Tag: arts

Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 5/5/26

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Citizen Comment:

Two people spoke:

  • Stop putting up Native American creation imagery because it’s hostile to Catholics.
  • Virginia Parker, director of the San Marcos River Foundation: yay EAHCP! They put in Dog Beach, Rio Vista, Ramon Lucio stepped entries into our park.

…

Workshop 1: Incidental Take Permits

Here is the Edward’s Aquifer:

The green part catches all the rainfall. The light blue part is all the porous caves and springs, where the aquifer is right at the surface. The dark blue part is the storage tank of the aquifer.

The water only pops up in two places: the San Marcos and Comal rivers.

In 1991, the Sierra Club sued the US Fish and Wildlife Service, for not protecting the endangered species in these rivers. They won the lawsuit, and the Edwards Aquifer Authority was created with legal status to protect the flow of these two rivers. (Here is all the history you might ever want to know, and then some.)

…

So the Edwards Aquifer Authority’s job is to keep the rivers flowing. They are required to have a plan, and the plan has to get approved by the US Fish and Wildlife department.

The old plan is going to expire in 2028, and so we’re working on the new one:

“EAHCP” stands for Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan.

…

A big part of the new plan is the Incidental Take Permit:

Incidental Take Permit means “you’re going to disturb the endangered plants and fishies, so let’s plan to do it legally”. Otherwise you could get sued.

Here’s the things you might do that would be bad for endangered species:

  • swimming and playing in the river
  • Pumping water out of the Edwards Aquifer
  • Construction things that happen alongside the river

The biggest thing is pumping water out of the aquifer.

Here’s who gets permits to pump water:

  • Edwards Aquifer Authority – Total water available is about 500,000 acre-feet of water.
  • San Antonio Water System – gets allotted about 235,000 acre-feet of water/year
  • City of San Marcos – gets about 5000
  • City of New Braunfels – about 9000
  • Texas State University – about 2000

…

Next up on the ITP: making sure recreation on the San Marcos River doesn’t hurt the protected species.

Here are the specific activities we want to allow, in the EAHCP:

Here’s the type of thing EAHCP has done, so that people can swim without destroying the river:

They built the steps on the left, and fence off the stuff in the middle.

So we used to have a barren bank, very bad for the river, on the left here:

and now we have nice steps and a protected, healthy river bank. Hooray!

San Marcos is expected to also do some work:

Basically:

  • Keep people from swimming and messing with protected parts of the river, and help people have fun in designated areas.
  • Pick up a lot of litter.
  • When the river gets super low, we have to keep the habitat from getting hammered, by limiting how much people are going in the water.

…

The plan lays out how to measure whether or not the river is healthy enough for the species to survive.

They have to measure a bunch of things:

For example, here’s some of the goals for springflow:

Average flow of the San Marcos river is 175 cfs (cubic feet per second). Right now it’s about 90 cfs. It’s been about 90 cfs for the past few years.

The absolute lowest that’s okay is 45 cfs, and only if it doesn’t stay that low for very long. I can’t imagine the river only having half as much water as it does right now.

…

What’s the plan when the river gets low?

The Edwards Aquifer makes everyone cut back on pumping during a drought:

So San Marcos normally gets 5433 acre-feet per year. But if we were in a Stage 5 drought, we’d only be allowed to use 3042 acre-feet.

So that’s the blue line at the bottom of this chart: the amount of water that we’ll always be guaranteed to get from the Edwards Aquifer.

…

I might have misunderstood this next part. I think the Edward’s Aquifer Authority is going to buy back 100K acre-feet of water, and then use that to protect the river when it gets low.

….

Here’s another goal for the river:

they measure the amount of endangered plants, and plant more good plants, and remove more bad plants.

So we also have to take care of the plants:

They measure the animals:

Listen: if I hadn’t been listening to the presentation, I might have been freaked out by the photo on the top right. Doesn’t that guy look a little spooky, laying facedown like that?

They also raise the endangered species outside of the river:

in case of some natural disaster.

…

In total, here are all the conservation measures that San Marcos and Texas State University are supposed to implement:

It’s mostly things we’ve already been doing, under the old plan. They help us fund these, too.

…

So how much does this all cost?? It is expensive! About $28-30 million/year.

Cost of water rights will probably go up over the next 30 years, to pay for all this.

What does Council say?

Josh: How much does it cost to put this plan together?
Answer: Mostly staff time. About $2 million in grant money.

Amanda: Is the city already able to hold up our end of the bargain?
Answer: Yes, we contract out a lot of the conservation measures. It’s a lot of continuation of what we’ve been doing.

Jane: You say that we need to controlling access during extremely low flow events. What do you think this will look like?
Answer: There are a lot of unknowns. Could be paid access, parking access, might depend on what locations have been degraded. River hasn’t been at 45 cfs since the 1950s.

Jane: Are the fences along the banks less ugly?
Answer: Yes, they’ve been replaced with more aesthetically pleasing black fences.

Jane: We’re trying to stop promoting the river to tourists. Like the TxDot sign on 35 advertising river recreation.
Answer: It’s hard to get them to take their signs down.

Conclusion: We’re going to have a future conversation about how to downplay the river to tourists. Especially since water is such a big topic these days.

…

Workshop #2: Water and wastewater fees

We’re going to be raising impact fees later this summer. This presentation is mostly informational.

What’s an impact fee?

Great. This presentation is specifically about water and wastewater fees.

Developers only pay impact fees new developments. Nothing existing is going to have to pay any of these fees.

Here’s the past history:

Great.

There are rules for impact fees:

…

You can only charge an impact fee in your service area. So here’s where we can charge impact fees:

and here’s where we think people are going to build:

…

In order to compute impact fee rates, they need to know two things:

  • What’s the total cost of projects that need to be paid for by impact fees?
  • How many developers are going to be sharing those costs?

Let’s take those one at a time.

First: total cost of projects:

So they know where the growth is expected to happen, and so they can map out what kinds of water and wastewater projects will need to be completed so that all the new homes and buildings can get water impact.

Second: how many developers will be sharing the costs?

You want to charge them different amounts, according to how big the development is. So we go according to meter size.

Here’s how we translate meter size into number of homes:

In other words, we assume a 10-inch meter is equivalent to 350 homes.

After doing all that conversion, here’s the total number of “homes” that we’re providing water to:

…

So that would give the city what they need to compute the new impact fee rates:

Actual proposed rate hikes will come in June and July.

Council questions:

Josh: How do we compare to neighboring cities? Are we scaring off developers?
Answer: We benchmark with neighboring cities. We’re in line. It basically depends on how recently they’ve updated their impact fees. If they’re still going on 2015 rates, we’re higher.

Amanda: Do we incentivize reducing impact? Do we have reward programs for water re-use?
Answer: We’ll take this input and get back to you.

The city has a big reclaimed water facility. It doesn’t produce drinking water, but you can use it for cooling and irrigation. We run “purple pipe” to a bunch of places, like the Kissing Tree golf course, the power plant, the downtown plants, and some parts of the university.

Shane: What if they use reclaimed water. Does the purple pipe give a discount or anything?
Answer: No, it’s an entirely separate thing. This is only clean drinking water. It means they use less water, though, so that reduces their costs.

Lorenzo: Does the university pay impact fees?
Answer: Yep.

This is important, because the university skips a lot of local taxes, in general.

…

Workshop 3: Public Art Policy

In the last 20 years, we’ve put up way more public art!

There are a lot of decisions about what gets funded and where it’s located. How should we be transparent with the public on how these decisions are made? We need a Public Arts Policy.

We already have one, but it’s old:

For awhile it was just donations. Then around 2018, we commissioned the mermaids statues and Big Wavey:

Since then, we’ve gone on to do a lot more.

Some are big, like this mural behind Industry:

and some are little, like these traffic boxes:

I really love that traffic box.

…

Here’s the program that commissions and maintains these public art pieces:

So we’re trying to lock down some details and create a more formal Arts Policy. It’s going to cover things like: how do we maintain art? How do we approve things? How do we ensure these things sustain after we’re gone?

This is the planning stage.

Council questions:

Amanda: If we’re collaborating with a private organization, how are they consulted?
Shane: What about the public?
Answer: We hold lots of meetings with the collaborators, and at least one public meeting, unless it’s a super small project.

Alyssa: It’s great that we’re getting a reputation as a creative community.

Shane: What happens if someone tags a mural?
Answer: Murals actually prevent graffiti. People are less likely to tag murals. When it happens, we remove it or work with original artist to repair the mural.

Jane: What about murals on private buildings?
Answer: We go in halvsies. They have to keep it up for at least five years.

Then we get to The Big Conversation:

Jane: For major art, I want it to come to Council. I’m so embarrassed that we omitted the rattlesnake on the big mural, but we have a bobcat.

Jane is talking about this:

You see this mural as you’re driving on LBJ from I-35 towards downtown.

It makes Jane lose her mind every time, because there is a bobcat:

which obviously represents Texas State, but there is no rattlesnake in the mural, to represent SMCISD.

Jane is so upset about this mural that she wants a line-item veto on every major art piece that comes through San Marcos, because if she’d seen this design, she’d have asked, “Where’s the rattlesnake?”

I happen to totally agree with her – that mural needs a rattlesnake. However! Council should not have a line-item veto on artwork.

Listen: Edge cases make bad policy. If you have a single unusual bad situation, it’s going to have a lot of unique aspects, and you should not write general public policy with that case in mind. (And in fact, the very next time a mural came around, Jane tried to apply the lessons of the bobcat mural standard. She tried to ban a cactus painting for being prickly. It was a total mess.)

Staff: Best practices is that council and community provide the prompt up front, and give them what to go by.
Jane: That wouldn’t have saved the rattler problem. I want to see the art before it’s too expensive or too hard to change.

Shane, Matthew: YES!

Josh: We could make a list of ten principles! Artists could be required include three of ten!

(Note: oh god, this is how you end up with bland mush.)

Jane: Nope. I want to see the art and proofread it to make sure there’s a rattlesnake in it.

Amanda: Art is super subjective. We don’t want to tie the hands of the artists.

Josh: I don’t want to weigh in on art.

…

So what went wrong with that mural? Here’s the process of how murals are designed:

  • The arts commission talks with the building owner
  • Hold public meetings, get community direction and input
  • Call for qualifications to get a style
  • Pay 2-3 artists a stipend to get designs
  • Arts commission votes on 2-3 designs. Makes minor changes.

With that mural, the artist included every single thing that was mentioned in the community meeting.

City staff: And actually, it was not a Texas State bobcat. It was an actual bobcat, like a wildlife thing.

(Note: the bobcat is literally standing in front of Old Main, so I’m pretty sure it’s a Texas State bobcat.)

…

Alyssa: No. I don’t trust our judgement. Don’t you all remember our insane Gateway Sign discussions? We have terrible instincts. Leave it to the experts on the Arts Commission.

Josh: does the arts commission weigh in on highway signs?
Answer: No, that’s graphic design. It’s art but also functional.

(Apparently all the council members have gotten a lot of phone calls from community members who hate the gateway signs.)

Jane: Do you all know WHY we even have an arts commission?
Amanda: I don’t.
Jane: It was my idea!
Shane: in 1821.
Jane: it was 1998. I was on CDB, we were asked to do a lot of art design, and I was like, “I’m not qualified. We should have a commission.” Boom, you’re welcome.

Bottom line: they’re going to probably get to micromanage the art. We’ll see what the next draft of the Arts Policy looks like.

Hours 0:00 – 1:00, 10/2/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:

Only one speaker! Max Baker, representing the San Marcos Civics Club. They held their “Reasons Why NOT to Vote”* rally last weekend.

At the rally, they had a “Worst Issues in San Marcos” ballot. Here’s how the votes shook out:
-6 for public safety
-9 for economy
-13 for transit
-30 for environment
-40 for housing

Max highlighted those results for City Council: 137 people turned out for this rally, and they definitely care about housing and the environment!

Is this rally – and these votes – representative of San Marcos? Yes and no. It’s not a statistically random sample, no. However, it’s definitely a new and different outreach pathway, so it’s probably capturing a different set of folks than the same people who always fill out the city surveys.

*The name of this rally makes my stomach hurt a little bit. Here’s the Civics Club blurb: “The San Marcos Civics Club has talked a lot about local politics since we’ve formed and we wanna recognize the very real reasons people have to not vote each election cycle with this event.”

I get that they want to amplify the voices of people that are frustrated. The problem is that these two things can both be true:
1. People have real reasons that they don’t vote.
2. Republicans in Texas spend A LOT of time and energy trying to increase the number of people that feel that way. Apathy, hopelessness, and a sense of futility work in favor of Republicans.

It’s so hard to get people to show up and vote! And so important! This whole topic gives me an ulcer. Please vote.

For the record, they did have voter registration at the event! I just feel conflicted about promoting a message of resignation and hopelessness.

….

Item 10:  VisionSMTX is inching towards the finish line!

Background

VisionSMTX is the new city comprehensive plan. Think of this as a master plan for planning & zoning: “We want this kind of development over here, but that kind of development over there.”

In 2020, Council appointed a gigantic 30 person steering committee. They met with consultants for two years, and produced the first draft of VisionSMTX. 

In January 2023, it got handed off to P&Z.  They looked at it and had a heart attack.  “What’s all this stuff about affordable housing?! What’s all this stuff about bike trails and walkability and things besides cars?!”  It was really kinda a self-satire.  They clutched pearls, got the vapors, etc.  “The historic district will be destroyed!” they cried.  

“No no!” said the steering committee and city staff. “We want the rest of San Marcos to be more like the historic district!” 

But P&Z formed a subcommittee (with the mayor) and rewrote it. Here’s their new cover page:

(not really. Sorry, it’s a slow week.) 

The new version basically amounted to: “If you got a 30 year mortgage before 2015, you’re going to LOVE how nothing is changing! Sorry everyone else.”  

Lots of people got mad, myself included.

So it was a major hot potato when it got sent over to city council, in September 2023.  

Council seemed like they were going to pass it, at the first two meetings. But at the third, they unexpectedly postponed and formed a subcommittee. The subcommittee decided to survey the community, to see how popular the P&Z changes were.  This was this past spring.  The survey results showed that the community was split. 

So since March, it’s been total radio silence.

This brings us to the present

The committee has hammered out a compromise position. They threw out some of the P&Z revisions, but also upheld a lot of them.

Two community members spoke during public comment: Gaby Moore and Diana Baker.  (Usually I don’t put private citizen names on the blog, but I think it’s instructive this time.)  What you need to know is that Moore is solidly in the camp of the original draft, and Baker is solidly in the camp of the P&Z revision. 

They both praised the new, committee version! This is kind of wild. I was prepared to hate the current draft, but it seems like the Council Committee managed to thread the needle and carve out a compromise position.  I don’t hate it!

Council still has to vote on it one more time, at the October 15th meeting. Then – after four long years – we might have a new comp plan.

…

Item 5:  The library is commissioning some stained glass windows:

(That’s a mock up on the right – it’s not made yet.)

But isn’t that going to be lovely? Everyone likes it.

Jane Hughson has a question: how come sometimes, Council allocates money for art and gets to see the design, and how come sometimes they allocate money without seeing the design?

Answer: It’s not one single process. There’s a dozen different processes, depending on where the artwork will be and who is funding it.

Jane: I’m really talking about the new mural on LBJ.  We didn’t preview the design for that one.

She means this one, as you’re heading from I-35 towards downtown:

Answer: [mumbo-jumbo about that specific funding process.]

Jane: Look, if I’d seen the design, I would have pointed out that there’s a bobcat, but there’s no rattler.  That’s a pretty big omission.  We should have had more eyes looking at the design so that someone would catch that.

She is totally right:

It is totally gorgeous! But it says “Welcome to the land of arrowheads, Texas State, Downtown, and the River, and that about sums up San Marcos!”

It should have had a rattler, and probably also some nod to Hispanic culture. Maybe on the far left, near the purple flowers.

…

Item 6: Quail Creek

Back in 2022, we bought this: 

That is Quail Creek Park.

Located here:

It used to be Quail Creek Country Club:

But the golfers of yore have all wandered off to graze in greener pastures. Golf on, my preppy brothers! Golf with the wind.

Anyway!

Now we’re hiring some engineers to draft some plans for what we might do with it. There will be lots of opportunities for community input, etc.

Mark Gleason: It would be nice to have some trails and connectivity! It’s actually very close to Walmart.

This is a great point. In other words, Quail Creek is a total pain in the ass to drive to:

But it’s not actually so far if you could bike:

Staff replied: TWINSIES! We have been thinking the same thing.

San Marcos is so carved up by rivers and railroad tracks. Both are hard for cars, but easier for bikes. Once this place gets path-connected, bikers will be able to really sail around town.

Item 15: We’re filling vacancies for three committees:
– Animal Shelter Advisory Committee
– Citizen Utility Advisory Board
– Parks and Rec Advisory Board

Last meeting, they had one applicant for the Animal Shelter committee, but they wouldn’t put that person on the committee because they’d only lived in San Marcos for two months. (I scolded Matthew Mendoza and Jane Hughson for being unwelcoming.)

They postponed so that more people could apply.

So we’re back tonight! And… no one new applied. They were in the exact same situation with the same applicant, all over again. Alyssa pointed out that the “two months” was written back in June. Now that it’s October, they’ve actually been here six months.

But Jane argues that this person hadn’t written anything about why they wanted to save the pups.

The thing is, this is the prompt on the application:

This applicant checked off three possible commissions they would be willing to serve on. So they answered that questions generally: “I want to serve the community, etc.” They didn’t give three separate answers, for each possible commission.

(Furthermore, I’ve never ever seen council nitpick the answers that people give on the application form. This is a weird time to get out the microscope.)

Anyway! It turns out they ALSO only had one applicant for the Utility Advisory board. And this person also didn’t give any detail. So in the name of fairness, they kicked both of these vacancies down the road. (I still disapprove! Give these people a chance unless you have an actual reason to look askance at them.)

If YOU would like to be on a board or commission – or the future City Hall Steering Committee – you can apply here. It’s pretty short and not too painful.

Parks and Rec has a new board member, though. That vacancy got filled.

Hours 1:39-3:02 , 6/6/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 14:  “ARP” stands for “American Rescue Plan”, ie Covid money. We’re down to our last $3 million.  We started off with $18 million. This last bit has to be spent by the end of 2024, or we have to give the remainder back. 

Here’s what staff is proposing, based on instructions from council:

The controversial part is spending $1.3 million on Uhland Road quiet district. Here’s what I think that means:  Every time the trains cross the road, they blast their horns.  If you want that to stop, you have to construct automatic traffic arms, and turn-around barriers, and some other safety things.  We’ve done this in other neighborhoods.  

Staff is trying to get the quiet zone funded through other grant money, but their most recent grant application was denied, so they stuck it here.   It’s not really connected with Covid, though.

Alyssa Garza makes the case that ARP funds should be used to address direct needs. In other words, we shouldn’t be spending $2 million on the two parks and a quiet district.  Direct needs are things like financial emergencies, mental health care, and violence prevention programs.  Alyssa focuses in on that last one: other cities are using ARP money to pilot communiy violence prevention programs. Why not us?

She’s making a clever case: all of you who are obsessed with the police and crime rates? Let’s address violence in a preventative way. Wouldn’t that be better than just being reactive? 

Objectively, Alyssa is right. (Let’s pretend I’m objective.)  Support for police departments is generally shrouded in language about public safety and rising rates of violent crime.  But police departments respond to violence. They’re reactive. That’s different from proactively working to reduce the causes of violent crime. If you claim you care about public safety, then you should support community violence prevention programs.

So Alyssa asks point blank: Can we re-arrange this money to pilot a violence prevention program?  

And…. <crickets> … the silence dragged out, and no one joined in.

The problem is that the rest of council has a semi-acceptable excuse: there really is a fixed deadline to spend this money.  Staff’s recommendations are all shovel-ready programs. So the rest of council doesn’t really have to entertain what Alyssa is saying, because momentum is on their side.

Should we be furious at them? It depends on what happens next.

Possibility 1:  

  • Alyssa brings up community violence prevention programs at the next CJR subcommittee meeting. 
  • Mayor Hughson and Shane Scott respond enthusiastically! 
  • They work up a pilot program for Council.  
  • Council enthusiastically finds some funding and moves forward with it!  

 In this case, everyone is forgiven for squirming uncomfortably and avoiding Alyssa’s proposal to use ARP funding right now.

Possibility 2: 

  • Alyssa brings up community violence prevention programs at the next CJR subcommittee meeting.
  • It gets bogged down in the slow wheels of San Marcos city government.  
  • Everyone says nice things, but also sandbags the process.   
  • It stays in the background as a nice idea, and never quite makes it into implementation for the next several years. 

In this case, City Council is making it clear: “Public safety” is a code word for “We love the police!” and they are going to prioritize SMPD over actual public safety whenever given the choice.  Vote the jerks out of office!

…

Item 18: Here’s Trace development, way down south, past the outlet malls:

That’s where Rodriguez Elementary is.

Some sort of development wants to go in here:

The Trace developers are definitely worried about something industrial right going in right behind people’s backyards.  Council decides to form a subcommittee: Jane Hughson, Matthew Mendoza, and Jude Prather are going to take care of business for ya.

…

Item 19: File this one under “victories are anticlimactic”: eight months after Max Baker loses his city council seat, they officially change the rules to allow subject matter experts to attend subcommittee meetings.  (Discussed here previously.)

This was a flashpoint with Max – he’d bring up new issues, and everyone would cock their heads like a confused golden retriever, and then ignore what he was saying. Max wanted to bring in experts to explain complex issues, so that others would take him seriously, but he couldn’t even get experts in, because no one took him seriously. (Partly, this was because Max generally had 50 issues to solve simultaneously, and everyone kind of just got woozy at the overload. But partly, they just didn’t want to consider new ideas, like the environmental impact of the SMART/Axis Terminal.)

But this can also be abused, as noted by Markeymoore and Forrest Fulkerson in the comments here. If you have councilmembers who are shmoozy with a developer, and they invite the developer to the subcommittee meeting, you may essentially have a developer writing their own agreement with the city.

…

Item 21: Ramon Lucio Park is where the baseball fields are. 

There’s also a little path to a bridge over the river, which leads to some trails.  And there are some art installations, right where you’d head from the parking lot towards the river.

More art is coming!

I am not sure where it will go, but I’m guessing with the other art installations. (Not at the falls, despite that picture.)

It’s big:

This is the winner of a nationwide call for artist submissions, and then an open house forum, and finally the arts commission picked this one.  

I didn’t find the price tag anywhere, but I generally think that arts enrich a community, and it’s worth spending money to compensate artists fairly.  

By the way: has everyone seen the kites display at the library? I love them so much. 

…

Item 20: Finally! I promised you more parking news, and you stayed for it. Here’s your big pay-off:

Things in the works:

  1. Parking Benefit Districts: this is not paid parking, but it’s a necessary pre-condition.
  1. Parking Mobility Funds: if we had paid parking, we’d need a bucket to put the revenue in.
  1. COLAs for fees

Currently, our parking tickets cost $20. They’ve been at that rate since 1974.  That’s almost 50 years! Congratulations, $20 parking tickets, you’ve had a great run.  

(Just for funsies, I went to an inflation calculator: a $20 ticket in 1974 is equivalent to a $126 ticket in 2023. What a bargain we’re getting!)

What’s proposed is having fees drift upward automatically with inflation.  In other words, every three years or so, you’d just set a new, higher fee rate to match inflation.  (COLA stands for Cost of Living Adjustments.)  

Jane Hughson cracked me up again: “This is a good idea. We should just get it automated, so we don’t have to update it every… fifty years.”

Here’s why I like this so much:  First, Jane says that we do this already with other fees that the city charges.  Second, we do this with certain city employees.  In other words, we are already well-versed in COLAs!

Which brings me to my hobbyhorse: Automatic COLAs for minimum wage.  San Marcos does have a minimum wage of $15/hour for any business receiving tax breaks from the city.  LET’S PEG IT TO INFLATION! If we can do this for parking tickets and city employees, surely we understand why this is so important for our neighbors earning minimum wage.

But wait! There’s more!

  1. An amnesty/incentive program. Suppose you rack up a huge amount in fines. Maybe you even got booted. This is the program that will make it easier for you to settle up with the city – like signing up for volunteer hours instead of owing money, for example.

Everyone loves this idea. I love this idea, too.

5. Dynamic pricing. In other words, a little sign that says “Violators will be fined $20-$60” or whatever. So if you park illegally in off-peak hours, it’s not so bad. If you park illegally in the middle of Sights & Sounds, you get charged more.

(They claimed this was about deterrence, but surely it’s about making more money. It’s hard to see how dynamic pricing would make a dent in the decision-making of the shmuck clogging up Sights & Sounds, in the middle of four different choir performances.)

All of these will be fine-tuned before Council officially votes on them. But it’s clear: our widdle San Marcos is gwowing up.

Hours 2:00 – 3:00

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 22 Next up: a little light industrial area by the airport:

169 acres, to be exact. They want to zone it to be Light Industrial.

Reminds me of the new park land we bought a few weeks ago:

Eh, I guess it’s not that close. There’s a lot of space out there.

(Also, did you notice that google maps has renamed I-35 “Monarch Highway”? That’s so cute! much better than “Smushed Monarch Highway”.)

Shane Scott asks about flight paths, and the developer concedes that the property is right in the line of Runway 3. But also says that the FAA and the airport both gave this development a thumbs up. I have no idea about such things.

The vote:
Yes: Mayor Hughson, Saul Gonzalez, Jude Prather, Alyssa Garza, Mark Gleason
No: Shane Scott, Max Baker

So it will come to pass.

…..

Item 23: Alternative Compliance for Cut-and-Fill

Cut-and-fill means that you are trying to build on a rocky, uneven slope.  But your building needs a flat foundation.  So you decide, “What is the average elevation of this portion?”

Once you know your average elevation, you have some bumpy parts that stick up, and some sunken parts that are too low.  So you shave down your bumpy parts and fill in your sunken parts. Ta-da, cut and fill!

The problem is that if you’re on a hillside, you may have to cut out a lot of dirt and move a lot of dirt, and this is going to affect how water runs down the hill.  What’s worse is if you’re on a hill in a flood zone.  You may have heard, but San Marcos has a flooding problem.

So these folks are trying to develop here, in that blue region:

on the corner of Rattler Road and East McCarty.  

They’re allowed to cut-and-fill up to 8 feet, but they want to cut and fill up to 13 feet. And it’s in a flood zone.

But the real reason that I’m interested in this case is because I’m invested in this case, where the water will run downhill to Redwood – also a cut-and-fill ordinance that is coming up soon. I was intently watching this case, to read the tea leaves on the next one.  

Max Baker suggests that the developer could offer up some environmentally friendly perks to take the sting out of this flood risk? The developer responds that he’s under the gun to get this approved tonight, and he’d love to try.

So the motion gets tabled for a few hours. The developer goes off with the engineer. They come back with a compromise:

  • They’ll put a 20,000 gallon rain barrel on each 150,000 square foot building, and use it towards irrigation.
  • They’ll reduce impervious cover from 80% to 60%
  • They’ll do some water quality treatment thing that I didn’t follow.

It gets approved unanimously now.

These are good, environmentally, but as a harbinger for the Redwood case, I didn’t like it. For the Redwood case, I want them to deny it altogether.

….

Item 15: Art purchases

The Arts commission is purchasing four sculptures for our San Marcos sculpture garden.  I didn’t realize we had a sculpture garden!

Then I looked it up, and realized I did realize it after all! 

It’s in between the library and the Activity Center, on Hopkins. (Photo yoinked from the city page.)

Anyway, here are the sculptures we’re buying:

Very nice! They’re not local artists, unfortunately. Sometimes we commission art, sometimes we purchase existing art on the cheap. Or so I’m told.