Just a note: “2024 YTD” is weird and confusing! Just to be clear, we’re talking about October, November, and December of 2023. It’s Q1 of Fiscal Year 2024. And “2023 YTD” means the last three months of 2022.
Anyway: The green bar is a little low. This is because property tax payments are coming in more slowly than last year. The speaker didn’t say why, but I assume it’s because Prop 4 passed in November, and so people got their tax bill later than usual. But the guy reassured us that it’s fine.
There’s also six Enterprise Funds: electric, water/wastewater, stormwater, resource recovery, airport, and hotel. They’re all fine! Everything’s fine!
Item 4: Short Term Rentals
We discussed short term rentals here and here already. We used to ban parties and require that STRs be owner-occupied, but (I think) the courts struck this down and so we had to rewrite our rules?
Loosely speaking, here’s what’s being proposed:
All STRs would need a permit.
Owners can only have one STR.
Only one STR on a block, or at least 600 ft apart.
Short-term tenants can have parties, but not excessively noisy ones, just like any other resident.
Everyone who lives within 400’ gets a postcard with a hotline number to call if you’re having any trouble.
At the March meeting, both Shane Scott and Alyssa Garza voted no, but they didn’t exactly say why. Jane Hughson chided them to come back with amendments that make it work for them.
To his credit, Jude Prather did come back with amendments to make it work. This is good governance! Let’s problem-solve!
Jude proposes that we strike the limit per block. In other words, anyone can have an STR wherever they want. His reasoning goes that everyone should be able to rent out their own home, regardless of whoever pulled a permit on your street already.
Matthew Mendoza doesn’t like it. You could have whole blocks which are full of STRs! It’s happened before, like on Riviera Street!
This is Riviera Street:
You might recognize this backyard from the river:
right when you’re floating here:
I got those two images from the VRBO listing, so feel free to rent it yourself if you want.
Riviera’s probably the only place in central San Marcos where backyards open up right on the river, so yeah, I can believe Matthew when he says that they’re all STRs. (And he also says they each have different owners – it’s not a case of one outside developer buying up the whole block.)
What do I think? Eh, I think it’s fine. I don’t think entire blocks are going to get bought up, in general. The other rule – “1 rental per owner” – is really much stricter than the “1 per block” rule, as far as preserving your housing supply.
And it seems reasonable to allow everyone to at least rent out their own homestead. If I had an ADU and I couldn’t rent it out because someone down the block was already renting theirs out, I’d be annoyed.
The vote to strike the “1 per block” rule:
Yes: Alyssa Garza, Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason, Jude Prather, Shane Scott No: Saul Gonzales, Matthew Mendoza
The vote on the whole set of STR rules, all together:
Yes: Alyssa Garza, Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason, Jude Prather, Shane Scott No: Saul Gonzales, Matthew Mendoza
So there you have it. Done.
…
Item 7: Water Restrictions:
We’re writing new water stages. Twenty years ago, we got a bunch of money from the state to start up ARWA, which drills from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer and requires a little more treatment before you drink it.
(Confidential to city staff who deal with water stuff: your slide is a few years out of date and it’s throwing me off, because I thought we weren’t getting ARWA water until later this year?)
Now:
The main thing that’s happening is that we’re going from 5 drought stages to 3 drought stages. This is supposed to make it simpler for everyone.
But there’s one other thing I want to discuss.
Last time, Virginia Parker from SMRF spoke about how the drought stage triggers were being recalculated. The staff person said hey, no worries! We look at all the sources! The details aren’t in the ordinance, but it’s department policy. No worries! So I didn’t worry.
This time, Virginia Parker spoke again and made the same point. However, this time it was a different staff member, and his answer was VERY different. So let’s dive in.
Background for Parker’s concern:
There are triggers that cause you to go from one drought conservation stage to the next. Under the old rules, we checked the Edward’s Aquifer level, the Comal level, and the San Marcos Springs level. If any of those were low, we moved to the next stage.
For example these were the triggers for stage 4:
(Full text here. ) The J-17 well is the Edward’s Aquifer. So we measured three sources, and if any of them were low enough, it would trigger stage 4.
Under the new rules, the drought triggers are very different. What we do now is combine all the sources first, and then check how much of the total we’re using. So if one source is running low, another source can compensate, and we don’t enter drought restrictions.
Here’s the specific text:
It’s way less detailed than the old triggers. Take Stage 2: “The average daily water consumption reaches approximately 75% of the rated available water production capacity for a seven-day period.”
In other words, now we take Edward’s Aquifer, Comal, and our new water source Carrizo, and we add all those together. Any one of them can be really low, but maybe the others compensate. If we’re using 75% of the combined total, then we’ll go into Stage 2.
You can see the scenario that Parker is worried about: The Edwards Aquifer could be way down, and our river is super low, but we’re not under any drought restrictions because the supply from Carrizo.
Here’s the answer we were given this time:
We’re allowed to use a certain fixed amount of Edward’s Aquifer water until the Edwards Aquifer Authority says otherwise. And dagnabbit, we’re going to use it, because it’s the cheapest water we’ve got, and the way our pipes are set up means that we can’t easily switch from one source to another. The EA water keeps our system pressurized.
When the Edwards Aquifer Authority tells us we have to cut back, we cut back. But otherwise we just take the same amount every week.
Jane Hughson: Would it be possible that Edwards Aquifer is in severe drought, like stage 3 or 4, and we’re still in stage 1?
Answer: Yes! That could happen.
Jane: What about people in San Marcos on well water that comes exclusively from the aquifer? We’d be telling them that San Marcos is Stage 1, but they’d need to know that Edward’s Aquifer is in Stage 3.
Answer: We’ll have to publicize both stages. But we include the usage of people on well-water in our budgeted Edward Aquifer totals.
Jane does not like this. Neither does Jude Prather or Matthew Mendoza. Neither do I! It just feels icky to say that “haha, we’re going to use all this LUSH PLENTIFUL WATER no holds barred” in the middle of a drought, because we’re shipping it in from another part of the state.
I see what the city staff guy is saying, too – our Edwards Aquifer usage doesn’t fluctuate. End of story. Conservation doesn’t help the aquifer and being wasteful doesn’t hurt it. But he’s being a cold engineer about how real people internalize drought stages. Drought stages are also about setting people’s expectations and communicating to people that we need to be good stewards of our environments.
Yes, we’ve planned well and gotten into a healthy water supply situation. But if you zoom out, the entire state needs clean drinking water for decades to come, so let’s not be all “WE GOT OURS, SUCKS TO SUCK!” to everyone else.
In the end, everyone votes to approve the plan, 7-0. As Jane puts it, “I have concerns, but I’m willing to see where this goes.”
the proposed student housing on Lindsey street (much, much more to come)
San Marcos Civics Club, inviting Councilmembers to drop in.
In favor of turning the Mitchell Center into an African-American History museum, overseen by the Calaboose board. (This is an item on the Executive Session agenda, so I don’t have any other info on it.)
Five people spoke in favor of a council resolution calling for ceasefire in Gaza. (Discussed a bit last time.)
Items 1-3: Financial reports. All about Q3 2023, which is last June-September.
How did last summer go?
We came in under-budget and over-revenue. Great.
They also went through the special funds: Electric, Water/Wastewater, Stormwater, Resource Recovery, Airport, and Hotel Tax. It all seemed like normal fluctuations to me, but knock yourself out if you’re curious to know more.
Item 16: We’re knee-deep in next year’s budget. I haven’t watched ANY of the budget planning sessions, because they’re dull as rocks, and I say this as someone who finds council meetings riveting.
I think this is the key part of the Budget Policy Statement:
What does “Eviction Services” mean? We’re helping the tenant and not the landlord, right? We’re not the baddies, are we?
In part A, “Mental Health Diversion” sounds promising. None of this got any discussion at Tuesday’s meeting, though.
I’m not sure what distinguishes As, Bs, and Cs. Funding level? Different departments? Urgency?
We bought it, but it wasn’t inside city limits. So now we’re annexing it.
Google maps tells me that it looks like this:
Nothing I enjoy better than the derelict remains of former wealth, as it returns to the common good!
….
Item 18: LIHTC projects are low income housing complexes, where the developer gets some tax breaks in exchange for building affordable housing. (We talked about LIHTC projects last month.)
These guys want to build affordable housing right behind the high school:
Great!
How affordable is “affordable”?
What this means is that there are 348 apartments, and all of them will be priced so that they are affordable for people making $58,401 – $70,080.
What does “51-60% AMI” mean?
AMI stands for “Area Median Income”. In other words, the AMI is the middle income in the town. So then “51-61% of AMI” means these apartments are for people earning roughly half of the middle income, or a little more. On the poor side of the AMI though, for sure.
Hopefully you’re thinking, “Wait, what? How is $58K-$70K on the poor side, for San Marcos!?”
It’s not! Here’s where the hocus-pocus comes in. San Marcos is part of the Greater Austin-Round Rock Metro statistical area. The median income for a family of four in Austin is $122K. And therefore 51-60% of that gives you $58,401 – $70,080.
People earning $58K-$70K in San Marcos are above the median income. These households are on the richer half of San Marcos. Not actually rich, but relatively well off for San Marcos. It’s completely absurd to call this apartment complex “affordable” or “low-income”. These are regular, market rate apartments for regular, old San Martians.
But here’s the thing: they’re not applying for tax breaks from the city. They’re only applying to state tax breaks. So this isn’t costing the city anything.
Still, they’re getting tax breaks from the state. Are they at least providing services that go above and beyond?
Eh, not really. Pretty bog-standard.
City Council is happy with this because we’re not giving away any money. So they give it a thumb’s up.
Look, as far as San Marcos goes, this is fine. It’s housing.
But they’re still jerks! They’re diverting funding that would otherwise subsidize actual low-income housing. They’re getting a subsidy, without helping the people it’s supposed to help. It’s not technically illegal – we’re within the Austin MSA, so officially our median income is $122k. Just kinda shitty of them.
There was a big turnout tonight! 21 speakers total, and more speaking at public hearings later during the meeting. The whole citizen comment lasted over an hour.
The main topics were:
The can ban, by far. People who do the work of pulling trash out of the river have a lot to tell you about why we need to ban single use containers. 16 of the speakers talked about this, including the mayor and some councilmembers from Martindale.
Some notes:
It would actually be a ban on all single-use containers.
New Braunfels and Martindale both have bans, and they’ve made a huge difference. Plus you save money on trash clean up.
The key is to educate and get buy-in from residents. Not just ticketing people.
2. Selling our water from the Edward’s Aquifer to Kyle
For the second year in a row, Kyle has run out of water and wants to buy some from us.
Virginia Parker, from the San Marcos River Foundation, talks a lot about this: their conservation efforts are shoddy. Sell them the water, but make it contingent on tighter water conservation.
The city doesn’t agree with SMRF’s criticism. We’ll talk about this when we get there.
3. The taxes are too dang high
There weren’t actually a ton of people who showed up in person, but council comments give the impression that they’ve been swamped with complaints behind the scenes.
4. Notification radius for development agreements – it should be appropriately large
This is mostly about the SMART Terminal, and how no one knew ahead of time that it was a thing, until it was too late. But it’s also happened with other issues, too.
The city is going to start sending notifications to neighbors in these situations. They’re offering a 400′ notification radius. The problem is that the SMART Terminal is supposed to be 2000 acres, which is 87,120,000 ft2. The 400′ notification is the tiniest sliver around something that big.
As we’ve said before, the notification radius should be proportional to the size of the project.
Finally, Dr. Rosie Ray offers some good improvements for the Comp Plan, but I’m going to save those for the VisionSMTX discussion so that I can put them in context.
…
Items 5-8, 16-18: The budget, the tax rate, and the rate hikes.
We talked a lot about the budget here last time, and I was an insufferable blowhard about the virtues of paying your taxes. (I still am! Sorry!) So I don’t think we need to recap all of that.
The short version: the tax rate is steady, but housing prices went up, and so the amount everyone pays is going up. Also utilities are going up.
Clearly councilmembers got an earful about property taxes and the appraisal process. I can’t tell if people are mad that appraisals are so high, or that appraisals are done poorly. If it’s incompetence, that’s a different problem than skyrocketing costs.
This is a useful slide, which is totally illegible:
Would you like it to be clearer? ME TOO. Unfortunately, this slide is not in the packet, and so I had to take a shitty screenshot.
If you promise that I’m your favorite blogger, I’ll transcribe the damn thing for you:
2022-2023: Average monthly bill
2023-2024: Avg monthly bill
Monthly increase
Electric
$93.01
$94.72
$1.71
Water
$56.47
$59.29
$2.82
Wastewater
$48.26
$50.67
$2.62
Stormwater
$14.90
$14.90
0
Resource Recovery (ie trash and recycling)
$28.80
$29.55
$0
Community Enhancement
$1.50
$2.35
$0.85
Property Tax
$160.53
$182.42
$21.89
Total
$383.47
$414.01
$30.54
All of those are based on a $338K house and average usage.
Listen: $414 is a lot of money per month. I don’t want to be flippant about that. In addition, you’re paying SMCISD and Hays county taxes, at a rate of $1.133782 and $0.3125, respectively. So that’s another $3832.18 to SMCISD and $1056.25 to Hays County, which works out to a monthly total of $821.38 per month.
That stings! BUT.
1. The first problem is that we’re bringing the sting of paying $821.38 to a conversation which is really only about the property taxes part, which is $182.42.
2. The next problem: there’s actually not much to cut. Core services are really important. The city actually runs a lean budget. You are getting mostly-maintained roads. You are getting smart people with degrees to make sure that the buildings are safe and conform to what we have all agreed that we want buildings to do. You’re getting libraries and librarians. You’re getting a phenomenal park system and park staff that work there. You’ve got cops that will (mostly) show up if you’re in danger and (hopefully) arrest the right person (that’s a conversation for a different day.) You’ve got firefighters to show up if you have a fire. And you’ve got to pay all these people fairly. That $182 is going to really important stuff, and I’m sorry that it’s invisible, but it’s as important as keeping the lights on in your house.
3. We can reduce the tax burden through city planning – increase density in gentle ways.
Listen: single family neighborhoods do not bring in enough tax revenue to pay for themselves. Cities compensate by taxing apartments and business at a higher rate. If you live in a house, you are already being subsidized by apartments and businesses.
We’ll talk about this a LOT later.
4. You should absolutely be angry, because the rich should be paying so much more.
Both locally and statewide, taxes are super regressive – 2nd worst in the country, in fact! The poorest 20% of Texans pay 13% of their income in taxes. The middle 60% pay 9.7% of their income, and the wealthiest 20% of Texans pay only 3% of their income in taxes. This is utter bullshit.
This is because the main tax at the state level is a sales tax. Sales taxes are the most unfair taxes. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you get taxed on your entire paycheck because you spend everything you earn. But the wealthier you are, the more buffer you have between the money you spend (and get taxed on), and the money you put in investments, tax free.
San Marcos also has a 2% sales tax. Obviously this is in order to cash in on the outlet malls, but it’s also another flat tax hitting our poorest residents the hardest. In fact, we actually bring in more money from the sales tax than property taxes: the sales tax brings in $42 million, the property tax brings in $37 million.
Remember the part about how poor people pay 13% of their income in state and local taxes? They are only earning $14,556 a year. The state makes $2037.84 off that poor guy.
Whereas the top quintile paying 3% of their income? They earn $228,924 on average. The state makes $6,867.72 off the rich guy.
If you taxed the rich guy at 13%, Texas would get $29,760, and he’d still have almost $200K left! We could do so much more to alleviate poverty and help communities, if we taxed the rich fairly.
5. Property taxes are not as unfair as sales taxes. They’re not great, but they’re not the worst. But you know what’s the ACTUAL WORST? The state proposal to use a surplus from sales tax to refund property taxes. Texas is literally going to redistribute money from the poor to the rich. This makes me lose my goddamn mind.
(If you think that landlords will lower rents with that money, you are high on your own supply.)
And the state needs that money! Might I suggest using it to REPAIR THE GODDAMN FOSTER CARE SYSTEM?
You guys, this conversation is making me sweaty. I need to bring it back to local issues again.
…
Sorry. I got really shouty. Ahem.
…
Let’s start from the beginning.
Utility rate hikes: water, wastewater, trash/recycling, and community enhancement are all going up a little. On average, you’ll pay $8/month more.
The Vote (tucked inside the consent agenda)
Raise them rates! Jane Hughson, Shane Scott, Jude Prather, Matthew Mendoza, and Mark Gleason Don’t you dare: Saul Gonzales and Alyssa Garza
I strongly disagree with Saul and Alyssa on this vote. These are four areas where responsible use can drive down costs. We need to be mindful when we’re taking a long shower, or lowering the AC, or watering the lawn. Don’t subsidize people being wasteful.
These rates should be priced so that each fund is self-sustaining. Separately, we should fund utility assistance for those who can’t afford the cost. In other words, we should keep doing exactly what we’re doing.
…
Next, the budget conversation.
The public hearing:
City staff made some 3 minute videos to explain the budget process to the public. They got like 50 views total. [Scroll down here if you want to see them.] That’s not successful. None of you shared those videos on social media or anything. None of you held town halls.
We pay money to contractors to do big surveys and we don’t use the results.
City staff is paid too much under this budget.
We’re taxing people out of their homes!
There’s no transparency and no environmental accountability!
Let me single out one speaker, Noah Brock, who is making a very different, specific point:
The Highway 80 Utility project only connects to two properties: some city property and the SMART Terminal property
The water and wastewater funds directed to this project have spiked hugely: – It’s going to use $10 million /60% of the water fund. This was 1.5 million last year. – It’s going to use $15 million /49% of wastewater.
Why are you raising rates 5%, and then directing $25 million for the SMART Terminal?
I have no answers.
Council discussion
Saul Gonzalez asks about freezing property taxes for anyone over age 65. He brings this up several times throughout the night. Do other cities do this?
Answer: Yes, cities like Killeen do this.
Saul asks how they make up the revenue?
Answer: their tax rate is higher.
(I don’t think Saul likes this answer.)
Next up is Alyssa: She is a no on this budget. We’re not fixing our problems. Incremental change is not meaningful change. There’s a lack of transparency and participation. We need a more equitable process and we need to provide tax relief. We’ve got big problems – we need good paying jobs, we need affordable housing, we need to help the homeless. We’re doing nothing on those problems.
Jude Prather: This budget achieves those five goals we laid out! It’s great.
Mark Gleason: I wouldn’t be voting for this budget if we weren’t going to get all this property tax relief from the state.
(Yes – that sales tax surplus from all Texans that will go to just property owners. How nice for some.)
Shane Scott is totally in campaign mode. He hasn’t given a speech all year. But here we go:
Since he was first on council, the budget has gone from 1.5 million to 3.5 million
He fights for the lowest costs.
“They should be paying for OUR lifestyle – we were here first!” I have no idea who he has in mind with this, but sure.
Cost of food, single moms
He doesn’t want to risk lowering our bond rating.
Safety, hooray!
Participation, hooray!
And my favorite part: voting on this budget literally makes Shane Scott puke… but he’s a yes.
Jane Hughson: Look, the property taxes are going up $22/month. I’m a yes.
Matthew Mendoza: I want to puke too, just like Shane! But I’m a yes.
So everyone has staked out their basic positions on the budget.
…
The conversation then turns meta
What went wrong that everyone is so unhappy at the final stage? We’re going to have a big conversation on this. Here’s the positions that everyone stakes out:
There’s an 9 month process and we’ve given you tons of opportunities to share why you’re unhappy. This is bullshit to bring it up now. (Jane, City Manager Stephanie Reyes)
We’ve said that we’re unhappy at every step of the process! And we have an obligation to represent the unhappiness of the community, and the community is freaked out by property taxes. (Saul, Alyssa)
It’s no one’s fault – it’s the appraisal calendar and the tight turnaround, and how difficult it is to communicate with the public. We feel great shame. (Mark Gleason, Matthew Mendoza)
Wait, I thought we agreed that everything was great. (Jude)
I already gave my one speech, why are we still doing this (Shane)
Here is how the conversation unfolds:
Jane Hughson says to council, “Save these speeches for January, when the next budget process starts up again. Voice these issues during the Visioning Process.”
In other words, if you all are mad about different things, use the budget process. Bring this up from day one.
Alyssa counters, “The Visioning Process does not work. It has nothing to do with the actual needs of San Marcos. It’s tone-deaf. Stop romanticizing the strategic goals and using them to accept the status quo.”
This is true – the budget process takes last year’s budget, and tweaks it incrementally, according to Council direction. It cements the status quo for another year. It’s never going to produce transformational change, which is what Alyssa is here for.
Alyssa believes sincerely and deeply in citizen participation – this is how she’d fix the budget process. This is where I disagree. First, I’m a little more cynical: everyone’s busy. I don’t think there’s an outreach effort on the planet that will engage a real number of citizens until they see the price tag, at the very last minute. (And frankly, people can be idiots about how to run a town when they do show up.)
But note: Alyssa is not proposing a concrete, alternative budget with different priorities that she can point to. This is why I’m interpreting her vote as a protest vote against a complacent status quo, and not a counter-proposal for a realistic alternative.
This next exchange is really crucial:
City Manager Stephanie Reyes:
“This is disheartening. This did not happen in a vacuum. We rely on each of you, as elected officials, to talk with our neighbors. You represent your constituents within the community. We expect to hear a diverse set of thoughts and ideas at every meeting. Every budget meeting has been in an open forum, with citizen comment and Q&A afterwards.
“You hear a lot about the things that city staff does not-so-good, and there’s not a lot about the things that we are doing that are going very well within our city. And that is very frustrating, because that is what staff hears. Staff gets a lot of bad raps, but they’re carrying out Council direction that you all make as a group.
“I also hear “hey, we can’t tax our neighbor out of their home” but I also hear “oh we don’t want commercial development” or “oh we don’t want these things”. We can’t have more and more and more and not have anybody to pay for it. Somebody’s got to pay for it. So either expectations need to come down, and what gets asked of city staff to do more, or we need to temper our expectations in a way that is within what we can afford.
“Staff is not formulating this budget in a vacuum. It’s a conversation, it’s been a dialogue, there have been different junctures, we’ve gotten direction from each one of you, every step of the way. And now at the end to make it look like it’s just our budget? I just don’t think that’s necessarily a fair way to portray that.”
(I shortened and edited her words, but I don’t think I misrepresented her. It’s at 1:53 if you want to listen for yourself.)
Alyssa replies:
“I hope you’re not trying to imply that my discontent is news to you or anybody else. I hear your frustrations. Let me take a second to share mine. I feel that staff feelings are constantly weaponized to foster this sense of guilt about speaking up. That’s my perception. I think the way I treat staff every day speaks to the fact that I value staff. I try to give kudos whenever kudos are merited, I try to have grace, I try to advocate for better things for them. Staff works hard, strides have been made on this process. That’s a fact.
“But multiple truths can exist at once. They don’t have to be in contradiction of each other. All that’s true. But it’s also true that it’s very little and these concerns from our community are not new. It sucks that you guys inherited this. I’ll just share this: when you know the caliber of what you’re working with and you know the possibility of what could be delivered , you just have really high expectations, and I think that’s what our neighbors are expecting with this whole new leadership and leadership style.
“So if it’s coming across as being dismissive or trying to intentionally hurt staff’s feelings, that’s not my intention. It’s my responsibility to echo my constituents’ frustrations. And it’s not just the ones I see, it’s decades worth of historical frustrations. And again, it sucks that you guys inherited this, but that’s just the way it is.”
(Not really edited at all. Alyssa’s very eloquent.)
They really are both right, and it’s not a contradiction. Staff solicits council input. Council ignores Saul and Alyssa and votes to stick with the status quo. Staff takes council direction and implements it. The community gets mad and blames staff.
[Here is one more truth: you will never escape “the community gets mad and blames staff.” No matter how amazing your process is, that’s how it will always end.]
Their exchange was so powerful and raw. It kind of cracked me up to hear everyone else chime in after for a piece of it:
Mark: omg omg! I’m so sorry. It’s just the calendar of when numbers become available! You guys get so many kudos. Covid AND inflation! Huge kudos. Teams. It’s just communication.
Jane Hughson: hooray for staff!
Saul: I too heart the staff! My constituents are broke. Let’s freeze taxes for those over 65.
Matthew Mendoza: We all failed. We didn’t fight hard enough. I blame me.
The vote on the budget:
Yes: Jane Hughson, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Matthew Mendoza, Mark Gleason No: Saul Gonalez and Alyssa Garza
…
But wait! There’s more!
Next, they have to vote specifically on the property tax increase. By Texas state law, this has to pass by 5 votes. (Last year, Saul, Alyssa and Max all voted against it, and almost blew up the process. In the end, Saul switched his vote. Alyssa and Max were protesting all the extra cops.)
More public hearings Max Baker packed 50 ideas into three minutes. LMC channeled Milli Vanili. Former councilmember Lisa Prewitt and former school board member Juan Miguel Arredondo both showed up to talk.
I don’t know how to boil it down, so I’m just writing it out.
Max Baker: – We don’t have it’s own economic development person. We rely on GSMP. – Maybe there are technology solutions! Why don’t we fight for those solutions to the budget? – Why wait for January? Start now. – Community blames staff because staff are the experts. We’re stuck with what you give us, and you get defensive. – People also ask for FEWER Cops. The Cops are the ones that ask for more cops. Other conceptualizations of safety. – when do we stop giving big corporations all these tax breaks? – Appraisal problem, cover for “not raising taxes” – why don’t we make sure people get their appraisals, and why don’t we help people protest their appraisals? – Y no accountability? Burt Lumbreras said we should stop giving tax breaks, because it will blow a hole in the budget, but GSMP said we need it, so we did it. – year after year, you claim you’ll fix it next year.
(This is generally what I mean when I say Max puts 50 ideas into 3 minutes. It’s a lot.)
LMC – Sings Milli Vanilli. Staff uses a big city consultant to give themselves a 5.5% raise. And we have to cut costs. Waste in the budget. You all don’t read your packets.
Juan Miguel Arredondo – Tax rate: I represent people who live on the margins. Those who have trouble fixing their car and buying groceries. They don’t get to decide that they are going to get pay raises to keep up with inflation. There’s no fund balance. They just have to do more with less. That’s what you have to do, too. Your choice will cause poor people to make hard choices.
Lisa Prewitt – ditto everything. everyone is right from their own perspective and we can’t judge. But I did the Visioning workshop for six years and we did talk about freezing seniors. We’re all in this together. We’re all trying to budget ourselves at home. Medical, medicine, groceries, utilities. Our seniors are vulnerable. They can’t get a second job or come out of retirement. When do people get a break? Another 5-10K per year? You can’t tax people out of their homes!
…
Look: clearly I disagree with these speakers. I don’t think that we should slash the budget to give people a tax break.
I know times are tight. But you absolutely cannot lift someone out of poverty with a tax break. You can break poverty by raising the minimum wage to keep up with inflation, and implementing well-designed social programs, affordable healthcare and housing, and wealth redistribution. But not with a $500 tax cut.
City staff deserve to be paid fairly. The budget is lean. Nevertheless, we’ll talk in the next section about how to reduce the tax burden.
Spoiler: no one wants to do it.
Council conversation
It’s more of the same:
Saul
Saul goes back to his thing about freezing taxes for seniors: I want to ask Juan Miguel Arredondo about how the school board freezing taxes for seniors. Did you all do that? JMA: I wasn’t there, and it’s complicated, and we went into debt.
Saul: How do appraisals work, anyway?
Answer: Houses are appraised on January 1st. And remember, there’s a 10% cap. And remember, you can protest your appraisal and get it adjusted downward.
Saul: All my appraisals went up and I had to raise all my rents.
Jude
Jude: Look at all these good things! Tax rate is steady, homestead exemptions, state tax relief will be retrospective!
Alyssa
Alyssa: What should I say to our neighbors when they say that we should use the general fund to close the shortfall? Answer: Tell them it’s not sustainable. The general fund is for one time expenses, not recurring expenses.
Alyssa: How are we helping renters? I’m concerned about utility increases, which disproportionately impact renters.
Note: this is not entirely true. Living in an apartment is much more environmentally efficient than a house. You get some savings on heat and AC because you’re insulated by other apartments. You’re not playing dumb games trying to keep your yard green in a historic drought. You’re presumably sharing the trash/recycling bill in some form.
Mayor Hughson
Jane: Appraisals are legally required to rise and fall with what people are actually paying for houses. The sales prices skyrocketed last year. Nothing sneaky happened. They seem to be cooling, they could come back down.
Mark
Mark Gleason, being smart: I’m not in favor of freezing property taxes for those over 65. Instead, we can increase their homestead exemption on a regular basis. That helps the poorest homeowners more than it helps the wealthiest homeowners.
Note: I agree 100% with this. Some seniors are rich and have million dollar homes, and you don’t need to freeze their taxes. Homestead exemptions help house-poor home owners more than wealthy home owners.
The Exciting Conclusion
Alyssa: Can we change the tax rate?
Answer: Yes. It would blow a hole in our budget. But we’re under a time crunch – if we don’t pass a budget by September 30th, we automatically revert to the 0.503 tax rate. This would cost us $6 million.
Stephanie Reyes: THE TIMELINE. THIS DID NOT HAPPEN IN A VACUUM!
Alyssa: OUR NEIGHBORS. THEY ONLY JUST HEARD ABOUT THIS AND ARE VERY MAD!
Shane Scott: Can we make it up in sales tax?
Answer: We’ve gotten a $1.6 million surplus recently, but we really can’t use that for recurring expenses.
Alyssa: I’m a no. I’d take vacation and do whatever it takes to rework the budget by October.
Mark Gleason: The time for this was two months ago. I know the public doesn’t become aware until the 11th hour. When we have overages, it goes to public safety, like I wanted. We just literally can’t change it at this late an hour.
Saul: My constituents want more services for less tax.
Jude: Political instability is bad for fiscal stability! This should be a 7-0 vote. We should have hammered this out all year.
Alyssa: I’ve been saying this ALL YEAR. And these are my neighbor’s concerns, not mine.
Matthew: How would not-passing the tax rate work?
City Manager Stephanie: DON’T YOU DARE. Please.
The vote: Set the tax rate to pay for the budget we already passed: Mayor Jane, Shane, Mark, Matthew, and Jude Blow it up to smithereens! Saul and Alyssa
…
One Final Note
The thing that kills me about this conversation is that no one connects it with the VisionSMTX conversation. Single family housing sprawl is a wildly expensive way to run your city!! Every single aspect of your city costs more! Running infrastructure down to Trace, out to La Cima, up to Whisper, and out east to the new Riverbend Ranch is what’s stretching our resources so thin.
You must put more people in these areas. Gently densify things – allow duplexes and triplexes, allow ADUs – you share the tax burden among more people, and tax rates can go down.
(Also, quit just putting giant apartment complexes on the edge of single family sprawl. Economic integration is important.)
The main topic of the night is the budget, so the main complaint during citizen comment is that taxes are too high. Taxes are too high, and also the city isn’t solving all our problems, which is basically the municipal equivalent of “the food was terrible and the portions were too small!”
(And also, people hating on the bike lanes. Everyone loves to hate the bike lanes. If you love bike lanes, I suggest you let City Council know, because the anti-bike lane people are kicking up dust.)
Confidential to city council: I like the bike lanes. Let’s keep bikers alive.
Back to taxes. I’m going to tell you a little parable of my cat:
I had a lovely tomcat who was scared of the vacuum cleaner. Whenever I ran the vacuum cleaner, he would lose his mind and attack my shoes. He would just beat my poor shoe all to hell. (I tried not to vacuum very often.)
That’s the end of the story!
Here’s the thinly veiled moral: Being mad about taxes is like my cat attacking my shoe. Don’t be mad at taxes for your justifiable economic woes. You are neck-deep in capitalism! Be mad at that! You are right to feel worried that a medical disaster could undo everything you’re working for, or that you might be destitute in your old age, or unable to help out your kids. The real crime is that someone can work fulltime and not be able to cover their basic needs.
If you know, if you truly 100% trust, that you’ll always have clean safe housing, healthy food, and free medical care readily available, then your life is much freer. That’s the paradox: we pretend this is freedom while paralyzing ourselves with anxiety. We’re such a mess.
Anyway, hooray for taxes. Hooray for a social safety net, and if only it were much stronger. We’ll talk more about who gets tax breaks, and what kind of charity that is, a little later on. In the meantime, if you’re still mad about taxes, scroll through this little demo on the scale of economic inequality and get back to me.
One comment that’s not about taxes: Virginia Parker spoke on behalf of the San Marcos River Foundation. Basically:
Everyone is freaked out by the river and parks right now
The summer was so hot, the river is so low, the parks are so overused
We desperately need more park staff and marshalls. (These are her words. I’m not totally clear on what the marshalls do.)
We should have paid parking with free passes for residents to help offset costs
Only remaining vegetation are those fenced off Habitat Protection areas, and keeping that vegetation is crucial to keeping the river clear
We’re spending a bunch of money to promote tourism, but with the river in its current state, that’s kinda irresponsible.
Item 13: The 2024 $315 million dollar city budget.
It takes 9 months to birth a budget. Here’s the basic timeline:
At the workshop last January, Council came up with their goals that are supposed to shape the whole process:
They are all important, but public safety was the one that council really hammered, over and over again. “Public safety” can mean so many different things to different people! Do we mean lifting people out of poverty? Do we mean vocational training for ex-offenders as they transition to private life? Do we mean hiring more cops? (We definitely mean hiring more cops.)
The budget has a ton of moving parts, obviously. Here’s the bird’s eye view of the whole thing:
Here are the major points that were emphasized:
Note:
The compensation study is to help us retain city staff. This is important – high turnover is incredibly expensive. Also, it’s just good manners to compensate people fairly.
The Human Services Advisory Board money is the money that the city gives to local nonprofits.
New city hall: there’s a state law that you can’t borrow money for a city hall building. (It’s wild what the state legislature will micro-manage.) So if your city hall was built in 1975 and you’ve outgrown it, you have to sock money away under a mattress until 2075, when you’ll be able to afford your new city hall.
Capital Improvements Program: this just means city projects and repairs. Fix the stormwater drainage in this neighborhood, add in sidewalks over there, etc.
So is this a good budget? Does it achieve those five goals? I don’t know!
Last year, city staff presented Council with 2 similar plans, and they debated them. Would we go with 59.3¢ or 60.3¢ tax rate? Would we use the extra $700K on cops and firefighters? Last year, Chief Stephens and Chief Standridge came in person to plea for personnel. This made it easier for me to understand those aspects of the budget being discussed.
This year, there was just one budget and just one tax rate proposed. No debates. No lingering questions posed. City council basically didn’t say anything besides thanking staff for their hard work. (And I listened to most of the workshops, and never heard much arguing there, either.) There are two possibilities:
Staff is just great. They’re producing top notch budgets, and there’s not much to argue about.
No one on council has strong feelings about these things, and no one has an angle to dig in and get heated up about anything.
Probably both are true? It’s very hard to figure out what people are thinking when no one says anything substantive.
The 60.3¢ rate is the same as last year. Of course, inflation’s been a thing. So how much are taxes going up?
The average home went from $294K to $338K, so the average homeowner’s city property taxes are going from $1,686 in 2023 to $1,949 in 2024.
Details:
(Now, this is only part of your tax bill. You also pay SMCISD and Hays property taxes.)
Let’s talk about the (15,000). That’s the homestead exemption. In other words, you get a 15K discount before we charge you property tax. This was created in 2022. It also gave seniors and people with disabilities a 35K deduction.
Was this a big deal? Yes and no:
It costs us about $1.1 million dollars, out of $315 million budget, to do so. Every home owner in San Marcos gets to evenly split $1.1 million dollars. None of them think that they just got a $90 bonus check from the city, but they did.
Here’s the thing: We spend $550K on funding various nonprofits around town. (This is the whole Human Services Advisory Board thing.) We hem and haw and dole out $15K here and $25K there, and make nonprofits put in a ton of work for little amounts of money.
At the same time, we spend twice as much on charity to people who own their own homes as we spend on all other nonprofits, combined. San Marcos is 75% renters! That handout is only going to 25% of the population!
Some home owners are rich. Others are definitely not. Being house-poor is definitely a real thing, and we need to help house-poor home owners. All I want is for the homestead exemption to feel like the city sent you a physical $90 check. It should not be invisible.
If I had a magic wand, I’d say that everyone must pay their full tax bill – federal and local – and then any deductions would get mailed back as a refund. Subsidizing the rich should feel as tangible as subsidizing the poor.
(Why not just cure poverty with your magic wand? oh hush.)
…
Items 15-18: Your utility and water rates are going up. I’m sorry. Sort of. Channel your anger towards structural inequality.
For electric, we’re still the cheapest around:
Don’t let anyone ever talk about privatizing public utilities.
Here’s our water rate:
Well, it’s mid, as the kids say.
Staff says that one of our biggest water expenses is a $1.4 million contract with Alliance Regional Water Authority.
I can’t actually find the contract in the budget, so I don’t know what we’re paying yearly:
I see Alliance Water Revenue, but not an expense. (I must be looking in the wrong place, idk.)
What is this contract? Basically, in 2007 we got some funding from the state to build this organization with Kyle, Buda, and the Canyon Regional Water Authority. We drilled 4 wells, and we’re laying a bunch of segments of pipes, and some storage tanks, and a water treatment plant.
Carrizo water needs to be treated – it’s got more minerals and salt in it than surface water or Edwards Aquifer water. But it sounds like there’s a LOT of it. During the Council meeting, staff says that this is supposed to be a 40 year plan for getting us water. I can’t find that promise written down anywhere though.
Either way: water rights are going to be a big, messy fight coming up in the future. It’s good that we’ve got at least somewhat of a plan.
…
Along with water and electric, there’s also garbage and recycling:
and also a Community Enhancement Fee:
So if I’m ballparking all that, your rates for all these services is going from:
58.20+49.27+28.80+1.5 = $137.77
to
59.43+51.71+29.66+2.35 = $143.15
So your monthly bill is going up $5.38.
(This isn’t exactly right, because I don’t know how much electricity and water the average household uses each month. I have to assume the city gave us monthly quantities.)(They actually mentioned the total increase at one point, but I missed it, and now I can’t find it.)
Full disclosure: the Utility Assistance application form is a little intimidating, at least to me. It is not Community Action’s fault that their application is cumbersome. It’s the culmination of a maze-like system of scrabbling for peanuts that we impose on nonprofits.
When I say my fantasy is a strong social safety net, my fantasy is also that it will be very easy to use.
…
There were two moments that I want to share:
The vote to raise the utility rate by 5%:
Yes: Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason, Jude Prather No: Shane Scott and Saul Gonzalez Absent: Matthew Mendoza, Alyssa Garza.
WHOOPS. It takes four votes to pass. So since Matthew Mendoza and Alyssa Garza were absent, it failed.
You could practically hear City Manager Stephanie Reyes’ stomach plummet through the floor, although she is the most poised person on the planet. She politely explained that we’ve now blown a giant hole in the budget, and we’ll need to revise it, and that we may need a special session in order to get everything passed by October 1st.
With that, Shane Scott offered to switch his vote, which I’m sure was a massive relief. He explained that he just reflexively is a “no” on rate hikes, but didn’t actually want all those consequences to come crashing down.
The re-vote:
Yes: Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason, Jude Prather, Shane Scott No: Saul Gonzalez Absent: Matthew Mendoza, Alyssa Garza.
Phew.
Matthew Mendoza was absent during the utilities conversation, but he arrived in time for the Community Enhancement Fee conversation. This is small, but it irritated me:
Matthew asked, “What if an evicted person decides to throw all their stuff all over their front yard? Can this fee help with that kind of thing?”
Listen: don’t phrase it like that. A yard full of possessions is mostly a sign that someone’s problems are too big for them, and I don’t mean the landlord.
Also, it’s just plain wrong. Evicted people don’t throw all their stuff all over their front yard. Evicted people just left their stuff exactly where it was, and did not move it one inch. Someone else got mad – like an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend – and threw out their stuff, or the landlord moved it all to the curb.
(The answer was no, Matthew, you cannot use this money for that purpose, why would public money be used to help landlords clean up after tenants.)
This is the same problem that happened with the La Cinema studio over the aquifer last year: by the time the public hears about something and has time to organize and respond, the development agreement has already sailed through Council.
With the SMART Terminal, the developer does still need more approvals. The new land isn’t yet zoned Heavy Industrial. So there are still intervention points. But the foundation has been set, and it’s very frustrating how quickly the basic agreement gets sealed.
In February, the SMART Terminal went to P&Z to be zoned Heavy Industrial. Because so many community members showed up and spoke at that meeting, P&Z delayed the vote a month, to give the developer time to meet with neighbors and gain their buy-in.
The speakers this week described how the meetings are going. It sounds like the developers are being giant pricks about meeting with neighbors, let alone gaining their buy-in.
When they finally met, the neighbors learned some interesting things. First, recall that SMART stands for San Marcos Air Rail Transit. It’s located right where the airport, railway – and unfortunately the river – all meet.
Anyway, here’s what the developers said to the neighbors:
There’s no rail. There’s not going to be any rail. The developers haven’t reached out to the railroad company and have no intention of incorporating the railroad into any of the five stages to be built.
There’s no air traffic, either. And no plan for any future airport tie-in.
So basically they’re planning a 2000 acre truck loading and unloading industrial site, right on the river? It’s gone from SMART to SMT? (Maybe the R was supposed to stand for River. The San Marcos All runs down to the River Terminal. Wheeeee.)
In response, the developers say, “Look, back in 2018, council told us this was the right place for heavy industrial.”
But let’s check that for a second: – First off, in 2018, it was 900 acres, and now it’s 2000 acres. – Second, clearly in 2018, the whole point was that the airport is right next to the railroad. Otherwise, you’re just building a massive industrial complex on the river.
So as best I can tell, that is the plan: a massive industrial complex on the river. This really seems to be a terrible idea. Unfortunately, this council (minus Alyssa) really has heart eyes for corporations.
…
Items 16 and 18: Starting on next year’s budget.
Council and department heads had a big two day workshop, where they envisioned the city for the next year in broad terms. This statement is the result, and it’s supposed to be the starting point for the new budget.
Here’s what they came up with:
Each of those has 5 or 6 sub-points, and then each of those has another 2-3 sub-sub-points. So for example, under Quality of Life & Sense of Place, it says:
The whole thing is pretty long. If you’re curious, read it all here. That document is supposed to be the scaffolding for the actual budget, which gets built over the spring and summer.
As for last Tuesday, there was not much more additional discussion. Max Baker spoke during the public hearing portion, and made some points: – Weren’t you all going to do an Equity-based budget through a DEI lens? – Annexing distant neighborhoods blows a hole in your future budget. As soon as they’re built, you have to provide fire/EMS/PD, as well as utilities, and it costs more to staff new far-flung firehouses than you’re bringing in with taxes. Sprawl is expensive for the city. – Budgets are moral documents.
These are all good points!
Alyssa asks her colleagues to consider a participatory budget process next year. Get the community involved. This would be great. Maybe CONA reps could solicit input from their neighborhoods, and then contribute ideas when Council puts together their strategic goals.
(Because I’m a pessimistic jerk, I can also imagine neighborhoods coming up with goals that I’d find awful, like “let’s keep poor people far, far away.” So there need to be checks and balances.)
Last time, we did a deep dive. Here is the executive summary:
Option A: Drop the property tax rate to 59.3¢ from 60.3¢. On average, each household saves $24 for the year. Budget is $700,000 less.
Option B: Keep the property tax rate at 60.3¢. Use the extra $700,000 to pay for six new public safety employees, split up as four fire-fighters and two police officers.
Mayor Hughson, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, and Mark Gleason are all Option B. They all cheer for public safety.
Max Baker, Alyssa Garza, and Saul Gonzalez are all Option A.
Max and Alyssa both represent constituents who are highly skeptical of cops. (hi!) Their basic argument is that more cops does not automatically mean more public safety.
Saul’s reason is different: he is unwilling to put the $24 increase on struggling home owners. He shares that his mother worked at Texas State as a maid when he was growing up, and she’d have to go to financing companies to cover her taxes. His sympathy lies with the most struggling home owners.
The Vote: Should we adopt the budget with the extra $700K? Yes: Mayor Hughson, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, and Mark Gleason No: Max Baker, Alyssa Garza, and Saul Gonzalez
That was so fast! So we’re done? Ha, no. We’re never done. But this time, we’re really not done.
Here’s the problem: the tax rate is a separate vote from the budget. Aaaaaaaannnnd…by Texas state law, the tax rate must pass with a 60% majority. Council needs 5 votes now, to establish the 60.3¢ tax rate. And of course, there were only four “yes” votes above.
Either Max, Alyssa, or Saul has to flip to “yes”, or Council has to go back and undo the budget they just approved.
So now we dig into the deeper arguments, from SMPD Chief Standridge and Fire Chief Stephens.
Chief Standridge’s argument is basically this:
There are a lot of public safety things we can do without more cops, and we’re doing them. (I went over this last time, here.)
You need cops for in-progress, violent 911 calls. There is no public safety alternative. You just need cops for that. We don’t have enough. I need officers specifically to respond to violent-in-progress-911 calls.
Max and Alyssa both concede the first point. They both praise his efforts to be an ally to progressives. He’s worked hard to form this allegiance, and they are right to recognize it.
For this one, narrow context (responding to in-progress-violent-911-calls), I do want SMPD to hire extra cops. I want faster response times to these calls. Standridge says they’re around 8.5 minutes long, and it should be 5 minutes.
Max and Alyssa’s other points are much weaker:
Max argues that it’s hypocritical that cops were so indifferent to safety when it came to wearing masks during covid, but now they need more cops. This is just irrelevant. Yes, cops should have worn masks, and yes, cops died unnecessarily of covid. Either way. right now, we need cops to answer 911 calls.
Alyssa argues that it’s irresponsible to pay for more personnel when we’re doing such a miserable job reaching out to our most vulnerable citizens for feedback and conversations. This is also true, but you can apply it to absolutely any proposal. Government would grind to a halt if we held it to that standard. Public outreach to the most vulnerable citizens is incredibly important, but also incredibly hard.
Chief Standridge says that San Marcos is more dangerous than Georgetown, Kyle, New Braunfels. There’s something called the Violent Crime Index, which is the number of violent crimes per 10K residents. Here’s how we stack up:
Georgetown: 12.4 Kyle: 17.4 New Braunfels: 24.5 San Marcos: 53.5 Statewide: 44.4
Max and Alyssa both question the methodology of that index. But I don’t think their criticisms hold water. I can believe that this statistic is shoddy or inflated, but whatever problems it has, it’s going to affect all those cities, not just San Marcos. It wouldn’t make San Marcos look specifically worse in comparison.
Fundamentally, Max and Alyssa are never going to vote for more cops, because they see it as betraying their constituents. That is fine!
But we still have to pass a budget, and Saul isn’t budging, either.
Next up: Fire Chief Les Stephens.
Fire Chief Les Stephens sounds like he’s about to quit. In a nutshell, “I really resent having to grovel in front of you all. You make me grovel every year. We’ve been underfunded since I took over 13 years ago. I used to think the old chief wasn’t good at his job, but now I realize you put him in that position. I will not be groveling here next year.”
Which brings us to the most absurd moment of the evening, at 1:39:00. Saul Gonzalez attacks Chief Stephens on the flimsiest of pretexts, and then Saul just doubles down and digs in his heels. It just keeps going. It’s so bizarre and inappropriate.
Saul asks Chief Stephens about a $45K charge for landscaping, a few years back. Chief Stephens answers that they do their own landscaping, and that the contract is soil and mowing, and the costs are on par with the rest of the city buildings.
Saul says – and this is a quote – “I just want to know what you value. What’s more important? More fire personnel, or keep your grass looking really nice?” Chief Stephens is like, “Facility maintenance is a council priority. You all literally make me.” Saul cuts him off, saying, “Well, I don’t want to pay $45K for that.”
But Saul is not done! Next, Saul asks if they get fancy firetrucks with bells and whistles, and Stephens is like, “No. Mid-range. Like you all told me to get.”
Jane admonishes Saul for not asking those questions back at the time, and Saul says he did. (If Saul did, it was super out of character for him.)
It’s very weird to see Saul being such a jerk!
Actually, that’s not quite right. Saul seems is acting like someone who is running for re-election, and hasn’t said a word in three years, and is now trying to say a whole lot of words. Way too many words.
Detour over!
So here we are: Either Max, Alyssa, or Saul has to flip to “yes”, or we go back to the old budget.
It’s time to vote. Drum roll …Saul reiterates that he’s looking at the budget hard, but that he’ll change his vote, and support the 60.3¢ rate. “But I’m going to keep an eye on you guys!” he says ominously.
The Vote: Yes: Mayor Hughson, Jude Prather, Mark Gleason, Shane Scott, and Saul Gonzalez No: Alyssa Garza and Max Baker
The budget has passed.
For the rest of the night, LMC relentlessly teased Saul about that line – “I’m going to keep an eye on you guys!” – every chance she got. And I enjoyed it every time.
One final note, for the wonkiest of municipal nerds
Before the first vote, Max Baker asked why he hasn’t heard about his question on the appraisal lawsuits over MLS data. Max has brought this up many times. Based on this, I assumed that the appraisal district was being sued for artificially inflating home prices. I assumed that the appraisers aren’t allowed to use MLS data to appraise houses, because it would be unfair to home owners, and now they were being sued for it.
Jane Hughson replies that she did get a response from the appraisal people, and she reads it on the spot. It says, more or less, “It was legal for us to use the methods that we used.”
Max gets frustrated that she hadn’t asked them the specific question he wanted to know: “Are they being sued for using MLS data?”
Jane Hughson just goes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
The thing is, the letter does answer Max’s question. The answer is, “Maybe we’re being sued, maybe not, but we’re on firm legal ground.”
So finally I went and looked up the lawsuit. It’s not about appraisals being too high. It’s about MLS being private data. The MLS people are suing because they don’t want the appraisal district to use their data.
There’s just no smoking gun here, and not one that benefits the community in any way that I can discern.
Items 21, 24, and 25: If you want to understand the budget, it’s probably worth going back and listening to the August 18th budget workshop. But I’ll do my best.
First off: it all comes down to property taxes. Property taxes are steep. But let’s zoom out for a second:
Most of San Marcos rents. Indirectly, property taxes get passed on to renters, but that’s not the main reason rent goes up. Rents have gone up because landlords realized they could get away with it. When we talk about property taxes, we’re mostly ignoring renters.
Texas taxes are regressive. Poor people pay 10.9% of their income in taxes, whereas the wealthiest people pay 3.1% of their income in taxes. Details here.
Texas could do a lot to alleviate poverty. For example:
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. But we don’t choose to do so.
So: do property taxes force people from their homes? In one sense, yes. A $5000 tax bill is huge, and it can be the final straw, for a financially precarious person or family.
So should we be mad about property taxes? No. Poverty forces people from their homes. Be mad at the state and national elected officials who are complacent about poverty. Do not misplace your anger about poverty onto property taxes.
We should work hard to keep property taxes from being the final straw that forces anyone out of their home. But the actual problem is not the local property taxes themselves.
Let’s break down property taxes:
Last year, the city had a property tax rate of 60.3¢ per $100. Let’s say you have a house, you lucky home-owner. Now, city taxes aren’t the only property taxes you pay. Total, you would have paid $2.0492 per $100 of value. (Source.) Then that gets divvied up between the city, SMCISD, the county, and the special roads district.
Say your house was worth $250,000. Then you paid $5123 in taxes. It breaks down like so:
$ 2868.88 to SMCISD (56%)
$ 1485.67 to the city of San Marcos (29%)
$ 717.22 to Hays County (14%)
$ 51.23 to Special Roads District (1%)
So far, so good.
The problem is that home prices went through the roof last year, right?
Suppose your $250K house is now appraised at $400K. You should not freak out! First of all, the state of Texas caps the increase for property taxes at 10%. So you aren’t going to be taxed on $400K. The most you could get taxed on is $250,000 x 1.1 = $275,000.
Second, the city has a homestead exemption. If you live in your house (as opposed to renting it out), then you can file the paperwork and get a deduction for $15,000. So instead of getting taxed on $275,000, you’re now getting taxed on $260,000. Fine. (If you’re a senior citizen or have a disability, you can get another $35,000 taken off.)
The city has boiled it down to two scenarios:
They could charge you the same rate, 60.3¢ per $100, and this time you’d pay them $1567.80, based on your house being worth $260,000.
They could charge you one penny less, 59.3¢ per $100, and you’d pay $1541.80.
The city has drawn up a budget based on 59.3¢ per $100. The big issues are:
What’s in the 59.3¢ budget?
What would be done with the extra penny, if we went for the 60.3¢ rate?
What’s in the 59.3¢ budget?
Obviously, everything is in it. It’s a budget. That said, they emphasized a few things in the presentation:
Personnel challenges: We’re terribly understaffed, across the board, and it leads to burn out and people taking jobs elsewhere, which perpetuates the problem. So, personnel challenges. The budget includes a 5% raise for all non-civil service employees. (Ie, the less highly paid public employees.) Everyone gets a one-time retention incentive. Funding for an additional 47 positions (2 funded from elsewhere).
Additional funding for CASA, GSMP/Splash co-working, art center
Squirrel some money away for future City Hall. (There’s a state law that you can’t borrow money to fund you city hall, and the voters will never approve a bond for a new city hall building. So you have to squirrel money away for it.) (Which is actually financially not great, but there you have it.)
All the regular business as usual, of course: CIP projects, parks, planning department, utilities, police, fire department, municipal courts, etc.
What would be done with the extra penny?
If rates are 60.3¢ per $100, then the city will bring in an extra $700,000 with this. According to the city presentation, the average house is worth $245,197, after all the deductions and everything.
– At 59.3¢ , city taxes would be $1,454.02 – At 60.3¢, city taxes would be $1,478.54
So, a difference of $24 per household, on average.
The $700K would be used for six new positions, which could be either fire fighters or police officers.
Mayor Hughson suggests going for the 60.3¢ rate and letting staff decide how the six positions should be split between SMPD and fire fighters.
Alyssa Garza says she’ll vote against the 60.3¢ rate until she’s consulted with more community members.
Shane Scott says he wants the 60.3¢ rate, and he specifically wants 3 firefighters and 3 cops.
Saul Gonzalez is in favor of the 60.3¢ rate.
Jude Prather is in favor of the 60.3¢ rate.
Max Baker is opposed. Largely, he argues that having more cops does not make us safer. Instead, it increases petty citations. He criticizes the outreach efforts of “playing basketball” and instead wants to see more town halls and more data driven discussions.
Max is way off on that last point. “Playing basketball” is shorthand for taking time to build trust and relationships with teenagers in neighborhoods. This is how you begin to counteract the cop mindset that young men are all potential criminals. Cops and young adults need to have healthy, non-punitive interactions and build relationships.
Max Baker says two other things: we should be reviewing officer duties and seeing what can be removed. (I like this!) And he praises the presentations that Chief Standridge has given at the Criminal Justice Reform committee meetings.
Mark Gleason’s take is interesting. He feels tortured over the decision, but comes out against the 60.3¢ rate, at this point. His neighbors are getting forced out of their homes due to property taxes. (Later, he’ll change his mind. But his angst is real.)
Mayor Hughson says she’s also worried, but this is a $24 difference. That’s $2 a month.
Chief Stephens and Chief Standridge both get a chance to plea their cases.
Fire Chief Les Stephens talks:
In 2009, 46% of the city was outside of the effective coverage area of all the fire stations
He’s relocated firestations and done his best, but with the growth, etc, it’s still just slightly lower than 46%
Worst part: far northern part.
Firestation 5 is the northern most station. Blanco Vista plus Whisper Tract.
Currently, it takes 15 minutes and 10 seconds to get from Firestation #5 to the deepest part of Blanco Vista. That’s the best case scenario.
If Firestation #5 out on any other call, Station #1 downtown is the next best. It will take them 21-22 minutes, in a best case scenario.
I know you know where Blanco Vista is, but look: it’s not close.
Sprawl is a really big problem! It takes 15 minutes to get to someone having a heart attack in the upper corner of that blue region!
And in this VERY SAME MEETING, we approve the little development by the Hays Power Plant, discussed here:
Equally far away, but in the opposite direction. WHY?!? The Chief just said he needs 27 firefighters to cover the existing city, and we’re funding three of them. The problem is the sprawl!
A few other points from Chief Stephens:
Insurance rates are tied to ratings. If our PPC safety rating goes down, everyone’s insurance goes up. So saving $24/year in taxes could cost you more in insurance, later on.
We want to buy a run down beater firetruck to use as a blocker, on I-35 or any time traffic is blocked, so that they can use their expensive trucks for calls. Takes 1 person to staff instead of 3. Seems like a good idea!
Next, Chief Standridge talks about SMPD:
Philosophically, can a police chief be progressive? Or are they doomed because they’re trapped in a toxic culture? I don’t know. But if it’s possible, Chief Standridge is making an appealing case.
He validates everything that Max says. He agrees that more cops don’t equal less crime, and he builds a case that we are already implementing the crime-reduction things that don’t require extra officers:
Since he got here:
Implementing intelligence-led policing (I love names like this that insult the alternative. What exactly had we been doing before?)
Build an intranet database of everything a cop might need to know
Twice-monthly collaborative crime meets to work on highest repeat offenders and highest repeat call locations (This is really important.)
Stopped sending officers to minor crashes that do not result in injury
Stopped sending officers to child custody calls. The idea is to keep custody disputes in family court, and out of criminal court.
So, to Max’s point about looking to see what duties can be removed, Chief Standridge is saying we are doing that.
Doing some kind of big legwork thing to keep high-repeat violent offenders locked up
Redid the downtown unit. During the afternoon and evening, they serve as a Crime Reduction Unit – preventative violent crime measures. Then they head downtown as the town square heats up.
Re-imagining mental health. Next week someone from some state org will come in to help re-invent how we respond to mental health and our behavioral advisory team
Homeless outreach team. We have 5 members focused on homeless help. Not issuing citations.
Used to have 1 internal affairs manager. Now we have 4 internal affairs investigators, all with state training. (I do NOT approve! Misconduct should be reviewed by external, independent investigators. But still, 4 is better than 1.)
Extra officers needed for in-progress violent 911 calls. Right now, it takes 8.5 minutes to get there, on average. Takes 3 minutes just to find an available officer. We need 10 officers.
Civilian liaisons: this is a new program where SMPD will hire regular civillians to take incident reports and direct traffic, and free up cops to do cop-things. (I am worried about George Zimmerman types being attracted to this job.)
Chief Standridge’s bottom line is that he’d like four more officers to respond in-progress violent 911 calls, and three to work on community outreach. If the $700K goes through, he’d probably get three new hires towards 911 calls.
Council discussion:
Shane Scott asks the cutting questions: SHOULD POLICE OFFICERS BE REQUIRED TO HAVE COLLEGE DEGREES???
Standridge cries, “no! We can incentivize it, but please don’t reduce our applicant pool!”
Saul asks if annexation cause problems?
Standridge answers: “We’re doing a cost study to answer that.” (But seriously. How could it not?!)
Mark Gleason says he’s now in favor of the 60.3¢ rate, after all.
Saul Gonzales says he’s in favor of the 6 new positions, at the 59.3 tax rate.
Jane Hughson tells him he can’t do that. The six new positions come from the 60.3¢ rate. It’s a package deal.
Saul says he’s doing it anyway! He’s in favor of cops, firefighters, and lower taxes, and opposed to staking out unpopular positions. Gotta love Saul-on-the-campaign-trail.
The vote on the budget: Yes: Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason, Jude Prather, Shane Scott No: Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzalez, Max Baker
Alyssa reiterates that her intent is to find out more from the community, and then base her decision on that. So here’s my two cents:
At the moment, I have a fairly high degree of trust in Stephanie Reyes, Chief Standridge, and Chief Stephens. So I’m mildly in favor of the 60.3¢ rate, although I won’t be heartbroken if we decide against it.
…….
Item 22: Stormwater Rates
We have $25 million of flood projects to be done. We have about $6 million so far. They are proposing raising stormwater rates to help pay for a little more of it. If you have a small house (less than 2000 sq feet), your rates would go up $10/year.
Increase stormwater rates?
Yes: Alyssa Garza, Shane Scott, Max Baker, Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason No: Saul Gonzalez Absent: Jude Prather
It feels like Saul is being weaselly for re-election. What is this.
Item 23: Trash and recycling
Here they will probably not raise rates. There’s some 3% surcharge that we’re contractually obligated for, but the recommended rate hike above that will get voted down.
This was a big, important meeting. Here are the items I’m categorizing as Top Tier Importance:
The 21-22 budget
Rate increases for various utilities and setting the property tax rate for the next year
School Resource Officers
GSMP
I’ll start tackling these, and split it into separate posts if need be.
As an aside: this meeting ran until 1:05 AM on Wednesday morning. Wouldn’t it be nice if they adjourned at 10 pm, and reconvened on Wednesday evening for the last three hours? A well-rested councilmember is a happy councilmember, maybe?
Item 21: Proposed Fiscal Year 21-22 Budget
The budget is one of these items which is very difficult for me to weigh in on and analyze. I don’t have years experience to compare this to. I did not watch the workshop in August where they sliced and diced it more finely. So for now, I’m mostly observing and not analyzing. The total city budget is $259 million.
There not many substantial questions. Shall we make the budget available to the public in infographic form? Should departments notify council for budget adjustments? Sure, sure. Controversial details were hashed out already. Aside from one: there are a number of rate increases which will be voted on in the next few items, however.
2. Items 22-25: Rate hikes for waterwastewater, electric, drainage, and solid waste.
Several rate increases for the utility funds: water, electric, drainage utility solid waste. All votes passed the hikes with a 4-3 vote, with Commissioners Scott, Garza, and Gonzalez voting against the hikes.
The total rates average $100/year increase per household. Commissioner Scott made the case that this is a pandemic year and we should wait and double the rate increase next year. Gleason sensibly points out that these projects desperately need funding. Mayor Hughson also pointed out that saving the hike for a year and having to hit households with a doubly large hike isn’t necessarily best for anyone, either.
In my opinion, this is an “ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” situation. Keep your utilities maintained and running smoothly, lest ye run up a boatload of catastrophic expenses when a disaster strikes.
Of course I’m sympathetic to people in poverty being asked to contribute an extra $10/month. I would much prefer it if we had a progressive tax code instead of regressive one. But with utilities, it is scaled by usage, and it is worthwhile to incentivize reduction of water and electricity. Let’s keep utilities solvent via rate hikes, and then be generous with a social safety net. (Granted, we are depressingly stingy with the social safety net. But still. This is not the place to make up the difference.)
Item 26: Overall property tax rate for the coming year.
So, this is a bit math-heavy. Let’s see if I can keep it simple. The state of Texas caps how much a city can raise it’s property tax rate. By that, our upper bound tax rate is $0.7554 per $100 of property value. We are staying well below that, no worries.
Next up is the No New Revenue rate, where the city brings in the same amount as last year. This is set at $0.603 per $100. Now, the city has a bunch of properties that weren’t taxed last year. Those new properties will bring in $1.4 million under this tax rate, and so all existing properties actually get a tax break, which totals about $300K less than last year.
Finally there’s a penny deduction, which is discussed at length. Can we run the city on a tax rate of $0.593, instead of $0.603? On average, this will save each household $17. It costs the city about $600K to drop down.
They’ve prepared both a $0.593 and a $0.603 budget. So what gets cut? Six new positions for the police department. The city tells us that the extra $600K will pay for three traffic officers and three 911 dispatchers. So there’s the rub: lower taxes or fund the police? (As a dedicated lefty, I took a moment to relish the sheer poetry of making conservative commissioners pick between these choices.)
Commissioner Gleason was the first to wring his hands over this. He tries to find the $600K out of the CIP budget, but those projects aren’t actually paid for out of the current year, and so next year’s budget doesn’t do us any good right now. Commissioner Gonzalez tries to raid development impact fees, but that also can’t be redistributed for this use.
Commissioner Scott suggests that we use traffic ticket revenue, which pisses me off. That is exactly the kind of counter-incentive that leads to aggressive over-policing of minority communities. (Commissioner Baker makes that point in rebuttal.)
Chief Dandridge is invited to weigh in. I find him to be measured and thoughtful at these meetings. He says that we have 3200 car crashes per year, and a high number of young drivers, and every crash is time-consuming. Most cities have dedicated traffic officers to deal with accidents. As to the 911 dispatchers, we are covering a larger area than just the city and the staffing hasn’t increased since 2013, but our calls have gone up a lot.
Commissioner Baker weighs in. He’s okay with the 911 dispatchers but questions the need for more police officers, and points out that this is not the best way to reduce car crashes. He advocates for redesigning dangerous intersections and implementing a Slow Streets project, where streets are designed in a way that drivers automatically reduce their speed. (I am also a fan of these solutions.)
Commissioner Gleason again wrings his hand over this choice: Safety! But lower taxes! But safety! But lower taxes! You can see the smoke coming out his ears.
Commissioner Derrick speaks up. She agrees with Baker on the alternate solutions for safety, but points out that those take years, and we need to provide health, safety, and welfare now. (This is basically where I land, too. Traffic cops can be abusive or they can be a benefit to society. I don’t know which they will be, but the solution is not necessarily not to have officers available for car crashes.)
Finally it’s time. Mayor Hughson makes a motion to lower the tax rate to $0.593 …and no one seconds it! I was not expecting that! Exciting times.
So they vote on the original proposal of $0.603, which would fund the traffic cops and dispatchers.
For: Baker, Derrick, Gonzalez, Gleason, and Mayor Hughson. Against: Garza, Scott.
……..
Let’s stop here, and we can save SROs and GSMP for the next post.
The San Marxist 