Item 20: Updates to the Land Development Code.
We went over the proposed updates last month.
Public Comment
- We relaxed parking restrictions downtown and it is having unintended consequences – The Parlor has bought up several private parking lots.
- Several speakers talk about the development agreement notification radius again. They use that the radius needs to be “proportional to the size of the project”, and my little blogger heart swelled three sizes.
Council Discussion
One of the changes being proposed is to increase the occupancy restriction from 2 to 3 unrelated people.
(What does this mean? In San Marcos, in single-family zonings, you get only one roommate. You cannot have three unrelated people living together. This is a great way to maintain wealth segregation. And yes, this is totally unenforceable but we do it anyway.)
Matthew Mendoza starts off with a rousing cry against it.
You guys: the speech Matthew gave made my little blogger heart shrivel back down to the size of a blackened pea. I could not disagree more with him.
Matthew’s basic claim: if we let three unrelated people live together, then we’re on a slippery slope to ending single family zoning. He claims that Minneapolis tried this, and it failed so hard that they’re undoing it.
For what it’s worth, it looks like he got every detail of the Minneapolis example wrong. They ended their occupancy restrictions, and then liked it so much that they doubled down.
And then, Minneapolis did exactly what Matthew is scared of – in 2019, they were the first major city to end single-family zoning. So far it’s providing gentle, incremental densification, the way it’s supposed to. (But rents and housing prices are actually falling there for an entirely different reason – elimination of parking minimums. But yowza, we cannot handle a topic that spicy on this particularly epic-length entry.) Since then, several states and many cities have ended single-family zoning.
Matthew!! Why are you micromanaging everyone’s lifestyle? Let people have a goddamn roommate.
But also: YOU ALL JUST BEMOANED HOW EXPENSIVE TAXES ARE. LET GRANDMA RENT OUT AN ADU, FOR GOD’S SAKE! Let people live with their friends!
See how crazy-making this meeting was? The cognitive dissonance fried my wee brain.
(Alyssa does respond to Matthew, wearily: Who are we to dictate what counts as family, anyway?)
Here we go:
The vote on occupancy restrictions:
Restrict back to 2: Matthew Mendoza, Saul Gonzalez, Jane Hughson
Relax it to 3: Shane Scott, Jude Prather, Mark Gleason, Alyssa Garza
So it barely passed.
A stray thought: Jane voted 6th in line. She was a reluctant yes when this was discussed 18 months ago. I think she switched her vote mid-stream, because she could see it would pass either way. If Mark had voted after Jane, he might have switched his vote to match hers, and the whole thing might have failed.
Bottom line: It should never have taken 18 months after extensive discussion to bring this to a vote. It almost undid all that hard work.
But whatever: it passed.
…
Still on the Land Development Code: Businesses that serve alcohol have to get a Conditional Use Permit. (CUP). These get renewed by P&Z every three years. Should we separate out bars from restaurants, and only make the bars go to P&Z? Staff is proposing this, because it would save time and effort.
Jane Hughson makes a motion to say no, and stick with the current situation – all CUPs, both restaurants and bars – should go to P&Z for renewal.
The reasoning goes like this: sometimes restaurants are jerks, and are bad neighbors to nearby residents. Noise complaints aren’t addressed by the police. But at P&Z, neighbors can state their case and the restaurant owner will actually pay attention because they don’t want to lose their CUP. Then P&Z can attach conditions to the CUP – make the restaurant come back for renewal in one year instead of three, put quiet hours on the restaurant, that kind of thing.
I agree with Jane here. And sometimes you do get a lot of people from a single street, all pissed off about the same restaurant. This is a really important opportunity for community input, and we shouldn’t take this power away from community members.
As Jane puts it, “Sometimes our biggest problem child is a restaurant.”
One extra thought: It’s already a thing where bars try to pretend that they’re restaurants in order to get more relaxed treatment. If you let restaurants skip P&Z approval, even more bars will try to get reclassified as restaurants, to avoid scrutiny.
The vote:
Restaurants have to go to P&Z: Matthew Mendoza, Mark Gleason, Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzalez
Let restaurants skip all that: Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Alyssa Garza
So it passes 4-3.
Finally, Mayor Hughson has a few issues that are queued up for next time:
- In the new (poorly named) “business park” zoning, Jane just doesn’t want truck bays for 18 wheelers. Little delivery trucks are fine, but she doesn’t want semis.
The point of this new zone is to be “good neighbor industrial” (which is what I’d name it). I agree that 18 wheelers are less neighborly than delivery trucks. Staff is worried that no one will apply for this zoning if you rule out 18 wheelers.
- Notification radius for development agreements: Jane is listening. She agrees that it should be larger for larger projects.
She also wants you to know that the city already goes above and beyond the notifications that are required by state law. (Sure, kudos. But state laws are mostly written by jerks, so that’s a low bar to clear.)
At any rate, getting her on board here is a huge win, because no one else was responding.
- A month ago, Mark Gleason got really mad about some house on Sturgeon with a rooftop patio. In response, staff is proposing that rooftop patios count as a “story” if they cover 25% of the roof.
Jane wants it to be much lower: any rooftop structure counts as an extra story.
My opinion: stop being a bunch of killjoys. Let people have their rooftop patios. Quit harshing my mellow, man.
- Developers have to either donate parkland, or pay a fee. We’re updating the calculations to be more fair. If you’re only developing 4-8 lots, you can skip the fee.
Jane: Why wouldn’t people in the 4 or 8 houses use our parks? Why exempt them from park fee? I’ll bring this back next time, too.
So there are a lot of fiddly details still to hash out.
The first vote, which is not the final vote:
Yes, let’s update the code: Everyone besides Matthew
No, I’m still mad about occupancy restrictions: Matthew
…
Item 21: SMPD body cams.
We rent them from this company called Axon. The company’s prices are going up. If we renew early, we can stay at the old rates. Save a million dollars.
We have 10 drones, btw.
Alyssa: There are multiple grants available for body worn cameras. Did we seek any of these opportunities?
Chief Standridge: We do not have an Equal Employment Opportunity Plan (EEOP) so we can’t apply for grants. We are aware and trying to fix that.
This is an interesting point. It turns out that we can’t apply for a lot of federal funding until we have an EEOP. It includes any Department of Justice or SAFER grants. We are definitely taking this seriously and working on one.
The vote to re-up on the body cams:
Yes: Everyone but Alyssa
No: (no one)
Abstain: Alyssa Garza
Alyssa explains that she hasn’t reviewed our SMPD body cam policy since it was last updated, and she can’t in good conscience vote on these in the meantime.
…
Item 23: Single use container ban!!
You guys. It’s been SUCH a long meeting. This last item is so popular and great – it’s a shame that I’m just now getting to it.
If you’ll recall, five hours earlier we had boatloads of community members show up to speak in favor of banning single-use containers from the river and parks. Volunteers pull out epic tons of trash from the river as often as possible, and we just can’t keep up. It flows down river and to the gulf. It’s bad for the river itself.
So what happens tonight?
This is just the very beginning of the process. Mark Gleason and Matthew Mendoza are bringing it up to see if council is interested in moving forward with this.
So who’s in?
Mark is a hard yes.
Jude: let’s do it!
Saul: Me too!
Matthew Mendoza: I live in Rio Vista! I’m desperate to see this pass.
Alyssa: Let’s focus on the education piece, and secure the buy-in of the community. Lean on park ambassadors instead of marshalls. Best practices. No unnecessary policing of our neighbors.
Jane: I’m in to move forward.
So everyone is enthusiastic! It’ll take some time and work. I definitely want to give Mark and Matthew props for initiating the issue, though.
…
Q&A from the Press and Public
Listen, Max Baker spoke as many times as possible this evening, and he has a tendency to pack ten ideas into a three minute speech. So I’m cherry-picking, because this was entertaining.
First, Axon is the company that makes the body cams. Max accuses, “Are you all aware that there is a SUPREME COURT CASE against them for antitrust issues? Do your homework!!”
He’s right but he’s wrong: It’s exactly that – some anti-monopoly wonky lawsuit brought against them by the Federal Trade Commision. But I can’t see how that’s a big scandal.
Max also says, “This same company wants to design TASER DRONES. Lotta concerns about civil liberties in that regard.”
Max is entirely correct – they are batshit crazy and they definitely wanted to design m-f-ing taser drones. But also, shortly thereafter “Axon halts its plans for a Taser drone as 9 on ethics board resign over the project.” So at this point we can just marvel at the human capacity for inventing really, really bad ideas.
I’m not saying this company is any good. But given that they’re involved in an anti-trust lawsuit, I’m guessing we don’t have terribly many choices either way. Have fun dreaming about TASER DRONES!
The San Marxist 