Tag: budget

Hours 0:00 – 1:19, 8/18/26

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

Citizen Comment:

I’m combining citizen comment from the 6 pm meeting and the 3 pm workshops:

  • Cottonwood Creek is very far from all polling stations. There is not good public transit to get to any of them. 123 is dangerous and insufficient.
  • Under the new impact fees, a small 1200 sq ft house, built on an infill lot in town will be $40K more expensive. That’s a big burden.*
  • San Marcos Civics Club meets the 4th Monday of the month, at Tantra. Candidates should look for the SMCC questionnaire coming out soon. Also their 3rd annual “Reasons Not to Vote” rally will be coming up.**
  • City government is facing public perception that they only do the right thing when tons of people show up and get mad, and that they don’t do a good job of promoting things that are important to the people. The Ethics Inquiries are not widely promoted. Consider ramping up your outreach and social media messaging.
  • The streetlights in Allenwood are chronically out. It’s not clear if the city is responsible or if the San Marcos Housing Authority is responsible, but residents are getting the runaround. In addition, the roads are awful, to the point where it impedes mobility for wheelchair users.

* This is true, but this is why Council needs to offer rebates for infill, affordable housing, and green housing. They have said they will do this! They just need to follow through.

** The name of the rally still hurts my soul.

…

Item 19: The Downtown TIRZ

Background

TIRZ stands for “Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone”.  

Basically, a TIRZ is a way to pull money from the General Fund to one specific part of town.  The goal is to make that part of town so much more economically vibrant that it generates way more tax dollars for the General Fund after the TIRZ ends.  

TIRZes have a specific time frame.  During the TIRZ, the city budget doesn’t get extra money.  The pay-off should be after the TIRZ ends.

We have a Downtown TIRZ, which covers this territory:

It started in 2011 and it runs until 2028. 

The details are a little weedy, but basically: take all the property tax dollars paid by all the businesses and properties in that green region. Those tax dollars get split up into two buckets:

  1. How much downtown properties paid in taxes in 2011.  This is called the base value. The base value is $87 million, which is about $560,000 in tax dollars. The city keeps all the tax dollars from this bucket.
  2. How much more valuable the downtown properties have gotten, since 2011. 
    Since 2011, the downtown properties have grown by about $300 million.  That yields about $2 million in property taxes. 
    • This city gives 70% of this bucket back to the Downtown TIRZ.  So the Downtown TIRZ gets about $1.3 million from the city this year.
    • The city keeps about $700,000 from this bucket.

Here’s the actual amounts, split between the city and the Downtown TIRZ in the past few years:

The Downtown TIRZ is supposed to spend their chunk on things that make the downtown a great place to visit, so you’ll want to go and spend money and enjoy it.

It all ends in 2028 – the two buckets get combined again and everything goes to the city.

Are TIRZes good or bad?

  • The good: Everyone gets to enjoy a nicer downtown!  After 2028, the general fund will get a boost!
  • The bad:  The downtown gets their tax dollars before it gets to the General Fund.  They get that $1.1 million, no matter what.  When department budgets are dwindling, Council can’t revisit this $1.1 million and divy it up differently.

My $0.02: I’m fine with the Downtown TIRZ. A happy, vibrant downtown benefits everyone. However, Kissing Tree is also a TIRZ, and it’s gated off.  They get $1.7 million from the city this year, and it only benefits Kissing Tree residents. 

That is more than double what we spend on the entire HSAB fund for social services!  Just for those residents.  It’s wild.

Remember: we subsidize Kissing Tree residents far more than anyone else in town.

….

Anyway, back to downtown.  Here’s what they’re going to do this year:

They’ll pay to do things like scrape the gum:

And light the trees:

And spruce up the intersections:

Everyone is fine with this!

….

There’s a bit of a digression to talk about this tree:

and how it’s tearing up that sidewalk.  It’s right by mini-Target, by campus. 

It’ll cost about $300K to build a usable sidewalk around it. 

Question: Can Texas State kick in some money to help with that price tag?
Answer: Maybe! We’ll talk to them.

Either way, the tree will be preserved.  Everyone loves giant oak trees.

…..

Item 9:  Scooters

We used to have rental scooters around town.  Back in June 2025, Spin Scooters decided to break up with us, and they up and left San Marcos.

But now we have a new company!   Meet Lime Scooters:

Look how happy you’ll be. They’ll be here on September 1st.

You’ll be able to use them in all the green zones (plus Texas State):

But the pink bits are off-limits.  No scooters in the river.

…

Will these be affordable?

Potentially! There is a low-income discount:  anyone who qualifies gets 50% off all their rides.  

How do you qualify? It’s a little murky. Basically, they want to piggyback on other programs that have already figured out who qualifies:

We don’t have a reduced utility program, and everybody in SMCISD gets free lunch.  So this will take some tinkering.

Jane: “By golly, let’s vote on this!”

The vote: 7-0.  Everyone is excited.

Look out! September 1st, they should be here.

…

Item 14:  EMS coverage

Here’s the county lines around Hays:

So Guadalupe is directly below, where two corners meet.

Zooming in on that region:

That is San Marcos plus the northern corner of Guadalupe county.

Historically, San Marcos-Hays County EMS has covered that little yellow bit, because we’ve got better road access to it than anyone else, and so it’s safest for residents. But of course, San Marcos-Hays County EMS was dissolved last year because they had decided to unionize.

Today: Can the newly forming San Marcos EMS cover that little region?

Answer: Yes.

Great.

….

Item 20: School zones

Every school has its school zones, where you have to drop your speed when the light are flashing.  We all know this. 

Currently, here’s our school zone hours: 

  • 7:00 am to 8:30 am  
  • 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm 

That’s supposed to cover all schools.  However, Blanco Vista and SMHS don’t really fit:

Blanco Vista isn’t in SMCISD, but it is in the city limits.  

So your new school zone hours are going to be:

  • 6:30 am to 9:00 am 
  • 2:30 pm to 5:00 pm   

This is good, because we want to keep kids safe.  It is also annoying, because school zones are annoying.  

But hey, keeping kids alive is more important than not being annoyed.  

…

Items 22-23: the budget

There’s an odd state law that requires cities to vote on a tax rate cap, before they vote on the actual tax rate.  They will vote on the tax rate on September 15th.  Today is just setting the upper bound.

Almost the whole 3 pm workshop is about the budget.  By the 6 pm meeting, everything has been decided.

Decision:  the tax rate will be ¢65.15 or lower. That’s the rate from last year.

…

However, there will most likely be utility rate increases – this is most of what they discussed at the 3 pm workshops.

If this passes, an average house would pay about $7 more per month.

They’ll vote on these increases in September.

….

My $0.02: We haven’t increased department budgets to keep up with inflation in 3 years. That means we’re in the hole about $740K this year, and $1.4 million over 3 years. (Amanda asks about this, specifically.)

I’d prefer to see very small yearly increases, rather than walloping taxpayers with giant increases every now and then.

….

Item 25: Bobcat Shuttle Service

Did you know that everyone in San Marcos can ride the Bobcat Shuttle for free? I did not!

Here’s a quick snapshot of the bus routes:

All the route and time info is here:  Bobcat Shuttle : Texas State University 

You can hop from city buses back and forth to Bobcat buses.

Here are the city routes:

And here’s the link: Local Bus Information | City of San Marcos, TX .

It sure would be nice to have one unified map!

…

Let’s talk about transit for a sec:

A good transit system has frequent buses and routes that cover the whole town. If the bus comes once per hour, and you have to make a transfer to a second bus to get to work, it’s going to eat up hours of your day. A bad transit system has incomplete coverage and infrequent buses.

But there’s a chicken-and-egg problem with transit:

  • If you have a bad transit system, you won’t have many riders. So you want to build a good transit system.
  • Good transit systems are expensive. You need funding. You qualify for federal funding by having lots of riders.

See the problem? Riders won’t show up until you’ve got a great system, but you can’t get a great system until the riders show up.

This is why we’ve merged with Texas State – they’ve got high ridership, and so this helps us qualify for more funding.

There is huge need in San Marcos for a great system. Owning a car is really expensive – like 12K per year. If we can build it, a great transit system would improve the lives of many people in town.

This is how cities address affordability: they can’t lower car prices, but they can provide cheaper alternatives.

Also!! A great bus system is great for everyone:

When you replace cars with buses, you have much less traffic. Your roads will last longer. You can get places faster.

People who still need to drive their cars are better off. People who ride bikes are better off. The city is better off.

Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 8/18/26

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

(I combined the 3 pm public comment with the 6 pm public comment, in the first post.)

…

Workshop 1: The Budget

It is heavy-duty budget season!

July 25th is the day that City staff finds out exactly how much tax money we’ve received. This is the first concrete draft budget that Council has looked at.

The whole thing has to be approved in the next month.

….

Background: How’s San Marcos these days?

We’re growing:

That’s probably an undercount. The city thinks we’re more like 90,000 people.

The next two slides take some thinking.

First: here’s how much the median home owner pays in property taxes to the city:

So home owners pay more here than elsewhere.

However:

the city spends less per resident.

This is because the deck is stacked against San Marcos in some key ways. The only one they mention in this presentation is this, though:

We’ve got more tax-exempt land than most places, in part because the university is our central giant business, but they don’t pay taxes.

You all know about inflation. The city knows about it, too:

However, the city has not increased taxes to keep up with inflation. Department budgets have not changed in 3 years. This year it would take roughly $720K extra to keep up with inflation.

Note: Apparently many cities are going through layoffs and budget cuts right now. Here’s a bunch of major Texas cities with budget problems and here’s a story on Kyle.

We’ve been extremely careful in watching our pennies, and we are weathering this economy in a stable way. So that’s nice.

…

Onto the budget!

There are actually many different independent budgets. Each one has its own revenue and spending. So the Electric Fund is funded by utility rates and impact fees, the General Fund is funded by taxes, etc.

Here’s all of them:

The big one is the General Fund. Here’s how it gets funded:

Here’s some of the major pressures on it:

SMPD gets 5% raises and SMFD gets 4.5% raises, because they’re allowed to unionize. That’s what collective bargaining gets you. Texas outlaws all other public unions besides those, though. So everyone else gets 3% raises. It’s not the slightest bit fair.

…

Also: this year we had our first round of Participatory Budgeting experiment. The public was asked to submit project ideas, and then we all got to vote on which projects to fund.

Here’s how it went:

Lorenzo: That’s pretty sad. Only 117 votes?
Answer: It was our first rodeo! We’ll promote the projects and try to drum up more enthusiasm.

…

Back to the General Fund:

Basically, things are less grim than they feared.

We’re going to have a balanced budget this year, without raising taxes:

Graph showing that between 2027 and 2030, our budget should be between the minimal scenario revenue and the moderate scenario revenue.

For the next three years, we might be on track to have a balanced budget, or we might get unlucky.

…

The new property tax rate

Last year, staff presented three different options to Council. Councilmembers all said which one they liked best. City staff went and finalized a bunch of details before the final vote. Then half the council members changed their mind at the last second.

This year, staff did not outline multiple options. They just said, “Hey, we don’t need to raise taxes to make the budget work.”

[Note: I actually think this is a bad idea. The budget is not working! We are not keeping up with inflation. Small incremental tax hikes are much better than having to occasionally lob giant tax hikes at the public.]

Anyway:

Note on inflation and how Governor Abbott is going to try to screw over cities further next session.

They’re not actually voting on the tax rate until September. But for planning purposes, staff is working with the same tax rate as last year, ¢65.15. On a $300,000 house, that works out to about $1,950.

Question: Is Council okay with setting a maximum tax rate of ¢65.15? This is the tax rate we had last year.

Everyone is on board with this.

Note: This is just the tax rate cap. They’re just saying the tax rate won’t be higher than ¢65.15.

…

The rest of the budget

The other major funds are:

  • Hotel Tax Fund: this has to be used for tourism and museums and things like that.
  • Community Enhancement Fund: there’s a big discussion about streetlights, maintenance, and who keeps track of where they should be located.
  • Electric Utility Fund: your electricity supplier
  • Water and wastewater: ie all your water hook-ups to get fresh water and get your toilet waste taken away and cleaned
  • Stormwater: major projects to keep people’s homes from flooding when it rains
  • Resource Recovery Fund: think trash and recycling
  • Transit Fund: busses and bike lanes
  • Airport Fund: airport repair, etc.

Council has a big discussion about a lot of rate hikes:

Chart showing proposed increases of each utility service or fee.

So the average house would see a $7 increase in their monthly bills.

They spend a lot of time discussing the pros and cons of all these. For example:

The Community Benefit Charge: It’s supposed to cover streetlights and lighting. How do we decide which streets need streetlights? Who is being neglected because the city hasn’t installed their lights or repaired them?

The Electric fund: our bond rating got downgraded a few years ago. This means that it costs more for us to borrow money to complete electric projects. Can we fix this by raising rates? Would it save tax payers money in the long run? (Yes, it would.)

The Stormwater fund: it shows a $0 increase above, but that’s a mistake. This fall, they’re going to roll out a stormwater master plan, and it’s going to take a rate hike to pay for projects in the Wallace Addition and Bishop/Belvin. We have a lot of flooding in town, just from ordinary thunderstorms.

Bottom line: pretty much everyone says “Yes” to all of these increases (besides Alyssa), but none of this is binding yet. They’re just telling staff that they’re open to these rate increases.

……

Workshop 2: EMS billing

San Marcos-Hays County EMS was dissolved last year because they had decided to unionize. Police and fire can unionize, and private EMS companies can unionize. But the leaders in Hays County lost their fucking minds when their private EMS company decided to unionize. So Kyle and Dripping Springs each split off to form their own EMS, and San Marcos was stuck holding the bag.

We’re in the process of building San Marcos EMS now.

Question: How much should EMS charge for a ride?

The problem – of course – is that health care is super broken in the US. How do you set rates that are fair within a system that is a hopeless mess?

In San Marcos:

  • About half of all EMS calls are Medicare patients
  • About 6-12% more calls are from people covered by Medicaid
  • About 25% have insurance
  • The rest – 13%-19% – don’t have insurance and can’t really pay.

You make up astronomical rates in order to get payments from insurance. Then insurance covers some of it, or none of it, and then people are screwed over for the rest. It’s a terrible system.

(Obviously socialized healthcare is the way to go. You get much better health outcomes in your country for far cheaper.)

San Marcos cannot solve the real, underlying problem.

Here is what’s proposed:

Lots of acronyms without explanation. ALS 2 is recommended to be $2700 ALS Emergency, non-emergency, $1800. BLS: 1600. Plus some smaller charges, like oxygen, disposables, and blood administration.

The city can offer certain discounts to help residents:

How the City Can Protect its Residents: Resident Discount, Private-pay discount, charity care/TASPP

The other major problem is the time crunch. If Council doesn’t approve something, then the new San Marcos EMS can’t start the paperwork with insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid, so that they can be operating by October 1st.

Everyone on Council was uncomfortable with everything. It was super rushed – they only had 15 minutes – and no one had time to thoroughly understand the details.

They did give it the thumbs up, so that EMS could make its October 1st opening deadline, but the plan is to revisit these decisions.

We’ll see!

Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 5/19/26

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Citizen comment:

One speaker!

Max Baker, organizer of the San Marcos Civics Club:  We’ve been trying to put people on boards and commissions.  But the city website has a lot of problems, like:
– HSAB still says they meet Thursdays, 2 months out of the year. They actually meet Wednesdays for longer than 2 months.
– the online calendar is out of date on library meetings
– etc
SMCC told the city about these details back in 2023, and they’re all still problems.

(Max is definitely a details guy.)

…

Workshop 1: Budget Update

Next year’s budget it chugging along! It takes 9 months to birth a budget:

Our little budget fetus is about 15 weeks old. It’s the size of an avocado.

…

So how does it look?

First off, San Marcos is growing:

Our budget has not been keeping up.

This is city spending, per resident:

So we’ve had a balanced budget, but we’re stretched more thin than we were a few years ago.

…

What’s the revenue look like next year?

We get two kinds of revenue:

  • Sales tax
  • Property tax

First, sales tax:

We’re up from last year.

  • Last year, we pulled in $ 22,567,986 by this point in the year.
  • This year, we’re at $23,442,368 so far.

That’s great! It’s also good because we had about 1.5 years of declining sales tax, so it’s good that we’ve finally turned that around.

I am just including this slide because I was entertained by how incomprehensible it is.

It’s labeled as though it’s giving you the revenue from sales tax, smoothed out using a 12-month average. But that’s not at all what the graph is showing! The graph is showing the rate of change of the rolling average.

[Confidential to staff: Yes, yes, you’re very smart. But listen: no one wants to wrestle with the graph of the first derivative! Put the calculus away, and just show the actual rolling 12-month average sales tax graph.]

On to property tax:

Property tax value also went up! But in an uneven way.

First, home values went down a little:

But there were new builds, as well:

About 2/3 of the new value comes from residential, and the other 1/3 comes from commercial.

So the total of all property value in San Marcos went up a little bit. Not a ton, but a bit.

So we’re also expecting a little more in property taxes.

….

Overall, we think we’ll have a little more breathing room than we thought we would.

Here’s where we thought we were at, back in February:

And here’s how the revenues and expenses have changed since then:

and here are the main budget cuts that we have made:

And there are still a lot of unfunded needs:

As they say, nothing is more expensive than deferred maintenance.

But nevertheless, all of that taken together probably gets us to a balanced budget this year:

This is great!

Now, there’s still a looming $7.5 million budget hole in 2028. But we’d be okay in 2027.

…

Amanda: Our fees increase incrementally every year, so that no one ever gets walloped with a giant increase. Have we applied that philosophy to property taxes? A very small, regular increase, to prevent a giant shock?
Answer: No one answers this.

Although no one said so at the meeting, the answer is definitely “yes, we should”.

Tax hikes are unpopular! People are broke. Better not to shock everyone’s budget, but still show fiscal responsibility.

…

Also in the first workshop, two small unrelated items:

Announcement #1: Community Benefit Charge:

If you’re getting a city utility bill, there’s going to be a new line, called the “Community Benefit” fee:

You’re not paying any extra money, though. It used to be rolled into the other charges, and now they’re itemizing it.

Then when you go to look at the details, you can see exactly what’s getting covered in the Community Benefit charge:

Council is worried about how to explain this on a large scale so that no one freaks out. How about a mailer inside of all the envelopes?

Josh: How about a QR code right on the bill?
Answer: Maybe!

Announcement #2: Destination services:

The Convention and Visitor Bureau wants to rebrand itself as “Visit San Marcos!”

Great. Done.

…

Workshop 2: Utility assistance program

This has been going on a LONG time:

…

Basically, we had a pretty big utility assistance program, but people kept getting disconnected anyway. And we had $45K in customer donations, but it never got spent helping people.

This is mostly because we were giving the money to Community Action. Community Action is a great organization! But not a good fit for utility assistance.

The problem is that Community Action gets federal money, which means they require a massive amount of paperwork from anyone who needs assistance. They can get you help in six weeks, but by then, your power might have gotten shut off a month ago.

Alyssa was really the driving force in reforming this. She kept drilling down into the details over and over again, until the program finally started to work.

So here are some of the changes:

In 2025, council decided to give money to three more groups for utility assistance:

This is great! Those other three organizations can hand out money on a quick turnaround.

A bunch more improvements:

Great.

Here’s some nitty-gritty on how it gets administered:

Basically everyone who needs help gets sent somewhere.

When they do have to disconnect utilities, they avoid certain situations:

So they’re not going to disconnect you in extreme heat, cold, or right before a weekend.

…

How many people are we helping?

So people are still getting disconnected, even with utility assistance.

and here’s how many people are getting assistance:

Here’s a snapshot of the demographics of who gets assistance:

Seniors are struggling more, recently.

Communities in Schools connects directly with students. One problem is that some SMCISD students live outside of city boundaries, and so their families aren’t eligible for this money.

(Community Action and Salvation Army have other sources of funding to help these families, but it may come with more paperwork.)

….

Here’s the biggest problem:

They’re blowing through their money.

At the start of FY2026:

  • BCL gave out all their money, $21K, in 28 days. They got an extra $11K in March, and gave it out in 18 days.
  • Salvation Army gave out $45K in 4 months.
  • Communities in Schools can only assist students that are enrolled in their program, and can’t help in the summer.
  • Community Action is SUPER slow, because of the whole Federal paperwork deal.

On the one hand, you WANT agencies to give out the money. You don’t want agencies to hoard funds like a dragon. But there’s also nowhere to go for help right now, and it’s about to be summer.

Fundamentally, we probably need to quadruple the funding in this program.

Listen: La Cima has an $86.7 million bond. Their city services are locked down and guaranteed for 30 years. Kissing Tree gets $1.8 million every year, and they are entirely gated off! They could be spending that money on Day-Glo lights for golf carts, and we wouldn’t know.

If it takes $400K to keep the lights on for all residents, doesn’t that seem do-able?

…

Since that’s not on the table, Staff had a few suggestions to try to stretch the money a little further.

Discussion item 1: How often can people get assistance?

Right now, they help you with back payments and the current bill, so you can get help on 3 months worth of bills. You can also come back four times a year.

Council settles on saying that if you get help with back payments on your, it uses up two of your instances. Soevery year, you can come in four times if you just need help with 1 month payment, or you can come in twice a year with a big backlog.

Discussion item 2: What counts as hardship?

They’re looking at this slide:

Jane doesn’t like the “children under 5” category. Specifically, if you’re not low income, why should you get assistance just because you have small children?

Everyone explains that it’s about childcare costs. You may have a pretty good job, but if you’re paying for daycare on two kids, you still can’t make ends meet.

Jane says she understands, but what about actually wealthy people with babies cashing in on this?

Everyone: That’s not a thing. That just never happens. Wealthy people with small children do not spend half a day at the Salvation Army to get help with their electric bill.

Jane wants more time to think about this one.

Discussion item 3: Reconnection fees and late fees

Right now, the utility assistance covers reconnection fees and late fees. However, this money is going in a circle: the city is giving money to the utility assistance program, to pay for the city reconnection fees and late fees.

Can the city just waive these fees altogether, in these cases? It would help the utility assistance dollars stretch further.

Everyone likes this.

Discussion item 4: Do we want to split the pot of money into four chunks for each season?

That way the agencies would have a little money available at the start of each season, instead of running out for the whole year.

I think council was interested, but wanted more info.

…

Basically, this will all come around for an official vote in a future meeting.

Hours 0:00-3:05, 3/31/26

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:

Two people spoke at 3 pm, and four at 6 pm.

Major points:

  • The solid rocket motor testing at the Freeman Ranch, over the Edward’s aquifer recharge zone, is an environmental nightmare. The ground is super porous and it will go straight into our drinking water. Can Council write a letter to the Board of Regents opposing this location, please? (Comment from director of SMRF, the San Marcos River Foundation.)
  • San Marcos Civics Club is holding its Speak Up! event at Eddie Durham Park*
  • Can we get updates on a lot of ongoing issues, like the license plate readers, Cape’s Dam, and EMS?
  • We should partner with Texas State to put on events that bring people downtown
  • Can we hold a town hall to address concerns about the apartment complex going in on Valley Street?

*sadly this blog doesn’t come out in time for this to be helpful. It was yesterday.

….

Items 1-3: Q1 finances

Every three months, the city reviews its finances. This one covers October, November, and December 2025.

Here’s the summary by fund:

Green is good! Great. Investments are fine, the audit came back clean, everything is on track.

The budget is still very lean this year. This report just means that we’re sticking with the plan – nothing new is going wrong.

No one had questions.

…

Item 4: North of Campus Neighborhood Area Plan

Area plans are supposed to help a neighborhood nail down its unique flavor, so that it doesn’t get overrun by change, while maybe also solving some of its problems.

Here’s the first batch of neighborhood area plans:

(Read ’em all here, if you want.)

So far we’ve seen Blanco Gardens and Downtown. I think Dunbar/Heritage is getting split into two plans?

Today’s Plan: North of Campus Area

They mean this patch here:

zooming in:

It’s actually pretty small. It’s a very Texas-State-feeling part of San Marcos – the Pie Society strip mall, a few bars and restaurants up LBJ, and a lot of small apartment complexes and rental houses.

…

They did a lot of outreach to get community input:

It’s very hard for cities to connect with residents and get their input. People are busy. But this is what it looks like when a city is trying.

…

Here’s what people like about this neighborhood:

Seems about right to me.

Here’s what maybe needs some love:

…

What does Council say?

Basically nothing! Today was just an update. This will get a public hearing on April 21st, and get a vote on May 5th

They thank staff for working so hard on all of this.

…

Item 14: A wee little annexation

TX-DOT owns a little building here:

They’re on septic. They want to be annexed into the city so that they can tie into city sewer.

Everyone says okay.

…

Item 15: Budget Policy Statement

The city takes most of the year to build the budget for the next year:

The big problem is that we don’t know how much tax revenue we’re getting until pretty late in the game. So there are a lot of guard rails to help city staff plan the budget in the meantime.

March is Budget Policy time. This is where Council sets a bunch of expectations for staff to work with.

It doesn’t always work! Council can change their mind later on, and send the budget into a tizzy. Like last year, when this happened ten minutes from the final vote:

We were heading to the right until literally the last ten minutes of a ten month process! It killed me a teeny bit. But at least city staff tried their best.

So now we’re here:

That $4 million red X is the consequence of the decision to drive off the left cliff in the diagram above.

Here’s what we’ve had to do so far:

(Those slides are all from the February budget policy workshop.)

Ok, but wait. How much were we going to have to raise taxes on home owners? Like hundreds of dollars or something?

No. Look at the last two columns:

Listen: if you ever hear someone complaining about the city, chime in and say, “Yes! Can you believe how short-staffed they are? Why won’t Council pass a structurally balanced budget?”

Thank you for being my propaganda army.

…

Everybody on council wishes real hard that we could bring in more businesses and get more sales tax revenue from businesses!

Unfortunately, that solution does not yet exist, today in 2026. We’ve got some lines in the water, but in the meantime, we are squeezing our city dry. (Also, if your “economic incentive program” amounts to giant tax breaks, you haven’t solved your problem. You’ve just subsidized private business interests.)

…

Also! Also! The $4 million shortfall does not include EMS. The EMS conversation will happen next week.

Stay tuned!

…

So! What does Council want to do for 2027?

  • They want to plan on the same property tax rate of 65.15¢ as last year
  • They are not going to cut HSAB, which is basically our funding for social services. That is good.
  • Some little details about debt ratios and covering the expenses, since Covid money is ending
  • A whole lot of thoughts and prayers about tax revenue coming in higher than expected. In other words, half our policy is “fingers crossed!”

It is true that San Marcos home owners are often broke, and the thought of $10 extra per month can add one more layer of stress to a dangerously thin budget. This is not a wealthy city. People do not generally have a lot of savings to cover a health care emergency or car crash.

My $.02: Yes, we should raise property taxes slightly. I know San Marcos is broke, but the brokest people of San Marcos do not own their own homes, and the wealthiest parts of San Marcos can afford $10/month.

…

Items 16-17: Downtown TIRZ

“TIRZ” stands for Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone.

Here’s the Downtown TIRZ:

Boundary of the Downtown Tirz goes from Texas State, through downtown, to I-35

It started back in 2011. The TIRZ is a tax deal where the city splits the downtown tax revenue with them. They get to keep part of their tax revenue, provided they spend it on making the downtown nicer. The idea is that then the downtown gets a boost, and starts bringing in more tax revenue, and everyone wins.

The TIRZ is almost over. It ends in December 2027. So now they’re just wiggling little final details here and there, like these from December.

This time they’re asking for $200,000, to pay for a Downtown Alley Lighting Plan.

Sure, why not. Everyone says ok.

…

Item 18: Paid Parking at the Lion’s Club

Last year, we started charging for parking at the Lion’s Club parking lot.

It’s free for residents, but you have to go register here. Registration is kind of finicky, because you have to upload photo ID. (You can do it in person if you hate that kind of thing.)

Last summer, it was just residents to the city limits who got in free.

Now it’s going to be free for everyone in pink, blue and purple:

Discussed here, back in January. (The purple is really pink+blue.)

The idea is that this roughly includes everyone who feels like they’re part of the San Marcos community, even if they don’t pay city taxes.

Everyone is fine with this.

…

Item 19: Fees for Rio Vista Park

Last summer, we fenced off the park around the falls:

It was temporary fencing, just for the summer.

The reason we did that was because of crowds:

and litter:

It just destroys your river. You only get one river. Plus there were tons of medical and public safety emergencies – lots of drunk people and heat stroke.

Furthermore, it was super expensive to staff the parks. Most of the visitors were from out-of-town, but they didn’t shop at San Marcos stores or eat at the restaurants. San Marcos residents avoided the river, because it was so packed and unpleasant.

Hence the fence. This is Summer 2025:

Last year, it was still free to get in. City staff just stopped everyone at the entrance on holidays and weekends, and went over the park rules about no alcohol, no single-use containers, etc.

Anecdotally, it helped a lot! I liked this solution a lot: fenced-but-free.

…

They decided last fall to keep the fence. But in light of the huge hole in our budget and all, they also decided to start charging admission for out-of-towners.

Here’s the plan:

Note: we’re still just talking about holidays and weekends over the summer.

What this means is if you want to use the park on weekends or holidays, you will have to register or somehow prove your residency, just like with the parking at the Lion’s Club. (SIGH.)

Here’s what you’ll need:

They’re going to try to use software that automatically registers everybody who registered for parking already, and everyone who has an Activity Center pass.

….

What does council say?

Amanda: How does it work? What if a resident just shows up empty-handed?
Answer: They can just show their ID at the gate! This summer is all about educating people.

Matthew: I live in Rio Vista neighborhood! At the neighborhood meeting in 2023, everyone said they wanted fees and they wanted to use their phone for entrance.

Amanda: I know people on Field Street who never heard about this meeting.

Note: People from Rio Vista have actually reached out to me, your friendly marxist blogger! I was told that they actually prefer not to bring their phone to the river. Their suggestion was an entry bracelet or something that can be worn while swimming.

…

I am 90% sure that the Free Zone for the park is going to match up with the Free Zone from the Lion’s Club parking:

In other words, if you live in San Marcos, or if you’re 78666, or if you are zoned for SMCISD, you’re in the Free Zone.

The vote on the fee plan:

Amanda wants to keep the river free for everyone, because it’s a natural resource that should belong to everyone.

(I agree. Fenced-but-free!)

My other concern is that the profit won’t actually materialize, after you subtract out the cost of the computer software needed to register everyone and accept payments, and the cost of employee time. In other words, I’m not convinced this will even pay for itself.

…

Item 22: Making council meetings more efficient

A few weeks ago, the Data Center city council meeting ran until 2:30 am. The very next meeting, Jane proposed cutting Citizen Comment time slots from 3 minutes to 1 minute. She got raked across the coals, including by moi, because it’s a terrible suggestion and the timing looked really bad. It looked retaliatory, for sure.

Nevertheless, it’s true that Council doesn’t work well at 2:30 am. No one is at their best.

Today is supposed to be more open-ended: does anyone have any great ideas for making meetings shorter?

Shane: We used to cap Citizen Comment at 30 minutes.
Answer: Legally, we can’t do that anymore. The state passed a Citizen Comment law since then.

They go in circles for awhile about trying to limit opportunities to speak. Right now there’s:

  • Citizen comment: anyone can speak on anything, at 6 pm
  • Public Hearings: some items have a built-in comment period, throughout the meeting.
  • Q&A after the meeting

Lorenzo: Maybe we can keep someone from speaking three times on the same topic?
Answer: you’re going to chase your own tail trying to police that. You’re going to waste more time arguing with private citizens about whether or not they were on topic or not. That is a fool’s errand.

Amanda: First off, this has only happened three times or so in the past few years. It’s not actually happening all the time. Second, there’s a rule on the books already – should a meeting need to be continued on another business day, you can do that. We can already do that, if we want.
Jane: There’s some technicalities around that.
Amanda: Sure.

Note: as far as I can tell, this is the only real solution. If it’s 11 pm and there’s hours of meeting left to go, cut it off and pick up again at 6 pm on Wednesday.

Alyssa: There is a ton of research out there, if anyone can do a lit review.
Jane: Maybe our city clerk can hit up the message board for city clerks in Texas, and see how other cities handle it?

Lorenzo: What if we stop having staff presentations altogether? If we just all read the packet ahead of time, we don’t need staff to go over it at the meeting.
Answer: The presentations are for the public, so that they can follow what’s going on.

…

They go in circles for about an hour. In the end, they decide to crowdsource the issue.

If YOU know how to make their meetings shorter, they’d like you to fill them in, please and thank you very much.

Hours 0:00 – 3:25, 9/16/25

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment

Just three speakers!  Topics:

Nobody spoke about the budget.  Nobody complained about the tax increases being too high.  Can we just put a pin in this for later? Let’s remember this.

…

Item 22:  Hazmat Routes

You know these guys. You love these guys:

via

They live in our lovely river, but nowhere else.  It could be catastrophic if there was a crash on I-35 over the river, and a bunch of hazardous chemical were spilled into their habitat.

What cities do in this situation is design a Hazmat route.  Here’s what we’re proposing:

That’s along FM 150.  So you’d cross the San Marcos river well east of the habitats of those critters, if you were driving a truck full of something nasty.  

A few notes: 

  • This is only for thru-traffic.  If you’re delivering somewhere in San Marcos, you can head there.
  • This is going to be a long process – it’s gotta go back and forth with TxDOT a few times.

Kind of related: remember when the train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, with all those toxic chemicals?

(and they tried to get away with paying each person something like $5 for wrecking their lives?)

We also have a lot of trains crossing our river! I doubt you can re-route trains quite so easily, but I wonder how environmentalists think about and plan for these risks.

…

Items 23-25: The budget and the tax rate

I’m sorry, this item gave me whiplash. This went off the rails. Not the good kind of roller coaster.

We need a fair amount of backstory. The drama on Tuesday unfolded so fast that it will be incoherent, unless I bring you up to speed, first.

I’ll try to keep it zippy!

Background

First thing to know: we have not raised our property tax rate since 2022.

Politicians genuinely hate raising taxes. Politicians like being liked! They like being elected. I don’t know where we got this idea* that they rub their palms together and cackle about bilking tax-payers, but they don’t do this.

Polititians love short-term easy decisions that make tax-payers happy! Raising taxes is the opposite of that.

*It was Reagan.

….

The budget process

1. January-February-March-etc: they hold some giant two day workshops. Councilmembers develop their priorities for the next year. More workshops. Very slow grind.

2. May-June: The first tax estimates come in: we’re in a budget crisis. We can squeak by this year, but we’re facing a budget cliff.

Roughly speaking, this is the problem::

  1.  Our sales tax is down.
  2. Our property taxes are down (because home prices are declining)
  3. Inflation is up.
  4. We are as lean as we can go. We have already cut $100K from departments.
  5. We’ve got some big expenses looming. (Covid money ending.)
  6. The state government is trying to strangle cities.

Here’s the graphic that they showed:

It was a big Come to Jesus Moment. Council went to Jesus. They gave direction that they wanted to go with the Structurally Balanced side of that road.

Bottom line: “Structurally Balanced” means raising the tax rate modestly over multiple years (instead of one big crazy future hike.) All of council agrees with it.

…

June: In June, staff comes back with some Structurally Balanced tax estimates:

Here’s what everyone said they wanted:

Ok, great! We’re getting somewhere.

….

August: Real numbers come in. (June was just an estimate.)

By law, council has to set their own upper bound, in August. It’s a weird quirk.

So staff lays out these possibilities:

That’s in the afternoon, at the 3 pm workshop.

Matthew and Saul are all willing to go up to the middle column now. The gravity of the budget crisis is evident to everyone.

The Lorenzo changes things up: “I want to go between 64.96¢ and 70.49¢. I want to land on the number that gives a $0 in that last row. Neither a surplus or a deficit forecast for 2027.”

Everyone is intrigued by this idea. He ends up successfully getting everyone on board with this! What careful planning we’re demonstrating!

That night, at the 6 pm meeting, they vote on the tax rate cap:

So we go with the 67.69¢.

This is our max: the final tax rate cannot be higher than 67.69¢.

…

Note: In August, they also mentioned something about an EMS study. It was another potential looming cost. This is going to become a very big deal, but it didn’t jump out at me then.

…

Last background month! We’re now to September.

September 2nd meeting:

They take the first official vote on the 67.69¢ tax rate:

Now you’re all caught up.

…..

This current meeting!

Here are the three scenarios we need to have on hand for this conversation:

What would home owners actually have to pay, if we raised rates in these categories?

    • The “No New Revenue” rate, 62.78¢. (NNR)  Your tax bill goes up $0.
    • Option 1: 64.96¢.   The average tax bill goes up $72.46 per year, or $6.03 per month.
    • Option 2: 67.69¢.  The average tax bill goes up $163.21 per year, or $13.60 per month.

….

Sidenote: Those amounts are based on an average house worth $347,398 (and $15K homestead exemption).

Most of San Marcos rents! But for those who own homes, home value varies a lot.

Here’s the average home price by neighborhood in San Marcos:

The last column is the monthly increase, under 67.69¢.

That chart has 40 rows. Only the last eight rows exceed the average home value! (Blanco Vista and Kissing Tree are both way bigger than they seem.)

Point being: most neighborhoods would see smaller tax increases under these proposed hikes.

….

The public outcry:

<crickets> …. <crickets>

There was none. I mean, I’m sure Council got phone calls. But I’ve watched these meetings for years now – compared to other years, this is nothing.

Two people showed up to talk about the budget during the public hearing. They both made nuanced points about the good parts and bad parts of the budget.

Contrast that to the big items this year:

  • Tantra: 50+ speakers showed up.
  • Gaza: 125+ speakers showed up (on the day of the vote)
  • Data Center: 14 speakers on August 19th

People show up when they’re mad. This ain’t that. This is the wind at Council’s back, pushing them to make the responsible decision.

And then suddenly there is a big curve ball: EMS.

This came up in August, but it was uncertain. Now it’s certain.

So, there’s something called the San Marcos-Hays EMS.  This is who you call when you need an ambulance.  It used to be a lot bigger.  Over time, Wimberly left. Then Buda left. Then Dripping Springs left.

Since the August meeting, it’s now official: Kyle and everyone else is leaving.  So it’s just San Marcos.   (The cheese stands alone)

This is a big problem! We don’t have a city-run EMS.  We’ve got fire fighters who may be trained paramedics, but they can’t take you to the hospital. We don’t have ambulances. We don’t have a facility to store ambulances.  We don’t have the infrastructure to run another department.  But because this partnership is dissolving, we’re going to have to figure it out. 

This is going to cost about $2 million.  This will start getting dealt with in November.

Bottom line: those tax rates all need to increase by about 2.4¢ to cover EMS.

Council Discussion

Council asked a lot of questions about the EMS situation. They also were asking about Council priorities – what had to be decided on Tuesday, and what stayed flexible. It was not a very long conversation.

Lorenzo keeps acting squirrelly.

Finally he says: “I don’t like the 67.96¢ anymore. The State legislature didn’t pass those crazy laws after all. We should have more economic development! I want to go back to 64.96¢.”

Well, shit!

A few things:

1. “Economic Development”: I erased a big rant about this.  It’s not a magic bullet.

This is like walking out onto the NFL sideline and telling the coach, “Hey, you should try to score more points than the other team! Then you’d win!”   City staff really does know about economic development. They are always working on it. 

2. The State legislature will definitely do Abbott’s bidding, and Abbott wants those laws. If not 2025, then watch for them in the next session.

3. The 64.96¢ isn’t an option anymore! It doesn’t include EMS!

The City Manager responds with alarm: “Please, please don’t go with 64.96¢. That won’t even cover EMS. We need at least 65.15¢.”

….

Listen: The rug just got yanked, suddenly, and nobody is prepared. Nobody has the presence of mind to call a time-out and fix all the numbers.

Confusion reigns.

But look how helpful I am! I made you a chart!

This is what I think city staff would have put on a slide, if anyone had had advance warning.

Here’s my theory: I think Lorenzo intended to go from the 3rd row to the 2nd row. After all, he said “64.96¢”. But since we now have an EMS crisis, he didn’t even cover the first row. The City Manager is asking him to please at least get to 65.15¢ in the first row.

…

We’ve suddenly rolled back all the careful planning for the budget cliff. The budget cliff is still coming! We still did all the planning! But instead, we’re about to do this:

I’m especially flabbergasted because Lorenzo himself was the one who promoted the 67.69¢. He literally picked it to leave us with a balanced budget in 2027 – neither deficit, nor surplus.

Saul, Shane, and Matthew were always barely willing to make a difficult vote. So as soon as Lorenzo gives them permission, the coalition for 67.69¢ falls apart.

The vote on 67.69¢:

Yeah.

Let’s have a time lapse:

(Technically, I’m combining two separate votes in that last column. First they vote for 67.69, and it fails. Then separately, they vote for 62.78+EMS. This passes.)

Anyway, that’s the whole saga! We had the wind at our backs, and instead we shot ourselves in the foot. It felt like someone whispered in Lorenzo’s ear at the 11th hour, and the whole thing unraveled.

Honestly, I’m kinda salty about the whole thing. .

…

One final note: $2 million for EMS is a bargain. That works out to 2 cents. By law, Emergency services is allowed to charge a special tax of up to 10 cents. That would bring in about $8.5 million.

Nobody is trying to shake down tax payers here. They just want an ambulance to show up when your grandmother has a heart attack.

…

Item 4-5: Electric and Water Rates.

The next discussion is even goofier, if you can believe it. (But less destructive.)

Your electric bill comes in two parts:

  1. a base rate ($14.31)
  2. a usage rate. (Based on how much electricity you use.)

Usage rates are going up. (Discussed here before.)

Shane Scott speaks up:”Let’s just cancel the base rate!” He wants everyone’s bill automatically lower by $14.31 every month.

You can practically hear staff’s hearts all plummet through the floor as they try to grapple with this craziness. (Ten minutes ago, we tanked the budget over whether to raise taxes by $6 or $12 a month. And now Shane wants to throw away another $14?!)

The director of utilities tactfully explains that this would blow a $3.4 million hole in our budget. The city manager gently mentions our bond rating and debt service coverage. We could get sued by bond holders.

Shane withdraws his motion.

The vote on electric rates:

A little later, we have the vote on water rates:

So water rates will not change.

Listen: this is totally irresponsible. This is lazy, wishful thinking.

The city is not turning a profit on water. You have to cover the costs of your water utility.

If you want to save people money on their water bill, help them conserve water. Don’t strangle the department that has to fix the pipes and pay for the water rights.

…

That’s basically it for the meeting. I know barely anyone cares, but this was super big bullshit.

Hours 0:00 – 3:04, 9/2/25

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:

Some years, citizens get fired up and angry at the budget. This year was the opposite. 

Three people spoke on the budget, and they all praised council for increasing funding for the Human Services Advisory Board. (HSAB grants are how the city helps fund all the nonprofits that help kids, people in poverty, vets, the elderly, etc.)

It was pretty short!

…

Items 20-24:  Welcome to our $371 million dollar budget!

It’s budget time. So far this year, we’ve talked about this back in February, then in March, again in May, and just now in August.

We’ve got several big problems:

  1. We’re bringing in less money from sales tax and property tax.

Sales tax peaked in 2023 and hasn’t returned.  Property taxes have been flat.  Actually, they’ve gone down on existing properties, but they’ve been propped up by new builds. 

(That slide is from the May workshop.)

  1. Everything is more expensive, due to inflation.

City department budgets were flat two years ago. This past year, they cut $100K collectively.  But everything is getting more expensive, so even holding things flat means you have less purchasing power.

  1. The State Legislature is always, always trying to knee-cap cities:

This past session it was House Bill 73 and Senate Bill 10. City staff implied that there were a few others. All of these cap city spending or cap city taxes.

The concept isn’t new – we already have caps on tax hikes. But these new bills are brutal in their severity.

All these bills were still up in the air last Tuesday, when city council met. Since then, the special legislative session ended. As far as I can tell, none of these passed? But Abbott could always call a 3rd session, or these could return in 2027. So this is always looming.

(Can you imagine how relaxing it would be if our state government wasn’t so hellbent on wrecking Texas cities?)

  1. We have three HFCs that are tied up in the courts

“HFC” stands for Housing Finance Corporations. These didn’t used to be scams, but they’ve become scams. For example: “Pissed” city leaders urge lawmakers to close loophole costing millions in tax revenue.

We’ve got three apartment complexes that were purchased by HFCs, and we’re losing about $630K in tax revenue from them.  (They’re tied up in lawsuit appeals, so it could still tip our way.)

  1. There are almost $4 million worth of new expenses that are kicking in soon, over the next 1-2 years.

The ones with the checkmarks were funded from federal Covid money, which is expiring next year.

6. Council also has some new priorities, which cost money:

  • Increasing HSAB funding by $200,000
  • Increased funding for tenants rights and tenants legal support
  • Start an office of community support and resource navigation.
  • Probably more that I’m not remembering

…

Because of all this, tax rates are going up.  

I mean, we don’t really have a choice, right?

If you own a $365K house, here’s how it affects you:

If you own a smaller house – say $200K assessed value – then you’d pay like so:

Last year: $1,115 per year, or $93 per month.
This year: $1,252 per year, or $104 per month.

We always focus on home owners here, because it’s easy to compute their tax costs. But rest assured: landlords cover the cost of property taxes by passing it on to their renters.

My back-of-envelope estimate is that an average renter pays about half as much: $640 per year towards their landlord’s property tax bill, or $53 per month.

…

Your utilities are also going up:

This is mostly based on CUAB recommendations. CUAB stands for Citizens Utility Advisory Boards.

Basically, if you don’t raise rates for a few years, you’ll get into a big financial hole. Then your bond ratings tank and it gets more expensive to borrow money, and you’re in even bigger financial trouble. To get out of it, you’d have to shock the community with a giant rate hike in order to right the ship.

So the idea is that it’s better to nudge prices up gently every year, to keep up with inflation. CUAB is the one that has to figure out the new rates. This is that.

…

One funny detail: The goal is to stabilize our budget going forward. We could have scrapped by this year, but then we’d be in a big hole next year. The looming expenses will kick in, and we’d have to raise taxes a lot, or cut services significantly, to handle it.

But because we’re being proactive, we actually will have $1.3 million of breathing room in the meantime.

City staff went to all the city departments, and asked about things like deferred maintenance projects or other ongoing needs. Here’s some possible ways to spend the money:

Council will hash this out later.

…

Finally: my yearly rant about taxes.

Taxes are good! This is how we can take care of our most vulnerable people. This is how we can solve collective problems, without someone trying to extract as much profit as possible.

The problem is that our taxes are not fair:

via

So yes: you do kind of pay way too much in taxes! We don’t charge our rich Texans their fair share.

(Also we Texans turn down about $5 billion every year by refusing to expand medicaid, and we turned down $350 million this past summer that would feed hungry kids.

We do this in order to prove a point, or something? The feds can’t force us to feed our kids or get medical care when we’re sick, dadgum. )

Look, the United States can easily afford for every person to have a safe home, free healthcare, and access to healthy food and education.  This country is extremely wealthy.  Collectively, we can afford to lift everyone out of basic poverty.  We just choose not to. 

Stop electing Republicans who are in the pocket of extremely wealthy Texans.

(End of rant. Thanks for playing along!)

…

Back to council. How did the votes go?

The votes on the tax rate and the budget:

Lock step, baby!

The votes on the various utility funds:

That’s the votes on Trash & Recycling rates, Electric Utility rates, and Water and Wastewater rates, respectively.

The votes are dropping like flies! Hang in there, councilmembers! They all passed, though.

….

Saul asked some interesting questions about our water supply:

Q: How much water do we sell to other cities?
A: We sell to Kyle, to County Line, and we sell reclaimed water to Buda and others.

(I don’t know what “County Line” means, and when I try to google it, I just get a bunch of BBQ joints and maps of counties. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

[Updated to add: “County Line” is this special utility district. Thanks to Diane Insley for filling me in!]

Q: What happens if they don’t use the water they buy?
A: Our contracts are “50% take or pay”. So they have to pay for at least 50% of the water we’re setting aside for them, even if they don’t use it.

Q: Were we ever in danger of not getting our water from Canyon Lake, due to drought?
A: Both Canyon and Edwards water have tiered drought restrictions. So we always get some water, but they require us to use less water during a drought. Before the July floods, Canyon Lake was Stage 4, but now they’re Stage 1. Edwards Aquifer has been between Stages 3 – 5 all year long. They’re about to tip into Stage 5 again.

…

That’s all of the budget talk for today! The official, final vote will be at the September 16th meeting.

…

Item 25: Just one tiny rezoning!

This is 906 Chesnut St:

From the street, it looks like so:

That’s if you’re standing on Chesnut looking back towards LBJ. Vie Lofts is on the right.

The developer wants to rezone it as CD-4. (Basically, they want to tear it down and build small apartments.)

Everyone says okay.

I’m okay letting it go, as long as we take a moment to pour one out for this wallpaper:

I mean:

I’m not made of stone, people.

Also this window treatment:

and maybe this pink trim:

ok, and this built-in cabinetry and paneling:

I take it back! Save this house! It’s too pure for this fallen world.

(Enjoy the full zillow tour here.)

…

Honestly, the rest of the meeting was pretty zippy. A few quick items:

  • postponing the new development by the high school
  • funding for the new water reclamation facility
  • funding for CARTS
  • setting some dates for elections and city council meetings next year.

On CARTS, we pay about $621K, and the federal and state government combined pay about $1.75 million. That’s great! Redistribution of wealth at work.

…

One last detail: Executive Session

Finally, Council discussed this land in executive session:

That’s the land that SMCISD is selling. There’s a big petition and movement in the community for the city to purchase the land, so that they can dedicate it towards the Mexican American and Indigenous Heritage and Cultural District.

So I don’t know what happened in Executive Session (obviously), but afterwards Council directed city staff to ask SMCISD about delaying the deadline of the sale, so that the city can get its ducks in a row.

I think it all comes down to timing:

  • Can the city speed up enough to meet SMCISD’s budget crisis timeline?
  • Can SMCISD delay long enough to accommodate the city’s due diligence and bureaucracy?

Also Hays county is somewhere in the mix, too. We’ll find out the details eventually!

Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 8/19/25

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

It’s budget season!

Here’s where we are in the timeline:

We finally know how much money we’re bringing in.

We get money from property taxes and sales taxes. In San Marcos, we’re split pretty much 50-50 between the two:

Our property tax rate is on the higher side:

but there are some reasons for that. For example, we have a lot of tax-exempt property:

particularly because of the university. You can also see Gary Job Corp on that map.

(I always love it when I-35 is drawn East-West.)

and also because our houses are less expensive on average:

and so we struggle to pull in enough revenue.

So altogether, here’s what an average person pays in property taxes:

Now if you’re a homeowner, your property taxes also include schools, county, and special roads district. So it’s actually significantly higher than that. That’s just the part that goes to the city.

Here’s how we’re doing on property taxes:

Sales tax dropped in 2024, and it sent our budget into a bit of a tailspin. But it’s working its way back up.

Here’s how much the city spends on each person, on average:

hey, that’s a bargain! $4610 worth of services for only $1798. That’s a better ROI than you’ll get from the stock market.

The state legislature is always trying to make everything harder on the cities:

because they are counterproductive twats.

Here’s how it might affect San Marcos:

…

Basically, we’re in a bind. Here’s two slides describing how we’re caught between a rock and a hard place:

and

Especially notice those last two bullets. The city is growing and inflation has been a big thing, and yet budgets have gotten leaner. This is not sustainable.

This brings us up to the current scenario. Council has a few choices:

The first one is the “No-New-Revenue” rate. If the property tax rate is 62.78¢, the average home owner will pay the same amount they paid last year.

In this case, we can skate by this year, and we’d be in the hole next year.

The next one is the Long-Term Focused Tax Rate, 64.96¢. This helps us keep up with inflation and growing expenses, over a longer term.

The last one is the Voter-Approval tax rate, 70.47¢. They’d never go for this, but in theory it would bring in a lot of money. Anything above 70.47¢ requires voter approval at the ballot box.

[Note: The (3,000,000) isn’t what it looks like. That’s balanced out by the “Fund balance in excess of 25%” line above.]

So what would we do, if we did the middle column of 64.96¢?

It helps plan for some financial cliffs that are looming.

…

Here’s these three tax rates, again:

The middle column buys us an extra year to plan for the looming financial cliffs. (The rate in the third column ends up lasting until 2028, and then we go to the red.)

…

You can probably see why that $9 million from the data center looks so helpful. 😦

…

What does Council think?

Matthew: I’m going with the ¢64.96 rate.
Saul: Same. ¢64.96

Lorenzo: If we go with the middle rate, will we be up this same creek without a paddle next year?
Answer: Somewhat. The state legislature may hamstring us, yes.

Lorenzo: How does tax rates translate into revenue?
Answer: Every penny brings in about $800K.

Lorenzo: I want to pick a number that heads off a projected shortfall in 2027. So I think roughly ¢67-68.

Jane: How would we prioritize cuts?
Answer: It starts getting into staff, because we’re already so lean. That’s a very hard question.

Alyssa: I don’t know.. I don’t have enough information. I’m willing to lean towards the middle, but I need to know more about how we’d use that extra $1.9 million.
Answer: Council can prioritize how we use it.
Alyssa: Then I can go with the ¢64.96.

Amanda: The legislative damage is highly likely to pass this session. Originally I was thinking ¢64.96, but I’m open to Lorenzo’s point about the ¢68. I want to take care of our employees, and making sure we’re keeping up there.

Jane: I want to see the impact on the average voter.

Amanda: Is it possible to see the impact on the average renter, as well?

Jane: I’m comfortable with the ¢64.96. And if the state school tax exemption passes in November, I can go a little higher.

They all want to see the impact on the average tax bill. How much would these new rates increase the tax bill?

…

They also discuss utility rates and other things. The Citizens Utility Advisory Board is recommending a 4% increase in electric rates.

This is slightly less of an increase than last year. Everyone’s goal is to make slow, smooth, steady increases, because otherwise after a few years, you have to make a giant leap in rate increases. That’s much worse

Commercial rates are a little higher:

Similar for the water/wastewater rates, trash, and community enhancement.

Here’s how all these increases will impact your monthly bill:

…

I’m returning to the end of the regular meeting, now. In Item 19, city staff returned with the answers to some of the questions above.

  1. How would these different property tax rates affect someone’s property tax bill?

64.96¢: additional $6/month
67.69¢: additional $12/month
68.17¢: additional $14/month

2. A list of possible things Council could fund with the extra money. (I couldn’t get a clear screenshot of this, though.)

Everyone has to weigh in with their max tax rate.
67.69¢: Alyssa, Matthew, Saul, Jane
68.17¢: Shane, Lorenzo, (but not committing. Just to give wiggle room), Amanda (same)

So! 67.69¢ is the upper bound this year for the tax rate.

This comes back on September 2nd!

Bonus! 3 pm workshops

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Workshops are big this week! There are two:

  1. Fiscal budget bad news for next year
  2. Riverfront parks update, for summer 2025

But First, Workshop Citizen Comment:

Just three speakers. Two in favor of fencing off the river and making people enter through managed entry points.

  1. San Marcos River Foundation Director (Virginia Parker): Last weekend, the river was busier than it ever was last year. Water quality is terrible. Lots of glass and styrofoam and trash. Swimmers get stuck under tubes. It’s dangerous. Residents don’t want to go on the summer weekends, but we’re the ones who pay. Monday’s clean up was worse than any clean up last year. In favor of managed access.
  2. Board member of Eyes of the San Marcos River. In favor of managed access. Clean up does not suffice. You must protect the river. Monday morning clean up was astonishing. Piles of glass bottles in water. Cypress trees stuffed full of cans. Trashed tubes everywhere.

One speaker on the AI Data Center:

3. The data center is going to be built, either way! Your choice is this: is the data center going to be in the city – regulated and taxed – or the county – unregulated, untaxed? It’s not bitcoin mining, it’s LEED Certified!

Workshop 1: Fiscal Budget Bad News

Council starts planning the budget in January, and passes the budget at the end of September. Here’s where we are in the process:

So we’re starting to get our tax revenue estimates, but we don’t know for sure how much we’ll get until the end of July.

Ok… this sounds worrisome…

Ruh-roh, Shaggy.

So basically, our budget is has a big gash in it? We can balance the budget with a bandaid, or we can stitch it up and balance the budget responsibly.

One hurts a lot more, but leaves us in better shape longterm. Yikes.

Good lord. It is not a good sign when your city staff is putting melodramatic visuals like this in your slide show.

…

So why is this happening?!

Ok, so property values are falling from their post-Covid peak. This is good in some ways – it’s getting a little more affordable to live here! But it does mean that the city gets less property tax income.

Next, we didn’t build as much this past year, so we’re not adding as many new properties to the tax roll as we have in the past. Also sales tax is down, and inflation is up.

And yet, we keep growing:

Our budget stayed flat while inflation took a bite out of everything:

Amanda: Did all departments hold their budgets flat?
Answer: there were some exceptions last year, due to existing contracts, but no exceptions this year. All departments held flat this year.

Mid-year, the city reduced spending by $100K, across all departments.

Alyssa: How did you all reduce $100K?
Answer: They looked at the unspent budgets over the past three years, and used that to proportionally allocate the cuts.

These are not one-time cuts – they’re permanent cuts. But departments are allowed to make requests for reinstatements.

So we have less money to spend per resident:

…

Some details on the tax revenue

We get both sales tax and property tax. Let’s take these one at a time:

This chart is a little complicated. Each of those numbers is its own computation. So you see where it says “December 24, -2.3%”? What that means is that they added up the twelve months in all of 2023, and added up all twelve months in 2024, and found that the 2024 year was 2.3% less than the 2023 year.

Some cities are up, some are down:

Here’s who does the most business in town, and hence pays the most sales tax:

And here’s how much different industries have tanked recently:

Dang.

Onto property taxes:

(This isn’t the clearest visual aid, perhaps? I’d probably separate the orange line and the blue bars into two separate graphs.)

Basically, the total property values increased a lot from 2022 to 2023. Then they started slowing down from 2023 to 2024 and 2025. And now, heading into 2026, they’re going backwards.

This is a big bummer.

We’ve built some new stuff, so that helps bring in more revenue:

This is again a wee bit confusing, but let’s take a crack at it:

This is the difference from year-to-year. If it’s positive, then you got more money than last year. If it’s negative, you got less money than last year. You can see that lately, blue has gone negative. Next year, it’s projected that blue is so negative that it outweighs the green.

Lorenzo: Do we have any commercial products on the horizon?
City Manager: Yes… you already heard from the AI dude. But there’s a lot more in the pipeline. Buccee’s, IKEA, HEB, multifamily, warehouse buildings. Lots of stuff will get added to the payroll over the next few years.

Ok, let’s shift to tax payers.

We have not raised the tax rate in the past few years. But property values have fallen. If we want to bring in the same amount of money, we would have to charge a little more:

So here, the tax rate jumps by 4%, and the average person pays the same amount in property taxes. This is called the “No New Revenue” rate.

We already made some midyear cutbacks, because we got reports that things were going badly:

Also yearly fee reviews.

Here’s where this leaves us:

Ok, all that shaves us down from $12 million over budget to $1 million over budget. (The blue “$3 million shift” is balancing the budget without being structural about that.)

Also ARPA and other Covid money is going away in 2027. That $1.4 is money the city will have to pick up.

How much does it help to raise taxes?

So each cent increase helps a lot.

…

So now let’s go back to this conversation:

Are we going to take the bandaid on the left, or the painful, responsible path on the right?

Note that in Option 4, everyone’s taxes stay flat. The extra $900K comes from new buildings. It would help offset inflation and implement council priorities.

….

Look, I believe in government. I believe that the role of government is to redistribute wealth and use it to solve collective problems. Starving your government makes inequality worse.

I get that San Marcos has endemic poverty, and people need every possible cent to make ends meet. People resent taxes. But I still believe in them. So I would vote for options 3 or 4.

….

Hang in there! There’s still a whole ‘nother workshop on fencing off the river!

…

What’s not in the budget?

So the departments made $100K in permanent cuts. They’re allowed to request it back, though. These are scrutinized to see if they’re “needs” or “wants”. (Council asks to see a list of all these cuts, as well.)

What else isn’t in the budget?

Remember back in January, when Council dreamed big? We got all excited about things like:

  • Tenants Bill of Rights and advocacy program
  • Office of Violence Prevention
  • Increasing HSAB funding for social programs

None of those are in the budget yet.

….

One last thing: Back in January, we talked about how San Marcos was going to move towards a participatory budget model. The idea is to get the community input, and particularly those people who generally are disenfranchised by government. (In other words, don’t just go and ask all of Mayor Jane’s BFFs what they think about the budget.)

How’s that been going?

Staff did three things:

  • Consult with the Neighborhood Commission
  • Have a bunch of Dream Sessions
  • Have an online survey

Amanda and Alyssa are FURIOUS over this. All of the outreach methods have gotten hijacked by the same old people who always have the ear of Council. This did not connect with the people on the east side.

For example, here’s where the survey responders live:

See that densest cluster in the southwest? That would be Kissing Tree, ie a bunch of wealthy old white retirees. That is not who we mean when we say “get the input of hard-to-reach San Marcos residents”.

Time for this meme:

(via) mmhmm.

In the city’s defense, this is an incredibly difficult problem to solve. What you have to do is form relationships with community leaders in your hard-to-access regions – church leaders, barber shops and hair salons, etc. It is extremely time-intensive.

…

Time for Council direction! Roughly speaking, which road do we want to take?

More specifically, which scenario is Council leaning towards?

This isn’t a final, binding decision. But you don’t want city staff to go in a completely different direction from what Council is willing to approve. You want staff to prepare options that are aligned with what Council is thinking.

Lorenzo has a good question: is that extra $900K enough address the budget requests and council initiatives?
Answer: Yes, it’s roughly enough to get us to a stable place, and to implement council priorities:

  • Tenants Bill of Rights and advocacy program
  • Office of Violence Prevention
  • Increasing HSAB funding for social programs

Council direction

Jane: Somewhere between #3 and #4.
Lorenzo: #4
Shane: #4
Alyssa: #4, as long as the extra is dedicated to social services, public facing programs, and council priorities. I have to be able to explain this to my neighbors.
Matthew: #3
Amanda: between #3 and #4. People must see tangible benefits to their tax dollars. That can only happen through the tenants rights and HSAB funding, ie council initiatives. If it doesn’t include council initiatives, I can’t justify this to my constituents.
Saul: #3

I agree with all of them! I’d go for #4 myself.

Hours 0:00 – 2:50, 3/18/25

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:

Main topics:

  1. Malachi Williams: Seven speakers, including family members. They want justice for Malachi. Several of the speakers focus on the detail that Malachi ran because a cop pulled a gun on him. Before the videos were released, this detail wasn’t mentioned. It shows how the officer escalated the situation instead of de-escalating it, which then ended in tragedy.
  2. Human Services Advisory Budget funding: Council is thinking about increasing HSAB funding for next year. Three speakers advocated for this.
  3. Cape’s Dam and the Mill Race: Two people talk about how much they love the river, east of I-35 and want council to keep it. We’ll unpack all of this!
  4. Tenants’ Bill of Rights: The San Marcos Civics Club made this a focus, and got Council to put this in their visioning statement. Now council will need to make it happen. Two speakers focus on this.
  5. Ceasefire in Palestine: four speakers. They still want the city to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

…

Onto the meeting!

Items 1-4: A bunch of audits and investment reports.

We got the audit reports for CDBG funding and the 23-24 fiscal year.  Plus the quarterly financial report and investment report.

Everything looks normal. No rude surprises. (Apparently we’ve gotten awards for excellence for the past 35 years, on our yearly fiscal audit. OH YEAH BABY.)

…

Item 18: Rezoning about 15 acres

This property is way up north:

Back in 2020, we annexed this yellow and pink bit:

The yellow was zoned Manufactured Home, and the pink was zoned Light Industrial.

There were some concerns then – do we really want to make the folks in the mobile home community live right against an industrial park? But we let it ride.

Now the pink part is coming back for a rezoning – they want to switch it from Light Industrial to Manufactured Home.  In other words:

Great! Now nobody has to live near an industrial park.

…

Item 20: Budget Policy Statement

We’re working on the Fiscal Year 26 budget.

First: There was a two days Visioning workshop in January, which lead to approving the Strategic Plan.

The nex workshop was at the end of February. Today we’re approving the thing from that: the Budget Policy Statement.  

What’s a Budget Policy Statement?

This is like the guard rails for building the budget over the summer. Most of it is pretty dry? Like “Do you want to budget to maintain 150 days worth of recurring operating expenses in the budget, or just 90?”  “Are we okay using the General Fund for Stormwater projects over $5 million?” Etc.

There are two interesting bits:

  1. Each year, the city sets the rate for electricity, water, sewer, trash, etc.  To do this, they have to predict what their costs will be. Then they pick a rate that will cover all their costs.

From the Budget Policy Statement

What does this mean? If your utilities get turned off, you have to pay extra late fees to get your utilities back on. All of the late fees, taken together, add up to big chunk of revenue.

The question is: Suppose we are predicting that we’ll bring in $100K in late fees. (I’m making that number up.) Should we use that $100K to lower the rates for the rest of the customers?

Argument in favor: It’s more economical to include the late fees in your calculation. It allows you to set lower rates for the whole city.

Argument against: It’s kind of icky to count on late fees, for two reasons. First, you’re charging your most desperate customers – the ones who already can’t keep up – an extra fee, and then using that fee to help out all the other, less-desperate customers.

Second, it creates an incentive to creep up your late fees over time. When budgets are lean, it’s tempting to lean on late fees as an extra source of revenue you can tap, like cities that ticket their poorest residents into oblivion in order to balance their budgets.

The current council has already been going in the opposite direction. They are already trying to lower the late fees, to make it easier for residents to get their electricity turned back on.

To the original question: they decide that we are not going to use the late-fee revenue in computing utility rates. Then, when late fees come in anyway, they’ll put that money towards the Utility Assistance program.

It’s a small touch, but a good one.

2. Here’s the other one worth paying attention to:

This is what the speakers during Citizen Comment were talking about.

Last December and January, HSAB funding was a total mess. There was too little funding, and Council ended up pitting nonprofits against each other. It was clear that we need to significantly ramp up city funding of nonprofits.

Right now, HSAB gets $550K. Council sets a range of additional funding, between $50K-$200K. When we find out what kind of money we’re getting from property taxes this July, then we’ll determine where we land in that range.

This part makes me extra happy:

Yes!! Peg the HSAB budget to inflation. We do it in contracts with for-profit entities all the time. It should be universal.

(The failure to peg minimum wage to inflation was one of the greatest policy near-misses of the 20th century. Having a federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour is such a mockery.)

…

Item 21: Cut-and-fill in La Cima

Pedernales Electric wants to build a substation here:

But it’s on a hill. Like we saw last time, it’s hard to build on a hill. So they also want to do a cut-and-fill.

This time, no one is worried about flooding.

Matthew Mendoza is a little worried that the people in La Cima might have to look at a substation, though.

Staff reassures him that there is another building, and then the La Cima apartment complex, all separating the substation from the houses. So their eyes won’t be hurt by the substation.

This passes 6-0.

…

Item 5: Council Compensation

This was so weird. 

Quick Recap: (Full story here.)

Councilmembers get three kinds of money:

  1. Monthly stipend
  2. Travel and expenses
  3. Flex money (either)

Shane Scott proposed doubling the flex money and travel money, and he wanted it effective IMMEDIATELY. Like, something lit a fire under his butt.

Last time, they went in circles forever, but ultimately landed here:

Travel budget

  • There’s plenty of travel money already.  The total council travel doesn’t go over budget.
  • Council members can lend each other travel money if one is going over.
  • If they STILL go over, there can be an extra $15K in a special travel fund that any of them can apply for.
  • AND, they each get an extra $2K for travel.

Flex budget

  • Double the Flex amount from $7.5K to $15K.

In other words: right now, a council member earns $24.9K a year, if they choose to take their flex pay as income. This would increase it to $32.4K.

…

The item was put on the consent agenda, which means, “Staff thinks this will sail through.” After all, they hammered out all the votes last time.

Jane said nope! and pulled it off the council agenda. She gives a speech about how none of this is needed, there’s plenty of money in the travel budget.  And how we certainly shouldn’t be doing this mid-year.

Amanda agrees on the mid-year part. More responsible to start it with the next fiscal year. She makes that amendment: Delay this until next year’s budget?

The vote: Postpone changes until next year’s budget?

Ok, great.

But then Shane – who started this whole conversation back in December! – says, “Let’s just kill the whole thing, who cares. We don’t need it anymore.” 

(This is when I first thought, “What the hell is happening? Was this whole thing a ploy to get some quick money?”)

Jane sees her chance and makes a motion to kill both the travel increase and flex spending increase.

On the flex spending, Amanda pleads, “But why?”

Amanda has been quite open about having to resign her state job to take this position, and the impossibility of surviving on $24.9K per year.

Jane: “We don’t need it. We already raised it in 2023.”

What she means is that before 2023, council members got $23.4K per year, if they took their flex money as pay. They gave themselves a raise of $1500 then.

Amanda: I agree on the travel. But on the living expense, who here – anyone? – can live on this little?”

Jane: “It’s not supposed to be a fulltime job.”

Amanda: “Fully agree.  But we both know that it is actually a fulltime job.”

Jane: “For some people it is.  Not everybody.” 

Amanda: “Oh trust me, I understand that too. And I wish everybody shared full interest.”

Jane: “I do too.” 

Amanda: “But again, please tell me, who can survive on this?  Would anybody in this room? 

<crickets>

Then conversation dies.  

…

The key issues is this: Is being a councilmember a fulltime job? We pretend it isn’t, but in order to do it well, it definitely is.

If we pay poverty wages, then council members have three options:

  1. Be independently wealthy or have someone who can support you.
  2. Try not to neglect your council job as you juggle multiple jobs
  3. Live in poverty

This is not how you get the best possible council members. This is how you get mostly wealthy and/or distracted council members.

…

But anyway, then they vote:

The vote: Should Councilmembers survive on $24.9K per year?

So yeah, no raise.

I’m so baffled.  Two weeks ago, Shane and Lorenzo both thought it was reasonable to increase flex spending, and now they don’t? What the hell happened?

….

Then they vote to roll back the travel funds increase:

This one doesn’t bother me so much. There is plenty of travel money, if you allow people to donate funds to each other.

Bottom line: After all these meetings, everything is back where it started, aside from a special bonus travel fund.  

Clearly I have no idea what happened, but it felt like petty bullshit, to be honest.

….

Item 24: SMCISD stormwater voucher

This is a continuation from last time.  (Full backstory here.)

Super quick background:

Statewide, the legislature is intentionally starving the school districts. This is not hyperbole. Abbott is hellbent force-feeding school vouchers down everyone’s throat. He’s denying funding to the public schools is a way of increasing the pressure on the state legislature to vote for his deal.

Funding hasn’t increased since 2019, but there have been several unfunded mandates that cost a lot. Plus inflation.

SMCISD is in a $9 million budget crisis. They’ve asked for the city for a stormwater waiver, which would save them about $350K.

Which brings us to today.

First there’s a presentation about the stormwater fund:

Immediately after San Marcos created the stormwater fund, Texas State University asked the State Legislature to grant them an exemption.  They were the very first university in Texas to ask for one!  What go-getters.

After that, all the other universities thought it was a pretty good idea.

Here’s the total list of state-wide exemptions:

So basically, empty lots, lakes, universities, and ….El Paso school district.  Who knows.

…

The state law says that stormwater fees must be equitable. They go into a fair amount of detail about how we put ours together. 

Basically, if we want to help out SMCISD, here are the four options:

Option 1 would cost a lot and open the door to other nonprofits asking for a waiver, too.

Option 2 would cost some, and open the door.

Option 3 might open us up to legal challenges of being non-equitable.

Option 4 is the one that Staff clearly favors. In fact, city staff and SMCISD staff have already met, and they’re both open to this.

Option 4 is about Mendez Elementary. Mendez is located in Sunset Acres, which has terrible flooding. The city wants to build a detention pond on Mendez property, to help with the flooding.

All the council members are on board with pursuing 4. 

The only thing is that Mendez Elementary is being renovated. Until SMCISD knows the new footprint of the building, they can’t donate the land.

(Now, SMCISD has already submitted the Mendez plans to the city for permitting. So the city could literally go look right now at the Mendez plans.  It’s not a mystery. We can see exactly how much space there might be for a drainage pond.)

…

There’s a long, weirdly circular conversation where Lorenzo and Amanda keep saying, “We should meet occasionally with the school board, just to stay informed on what we’re each up to.”

Jane keeps responding with, “It’s no use.  Alyssa and I keep trying to think of a reason that all three entities – city, county, schools – should meet, and it’s very hard to think of issues that need attention from all three groups.”

Ok?  That’s a different thing?  That’s not what Amanda and Lorenzo are suggesting?

Anyway, they vote for 4. 

…

Item 25: Redwood/Rancho Vista

Last time, we discussed this property, immediately north of Redwood and Rancho Vista:

We were trying to figure out if that industrial portion would make flooding worse in Redwood.

Redwood and Rancho Vista have severe septic and flooding issues, which leads to a parasite living in the soil. It’s a big health issue, and it usually only happens in developing countries. But the community is quite poor and vulnerable, so it’s happening here. Any solution is going to be very expensive.

Last time Council tried to have it both ways: “We’ll let this development through, but we promise to take action on Redwood.”

So tonight is that action: A strongly worded letter to Guadalupe County about how the septic issue and parasites is a public health and safety issue, which has been going on for years and years.

Jane suggests that we let them know about the Texas Water Development Board, which has a specific Economically Distressed Areas Program. Maybe Guadalupe County could get some money from there.

City Manager Stephanie Reyes mentions looping in SMCISD – after all, these families go to our schools and are part of our community.

So staff will draw something up, and it will come back.

My two cents: this is fine as a first step, but not as a last step.

Hours 0:00 – 2:10, 9/17/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Uncategorized

Citizen Comment:  

  • One speaker spoke on some one-off issues – closing Cheatham street, lending police for football games, etc.
  • A second speaker talked about the utility rate hikes. Specifically, he told Council that we should have separate rates for rich people.

This connects to a thought I’ve had.  We do kind of have separate rates for rich people!

Take water as an example: 

As you use more water, the water gets more expensive. This is good! It incentivizes people to use less water.

Right now, we’re raising utilities 5% across the board. If Council had wanted to, they could have tinkered with these marginal rates. But I bet it gets complicated, fast.

(Electricity doesn’t have tiered brackets like this, though. )

….

Not exactly Citizen Comment, but a general concern from a community member: the San Marcos Housing authority put out a statement saying that they were going to open up the waitlist for housing vouchers on Wednesday morning.

So everyone showed up! Apparently something like 250 people turned in pre-applications for housing vouchers that were supposed to open up on Wednesday morning. A bunch of people even spent the night outside the Housing Authority, in order to be there when the doors opened at 8:30.  There was supposed to be a lottery to accept new applications. 

And…. it just didn’t happen. The Housing Authority did not actually accept any applications.   All the people needing housing just got sent away.

I don’t know what went wrong, but I guarantee there’s a throughline between having chronically underfunded housing assistance for decades, and this kind of mess. And Texas especially relishes underfunding programs for the poor.  

….

Item 1: New City Hall steering committee

Last time we had a big song and dance about the composition of the committee. Should we do things the way we always do them? Or should the DEI coordinator steer us in a more equitable direction?

Here’s what the DEI coordinator says at the beginning of the conversation:

A good general principle is that the composition of your committee should match the composition of San Marcos. So you look at things like race, gender, ethnicity, and try to match the overall population of San Marcos. (As your friendly marxist blogger, I’d toss wealth on that list, too. Socioeconomic status is should be included in DEI initiatives. Poor people are underrepresented!)

Here’s what Council settles on:

  1. Each councilmember will pick two community members to be on the committee
  2. The mayor and two councilmembers will be on the committee
  3. The committee will have some specific roles filled:
    • Someone from P&Z
    • From the library board
    • Someone representing the disability community
    • SMRF representative
    • Texas State representative
    • Downtown association rep
    • Chamber of commerce rep.
    • Two people from Rio Vista neighborhood

So depending on how much overlap there is between 1 and 3, there could be as few as 17 members or as many as 26  members.

The DEI coordinator tentatively pipes up: “The more prescriptive we are with roles, the harder it will be to achieve the DEI goals.” 

What she means is that the Library Board, P&Z, Texas State admin, SMRF, the Downtown organization, and Chamber of Commerce are generally less diverse than San Marcos as a whole.  The more you stack your steering committee with folks from these organizations, the harder it will be to make the composition of your steering committee match with the composition of San Marcos.

Jane misunderstands what the DEI coordinator means, and says, “Inclusion of these partners doesn’t mean exclusion of others! We’re not excluding anyone.” 

She also says (tellingly), “This just follows the pattern of how we do appointments in San Marcos.”

It does follow the pattern! Councilmembers pick people they know and put them on committees. This is how power perpetuates itself.  This is why you have to deliberately not follow the pattern of how we do appointments in San Marcos, if you want change.

The plan is to collect applications, and then have councilmembers select their two special besties from the pool.

Anyone can apply! Would YOU like to give your two cents on the new city hall?  Submit an application here, why dontcha? They’re due in 30 days. (The application is not up yet, but I’ll edit this when it goes live.)

…

Item 20: Parking by permit

The good people of Sturgeon are fed up with non-residents parking on their street.

Sturgeon is this street, in Blanco Gardens:

They filed a petition to make the street permit parking, so only residents could park there.  This is the area they want permitted:

My guess is they’re either sick of college students or river-goers parking there.

To be honest, I hate this kind of thing.  Everyone pays for roads!  We don’t own the curb in front of our houses. It’s not yours.

Occasionally, there is an extreme situation puts an undue burden on residents.  I can understand that. But here? Seven of those parcels are empty! Why are we banning the public from parking in front of empty lots? It makes me cranky.   (All the tan lots are empty in the diagram above.)

I just don’t like the privatization of something that’s public.  Public spaces belong to the public, end of story. 

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Items 21-23: 51 acres off McCarty and 123

This bit is getting annexed and zoned:

It’s right by the high school, here:

Everybody knows we need more commerce on the east side of town.  For years, residents have asked for this.

(Quick sidebar: But don’t forget! Council removed commerce from Cottonwood Creek here, and then two months later Council removed commerce from the giant future development on 123 here. For Cottonwood Creek, residents wrote letters and showed up to say that they wanted to keep the commercial! And yet Council killed it anyway, because the developer asked nicely.)

Anyway, in general there’s very few stores east of I-35. These guys are committing to putting commerce on this corner:

It’s being zoned Commercial.

The rest of it is being zoned CD-4:

CD-4 is a Character District. That means that city staff is really hoping it will look like this:

Little shops mixed with apartments, and oodles of charm.

But it actually usually looks like this:

Not terrible, and the housing is needed, but not quite as charming as Sesame Street.

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You know what would be fun? Dusting off our five criteria for zoning! C’mon, guys, let’s see if we agree with our councilmembers.

1. Price Tag to the City: Will it bring in taxes that pay for itself, over the lifespan of the infrastructure and future repair? How much will it cost to extend roads, utilities, on fire and police coverage, on water and wastewater?

Who knows! No one ever provides this information!

But my educated guess is yes.  The main problem is with single family detached homes – they don’t pay enough taxes to cover their roads and services. Since this will have apartments and commercial, it should be fine.  It’s also along existing roads with existing utilities and coverage areas.    

2. Housing stock: How long will it take to build? How much housing will it provide? What is the forecasted housing deficit at that point? Is it targeting a price-point that serves what San Marcos needs?

We also have no info here! But it doesn’t sound like giant $500K McMansions.  It sounds like apartments plus stores.  

3.  Environment: Is it on the aquifer? Is it in a flood zone? Will it create run off into the river?Are we looking at sprawl? Is it uniformly single-family homes?

Environmentally sound.  Not near the river.  Not sprawl. Not all single family homes.

Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?

I doubt it will be mixed income.  It is near schools, and hopefully near amenities. 

The San Marxist Special: Is it a mixed-income blend of single family houses, four-plexes, and eight-plexes, all mixed together? With schools, shops, restaurants, and public community space sprinkled throughout?

I don’t know how charming this will be.  We can hope.

So overall: I approve. It seems more good than not.

Council does, too. It all passes 6-0.  (Shane Scott is absent.)

“YAY COMMERCE!” council cheers.

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Items 24-27:  All the budget and tax rate final details. (Discussed here and here previously.)

First things first! The good people at City Hall were able to give me the General Fund breakdown.  

I put together this side-by-side comparison for last year and this year:

Budgets are complicated. I don’t have any great takeaways here.

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Next: We’re taxing ourselves less than we thought we were. We made an error in an obscure tax computation, and just now fixed it.

Here’s the quick version:  You’ve got your existing taxable buildings, and you’ve got your new builds.  Texas state law cares about the total amount you’re getting each year from the existing taxable buildings. (So you’re ignoring tax revenue from new buildings, for now.) 

Is the total revenue from existing buildings going up or down?  Sometimes it goes up because you raised taxes.  Other times it goes up because your housing prices are going up.  Either way, you’ve got to jump through some extra hoops if that total is going up.

We drew up our budget, and we thought it was going up, but…. <drumroll> it turns out it’s going down!  Hooray?  Since we didn’t change our tax rate, that means home values are falling.  

(Jude: THIS IS A REALLY BIG DEAL! THIS NEVER HAPPENS!

Mark: IT’S THE GROWTH!)

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You know me: I just always have to rant a little bit about taxes.  (I swear this will be a very tiny soapbox.  Two minutes, tops.)

Taxes are good! That’s how you fund your government, and take care of your community. The problem is that we won’t tax wealthy people in Texas. First off, the poorest people are paying the most taxes:

And this is worse than in other states!

Notice that Texas is one of the states on the left part of that graph.

People complain about high property taxes, but those aren’t the unfair part.  The unfair part is the sales tax.  (Both state and local.) Sales taxes really are the worst! Poor people end up paying a much higher percentage of their income than wealthy people.  Literally, it’s capitalism for the poor and socialism for the wealthy.

End rant! I promised you I’d keep it short.

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Anyway: only one person speaks at citizen comment and nothing gets debated.  The end! We have a new budget and next year’s tax rate.

The vote: 5-1.  Alyssa Garza votes against everything, presumably because of the utility rate hikes.  

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Item 28: Mowing, landscaping, and litter around city buildings. It is a giant task. 

We contract out parts of it to Easter Seals of Central Texas, to the tune of $1,432,702.54.

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Item 29:  Purgatory Creek Channel improvements

We had a whole workshop all about the Purgatory Creek channel improvements last time! This meeting, we’re kicking off $3,281,773.35 towards engineering for Phase 1.  

Saul Gonzales asks, “There’s a bunch of stagnant water in the side channels through Dunbar. Will this help with that?”

Answer: Sort of yes! Part of the project is raising some of the low-water crossings.  That is a major reason why water can’t drain downstream.  But also sort of no! This is supposed to recreate natural channels, and they do pool some. 

The city applied for grants to cover a lot of the costs. We should find out next month if we get them. If we get them, we’ll start construction next year.

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Item 32: Filling a bunch of vacancies on different committees.

There was one moment that ticked me off.   There’s a vacancy on the Animal Shelter Advisory Committee. We only had one application. 

Matthew Mendoza pointed out that on the application, this volunteer stated that they have only lived in San Marcos for two months. Matthew is uncomfortable with this, and Jane agreed.  Matthew likes it when people have lived here longer. They decided to re-open applications and see if anyone else applies.

GUYS! Stop this rudeness.  First off, you should be welcoming to new people.  

Second off, if this were a vacancy on P&Z or the new City Hall steering committee? Sure, require 5 year residency.  You want people with some roots and community background. (I guess.) 

But that’s not this.  This is the ANIMAL SHELTER.  A new person moved to town and wants to volunteer their time to help the doggos! We should be appreciative, but instead we’re crapping on them for not having roots in the area.  That’s dumb.

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Item 33: What night will city council meet, on election week?

The election is on a Tuesday. You don’t want to hold a council meeting the same day as an election. We don’t want to get in the way of anyone voting.

So should the council meeting be shifted to Monday or Wednesday? Historically we switch to the Monday. But Jane Hughson is suggesting that this year, council should meet on the Wednesday instead.

I want to emphasize two things:

  • When I say that Jane is good at details, this is a perfect example of what I mean.  She explained her thinking: “Suppose I am a community member who doesn’t know that the meeting was moved, and I show up on Tuesday.  If the meeting already passed on Monday, then I’m out of luck.  But if the meeting is not till Wednesday, I can come back tomorrow.”  

This is really thoughtful and detail-oriented.  Jane Hughson is unusually good at this sort of thing.

  • It’s worse for me, your friendly blogger.  I need every last minute to crank out these posts!  If the meeting is on Wednesday, then I get crunched, which gives me a sad. But in my heart of hearts, I know Jane is right.