have heard about a giant clusterfuck with vouchers and waitlists, back in September? This workshop is that. Council is attempting to figure out what the hell happened.
Background
SMHA is funded by the Housing and Urban Development Agency. (HUD). So it runs on federal dollars and doesn’t have any formal partnership with the city.
SMHA owns about 200 properties, at these sites:
as well as some individual rental houses around town. In addition, they have 251 Section 8 vouchers. This means that SMHA subsidizes your rent, so that you’re only paying according to your income.
To be eligible for a Section 8 voucher, you must earn under 30% of the median income for our region:
The median income in San Marcos is $47K/year and the poverty rate is 27%, so I’m going to ballpark that there are about 19,000 people in San Marcos who would qualify for housing assistance.
Anyway! We’ve got 451 apartments and vouchers total, to spread out over those 19,000 people. What could go wrong?
….
Naturally, there’s a super long waitlist. Once you get a voucher or an apartment, you can keep it as long as you qualify. So the waitlist moves very, very slowly.
None of this is SMHA’s fault so far. It’s basically the fault of voters and federal elected officials, who don’t properly fund HUD.
SMHA has an internal policy that everyone on the waitlist should get a voucher within 12-18 months. So they cap the waitlist. It’s very rare that they open up the waitlist and let people on.
The last time they opened up the waitlist was in 2016. They had 500 pre-applicants join the waitlist. That was too many – it took 8 years to whittle it down. Over that time, half the people dropped off the waitlist. There are still 30 people remaining, from that 2016 batch.
…
Ok, we’re getting to the September mess now.
So back in September, they finally decided to open up the waitlist. They ran this notice in the newspaper:
Nothing in that posting is faulty or misleading. But listen: it is so, so hard to get clear messages out to the public. This is not that.
Here’s how it was supposed to work:
Between Sept 9th and Sept 22nd, 250 people stop by and pick up a pre-application.
On Sept 14th, all 250 people drop off their completed pre-application, between 8:30 am-5 pm.
Those 250 people are now on the waitlist.
That’s just not a realistic plan, when it comes to guiding actual people? Organizing people to follow a game plan is really difficult! People are not good at paying attention and following detailed rules. You have to build a lot of redundancy and safeguards into systems.
Here’s what happened:
250 people did successfully pick up a pre-application.
Tons of people showed up on September 14th. They were hoping for actual vouchers. Chaos reigned and the rumor mill picked it up. People were sent away. People were incredibly frustrated and heartbroken. There was an air of chaos and disorganization.
In the end, about 180 of those original 250 got on the waitlist.
Listen: The biggest failure is having 451 subsidized housing units for 19,000 people who qualify. When you have that kind of massive scarcity, every mistake that follows takes on epic proportions. So yes, their roll-out had lots of problems, but it’s magnified because of the huge need.
…
What is Council’s take on all this?
Council takes three basic approaches:
What the hell?! How was this so poorly planned? [Jane Hughson]
Gingerly asking, “Is there any way we can help? Are there major obstacles that are preventing SMHA from running smoothly?” [Alyssa, Amanda]
There are a lot of broken elevators, broken cameras, and generally crappy living conditions in these apartments [Saul]
What the hell?! How was this so poorly planned?
Jane just cannot get over the fact that they intended to accept 250 people onto the waitlist, but then required a drop-off between 8:30-5 pm on a single Wednesday. “Why not open it up all week? You controlled the number of pre-applications that were out there! You knew for sure that you wouldn’t go over 250.”
There’s not really a good answer, no many how times Jane tries. (And she tries.)
Many towns in Texas only open their waitlist for a day.
By 3 pm, they weren’t getting people anymore.
You could also fax it in! You don’t have to come in, in person!
All of these just make Council’s head spin.
“But what if someone works? Or has childcare issues?”
“Who the hell has a fax machine in 2024?! Why can’t they email their pre-application paperwork in?”
When they ended with only 180 applications, why didn’t they give out more pre-applications to get up to 250?
Ultimately, there are not any satisfying answers. A lot of these are SMHA policy, and the speakers don’t have the power to change the policy. Only the SMHA board can change the policy.
They do plan to do things differently next time:
Give away preapplications to all
Allow online preapplications
Select people for the waitlist by lottery.
Again: Yes, the roll-out was poorly done. But the scarcity is the real problem. If we had 19,000 low-income housing options for 19,000 people, then this would be a hassle, but not a catastrophe. But 451 housing units is just crumbs.
….
“Is there any way we can help? Are there major obstacles that are preventing SMHA from running smoothly?”
Alyssa and Amanda ask variations on this several times, but never get a clear answer.
They also ask:
What’s the best way for community feedback?
What is the best way for Council and SMHA to partner? Whose lane is whose?
None of these have particularly good answers. Alyssa encourages them to put email and phone numbers on their website.
…
“There are a lot of broken elevators, broken cameras, and generally crappy living conditions in these apartments”
They have four maintenance workers for the public housing units. They try to do all repairs on vacant apartments within 30 days.
Like with everything else, they’re underfunded and understaffed. (That’s my language, not theirs. They most repeat their policies.)
…
Going forward, the plan is to have a joint meeting between City Council and the SMHA Board, probably in February, to iron all this out.
Want to talk about the big open natural area around the Hays County Courthouse, and if it should be housing? Want to get into the weeds on some very detailed decisions about mailing parking tickets, buying new Tahoes for SMPD, and more? I’ve got all your weedy deets right here, kid. Hit me up.
But first, it’s City Council Run-off Election time!
Go vote for Lorenzo Gonzalez. He’s a police officer who has some clear-headed criticisms of how police departments work. He gave solid progressive answers at the debate held by the Primrose Advocacy Council.
The other candidate is Roland Saucedo. His answers were fine, but his background is troubling. (Like I mentioned before, after my initial take, a lot of people reached out to inform me that he does not operate in good faith. Some details here, but not all.)
Why don’t you and me go vote? Let’s get Lorenzo Gonzalez across the finish line. Voting details here.
Onto the meeting!
Hours 0:00 – 2:39: There’s a lot of open space in the middle of town right now, around the Hays County Courthouse. Should it all be housing? Should Dunbar connect to Wonderworld?
Hours 2:39 – 4:58: Lots of little details. So many little details. Do you love passionate arguments over tiny little details? Then you are in for a treat. (I mean, I obviously do.)
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: Sneak peak into what Texas State is doing on campus over the next ten years.
See you next time, for the last meeting of the year!
The San Marxist 