Tag: budget

Hours 0:00-2:00

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Items 20-21: The ’22-’23 yearly budget.

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.

Hours 0:00-3:44

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is blanco-vista-e1662829554528.jpg

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.

September 7th City Council Meeting (Part 1)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

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?

  1. 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.