Tag: can ban

Hours 1:00 – 1:57, 2/20/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 17:  you may have heard of this gasoline station?

They want to come to San Marcos. 

Specifically, here:

Even more specifically here:

It’s going to have all your Buc-ees features that you know you love:

120 gas pumps, some electric vehicle charging stations, massive travel center, endless Buc-ees themed gear, etc. You know the drill.

There’s going to be some extra roads:

This is a good location.  It’s not in any floodplain, it’s not over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, nor any other sort of environmentally sensitive zone.  It’s good for traffic, too, because there are off-ramps and on-ramps right there. Southbound I-35 traffic can get in and out, without having to wait at any traffic lights.

…

So now the bargaining begins. What can they offer us? What can we offer them?

They’re offering a minimum of 175 stable jobs:

Just to be clear, $18/hour puts you at $36K per year.   That is above the federal poverty rate for a family of four, but it does not exactly leave you any breathing room. It’s a hell of a lot better than our $7.25/hour  joke of a minimum wage, though.

The benefits are meaningful – health care, 401K with matching contributions, 3 weeks paid vacation.  They’re not doing the asshole move of scheduling everyone for 35 hours/week in order to avoid having to pay for healthcare.  

Environmentally, they’re offering to install an oil-water separator to handle the runoff from the fueling area.

Virginia Parker, the director of the San Marcos River Foundation, had a recommendation: include a clause in the contract to require regular maintenance inspections of the oil-water separator on a regular basis.   

Take her advice, Council!!  Systems need maintenance! Don’t just let things degrade over the next 50 years.

(Council ignored this.)

So what do they want from us?

Background: businesses pay both property taxes and sales tax. 
– Property tax rate: 0.063 cents per $100 appraised.
– Sales tax rate: 1.5 cents per dollar. 

The deal is that Buc-ees would pay all of their property taxes, but only half the sales tax, for 15 years.   

Here’s what the fiscal analysis predicts:

So we stand to bring in a lot, but we’re also giving a lot away. 

Let’s just do some quick back-of-the-envelope math.  If Buc-ees expects to pay $188K in sales tax in the first year, that means they’re expecting to bring in over $25 million in sales, from this one store, that first year.  Over the whole 15 years, we’re rebating them $3.2 million. That implies they’re expecting to earn $426.7 million in sales, at this location alone. 

Bottom line: Sure, it’s in our best interest to give up this $188K so that we can get the bigger revenue. But they’re not struggling to keep the lights on. This isn’t a feel-good grant to a struggling mom-and-pop shop.

One other note: 

This is not in SMCISD.  Your local schools won’t see that money. Is Hays ISD a perfectly nice place? Sure. But it’s vast and stretches up to Austin, and it’s mostly not San Marcos, which is what this Council represents. Probably 98% of the kids in San Marcos are zoned for SMCISD.

One more interesting detail:  The EDSM board  is the Economic Development of San Marcos Board.  They took a look at this project at the end of last year, and they recommended a 10 year rebate.  But then it got changed to a 15 year rebate.  Why?  

Shane Scott asks this very question, later on:  Why was 10 years not okay? 
The Buc-ee’s rep says: This is our standard Chapter 380 agreement! If you want 10 years, we need a bigger rebate. Or if you want 20 years, we’d take a smaller rebate. You’re getting the standard package!

Saul asks: Would you stay if it was 10 years at 50%?
Answer: Yeah, no.  We’d walk.

Mmhmm. 

Saul asks: What about part-time employees?
Answer: We pride ourselves on having a maximal number of fulltime employees.

Saul: Is your customer base going to be local people or I-35 traffic?
Answer: We think it will be 80% out-of-towners.  Our business model is that we’re a road trip stop.  Shouldn’t affect local convenience stores or gas stations.

Matthew Mendoza asks about trash and recycling.
Answer:  We are aggressive recyclers! We do as much as we can! 

Matthew also asks if this is actually a truck stop?
Answer: Nope! No 18-wheelers except for the ones delivering things to the store.

Alyssa asks about benefits for employees?
Answer: 3 weeks vacation, health care after 60 days, and a 401K with 100% match up to 6%.

Those are all reasonable.

Jane Hughson asks one of the city staff to talk about programs for local small businesses, and he rattles off a dozen small programs. You can get coaching, you can get grants to replace your awning, you can get a grant if you want to do something environmentally friendly, that kind of thing. (That is the extent to which City Council heard and placated the citizen comment complaints.)

Jude Prather is super stoked.  This sends a message that San Marcos is OPEN FOR BUSINESS! 

Mark Gleason praises the choice of location for traffic and environmental reasons, which is fair.  He says he’s a little uneasy about the 15 years, and wouldn’t have agreed to it if they also were getting property taxes back. Also fair.  He compliments them on their fair employment practices and reiterates Jude’s OPEN FOR BUSINESS line.

The vote:

This will come back around next time for a final vote.  

I know I sound a little grumpy here. I’m not saying Buc-ee’s is a bad corporation. They seem like nice people. They seem like they make an effort to treat their employees well and do more than the bare minimum for the environment.  

Here’s what I’m saying:  In Texas, we allow corporations to get away with staggeringly awful behavior. So when a company comes along and doesn’t treat their hourly employees like utter dog shit, we fall all over ourselves with shock and awe.  What heroes! They pay $36K a year!  You can go to a doctor and take a vacation! 

Excuse me while I sidle away from the wankfest?  Thank you for clearing this extremely low bar of decency?

Bottom line: do I think we should we take this deal with Buc-ees?

Eh, yes. I do.  I’d vote for in favor, if it were up to me.

…

Item 5: THE CAN BAN!

This is the final vote. We’ve been over the go-zones and no-zones, the issue with the coolers, and everything else. (Here, here, here, and here.)

Alyssa Garza mentions again that she’s opposed to the ban on big coolers on the river.  I too think it’s silly, but the “go-zones” ended up being so big that there’s plenty of space for big coolers to hang out. 

Everyone is very gracious and appreciative of staff, and very excited to get this done. 

THE VOTE:

There was an actual burst of applause in the chambers.  Everyone’s super stoked.

Hours 0:00 – 1:30, 2/6/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Uncategorized

Citizen Comment:

  • We just picked land for the fire station that is supposed to cover the SMART Terminal land. Why did we go with the only choice that is outside San Marcos ETJ, and in the Martindale ETJ?
  • Hooray for can ban
  • Hooray for the can ban, but take a closer look at the No Zones and Go Zones please. On a windy day, all that trash is going to blow from the Go Zones into the No Zones.
  • Hooray for bringing back PDDs. Consider charging fees to cover staff time.

I’m also surprised that we’re moving forward with the fire station, although I guess you want to pick out land long before anything gets built. There have not been any public updates on the SMART/Axis Terminal since last summer.

…

Items 3-5: This little triangle at the corner of East McCarty and Rattler Road:

was annexed and zoned.

The plan is for it to be a gas station with car wash along the part facing McCarty, and then a strip mall along the back part that opens onto Rattler Road.  The developer is hoping for things like restaurants, medical offices, some commerce, etc.

There’s a larger context:

this whole dead spot between the high school and the city is supposed to someday turn into a thriving East Village city center.  (According to the Area Plans, which are in progress. This is supposed to accompany VisionSMTX.)

Point being: this is a good spot for a gas station and some commerce.  You have my blessing, Young Developer.

No one really has any questions, and the vote is 6-0. (Mark Gleason is absent for this part.)

…

Item 6: Here comes your can ban!

So first, here are the Riverfront Parks that we’re talking about:

The plan is to carve out “No Zones” and “Go Zones”. 

In a No Zone:
– Only reusable beverage containers
– Only coolers under 30 qts in size
– No containers under 5 oz, which is a little redundant, but we’re just doubling down on jello shots and mini-liquor bottles.

In a Go Zone:
– Go nuts. Have all the single-use beverage containers and giant coolers you want.
– Still no glass or alcohol or charcoal grills, but that’s not new.

So what are the boundaries? 

It’s fuzzy! I thought there’d be a big conversation about it, but nope. None of the councilmembers had anything to say about these boundaries.

Here’s what was provided:

There are some trails to the right of Ramon Lucio park, in the map above. Those would all be No Zones, because there are so many river access points throughout.

Loosely speaking, it sounds like the big trails along the river will be the boundary of the No Zones. If you’re beyond the trails, you can pop that tab. If you’re closer to the river, you can’t.

My 2 cents? This is probably as good a starting point as any. It allows for plenty of big family picnics. The paths are already a big, visible feature, so it makes sense to use them as a boundary.

If we do a great job with the signs and communicate this boundary loud and clear, it’ll probably work. If we half-ass it, it’ll take a lot more effort to get people to change their behavior.

More details:
– It’ll kick in on May 1st
– The first year will be focused on education. Citations, etc won’t really kick in hard until 2025.

At the January workshop, there was a lot of conversation about hiring more staffing. Specifically, are we going to hire city marshals (who dress like cops), or will we hire park rangers (who dress like park rangers)? Nobody discussed this on Tuesday. So it’s still an open question.

Jane Hughson had a few questions, but they were extremely detail oriented – definition of banks of the river, clarity of exemptions for people cleaning up the river, that kind of thing. 

The vote:

YAY for the can ban: everyone
Screw the river: no one.

This was a first vote, so it will come back around next meeting.  But most likely, it’ll be here this summer! 

Bonus! 3 pm Workshops, 1/16/24

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

The Can Ban: let’s hammer out some of the details.

First, Texas State has agreed to put can-ban rules in Sewell Park that match whatever the city comes up with for the River Parks. So that’s good!

Next, there was a long bit on enforcement, by the City Marshal’s office. The City Marshal’s office has two sergeants, eight marshals, and two part-time park rangers. It was basically a big pitch on why we need to hire more marshals.

Here’s the main differences between marshals and park rangers:

  • Marshals can arrest people, park rangers can just give minor citations.
  • Marshals are hired fulltime, park rangers are just hired for the summer.  During the off-peak months (ie during the school year), marshals help out SMPD.
  • Marshals wear blue uniforms and look like cops, park rangers wear green uniforms and look like nerds.  (Kidding! Sorry!)

That last point is the most important one: Marshals wear blue, rangers wear green. 

So when it comes to the can ban, why do we need more Blue, instead of more Green? Here’s what it says on the slide:

Park rangers writing citations isn’t enough? We need law enforcement officers who can arrest people? This is ludicrous.

Alyssa asks if we could hire more park rangers, instead of marshals. She points out that we’re not planning on enforcing the can ban via arrests.

The answer given is that it’s very hard to hire park rangers, because they’re part time. 

Surely the city can invent some sort of, idk, FULL TIME park ranger? If we are interested in finding ways not to over-police this town, we’d reach for Green Uniforms over Blue Uniforms when they’re equally qualified to do the job at hand.

Here’s the plain truth: the City Marshal’s office already wanted more marshals hired. (They said this explicitly.) They are using the can ban as an opportunity to lobby for the marshals they already wanted. It just rings a little phony to pretend that a can ban is a dangerous crisis that can only be solved with more cops.

Mark Gleason feels very strongly in favor of hiring more marshals, regardless of whether or not we pass the can ban. The whole presentation pulled at his heartstrings.

….

A few decision points for Council:

  1.  Should it be a ban on single-use beverages, or all single-use containers?

The consensus is just beverages.  I’m okay with this.  

  1. Should it be on the river alone, or only in the parks, or should it be both river and parks?

Everyone thinks it must include the river.

One possibility is “go zones and no zones” – little carved out areas where you may have single-use beverages, like inside the playground at the children’s park, or inside the fence of the baseball fields, at the pool, or at picnic tables set back from the river.  Everyone is open to the idea of go-zones/no-zones.

Coolers: should we limit cooler size?

No, we shouldn’t. Next question!!

Why would you even? New Braunfels limits cooler size, because they’ve got a tight exit on the river, and giant coolers cause tubing traffic jams. But that’s not our situation. We’ve got large multi-generational families holding large picnics. Are we really going to make Mom/Dad/Aunt/Uncle/Grandma each bring their individual cooler? That seems dumb as shit.

What does council think?

Jane Hughson: This is just another thing to enforce. But why does anyone need a giant cooler?

(See, she’s missing the bit about large groups bringing one big cooler.)

Mark Gleason: Yes on limiting cooler size. 30 quart limit for both river and the parks.

He means this:

So you are not going to be able to bring your big tray of shredded pork for sandwiches, or your tub of potato salad, or much of anything. 

Seriously: this is more about shutting down big family gatherings than about controlling litter. Maybe Council doesn’t intend that, but that’s the effect. It’s kinda racist and classist because the river parks are a free way to have large, inter-generational family gatherings.

Matthew Mendoza: 30 quarts on the river, no restrictions for coolers in the parks.

(I’d be okay with that.)

Alyssa Garza: No restrictions anywhere.

(and this.)

Saul Gonzales: 30 quarts in both the river and the parks.

Jane Hughson: If we say 1 cooler per person, can two people bring a 60 quart cooler?

No one answers.

Jane: Okay, I’ll say 30 quarts in both river and parks, too.

So there you have it: 3-2 for banning big coolers, both in the river and in the parks. (Shane Scott and Jude Prather are both absent.)

Note: the amendment that Alyssa or Matt should offer is to tag coolers to the “go zones”. In go-zones, you can have your big cooler. In no-zones, you can’t.

What about jello shots?

The way New Braunfels banned jello shots was by banning containers that hold less than 5 oz.

Everyone likes this, besides Alyssa, who says she needs to go talk to her constituents.

My two cents: sure, ban the jello shots and mini-liquor bottles. These seem like single use beverage containers to me, anyway. 

When should this go into effect?

Everyone wants to aim for this summer, instead of waiting for 2025. 

The next step is for staff to write up a proposed policy, and bring it to city council for a vote.

WE’RE DOING THIS! STAY TUNED!

Hours 1:51-3:03, 12/5/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 14:  We’re converting some of City Hall to be ACC classrooms. (Discussed here before.)

This will be where the classrooms go:

I love city staff.  But they are crap at selecting useful maps.  Like, would it kill you to include Hopkins as a reference point, on a map of City Hall?

Here’s my supplemental map:

[smugly waits for applause. You’re welcome.]

The idea is that ACC will provide workforce training.  Some people will get free tuition, but they didn’t give much details about who.

…

Item 15: $2 million dollars on vehicles.

You know how I like to try to find photos of the fire trucks or back hoes that we’re buying. But this was a little vague:

“Consider approval of Resolution 2023-198R, approving an agreement with Enterprise Fleet Management, Inc., through the Texas Interlocal Purchasing System (TIPS), to provide for the lease and maintenance of one hundred and eight (108) vehicles for use by several city departments and the purchase of miscellaneous equipment in the estimated amount of $2,115,083.00; authorizing the City Manager, or her designee, to execute the agreement; and declaring an effective date.”

This is 108 vehicles, across a bunch of departments.

Jane Hughson said, “I hadn’t been on board with this, but I suppose I’ve come around.”   But she never said what it is!

Good thing I’ve got mad reading skills. In the packet there’s a link to “Feasibility and Implications of Electric Vehicle (EV) Deployment and Infrastructure Development”.  So I guess we’re upgrading a bunch of city vehicles to be electric. That’s good!

…

One day over the summer, I had some friends down from Austin. They needed to charge their electric car while they were in San Marcos. 

Let me tell you: it was a royal pain in the ass to find a working charger. We tried the library chargers, we tried some near the town square, and finally ended up at Embassy Suites an hour later.  

So maybe increasing the number of electric vehicles in San Marcos will spur investment in some charging stations?  That would also be a good thing.

…

Item 16: IPAWS: Integratred Public Alert & Warning System

This is FEMA’s emergency alert system. Hays County is on it. We’re joining in onto their system.

…

Item 19:  CAN BAN TIME! Or rather, SINGLE USE CONTAINER BAN TIME!

Council discussed a possible can ban back here, or rather a ban on single-use containers, because there’s so much trash in the river. 

We’ve also discussed how badly the river got beat up over the summer. Since then, the Parks & Rec Board came up with their formal recommendation for Council.

Parks Board Recommendation:

  • Ban single use beverage containers
  • Limit cooler size to one 30 quart cooler per person.

Council discussion:

First, Jude Prather weighs in: San Marcos should adopt rules that match New Braunfel’s single-use container ban. It’s really important that the central Texas rivers all have uniform policies.  (At the beginning, Jude’s position seems totally reasonable. By the end, his uniformity shtick starts to seem a little silly.)

One big question is whether or not we can regulate containers on the river. The state says that we can’t.  But New Braunfels and Martindale both have river regulations that are currently upheld by the courts. New Braunfels passed their ban in 2011, but then the courts overturned it in 2014. But then in 2017, a different court reversed the earlier court decision. And Martindale passed theirs in 2018.

Shane Scott:  Can we use the endangered species somehow? Like to get federal protection to regulate containers on the river?

Matthew Mendoza: I was thinking that too! Also we can charge out of town users to use the river.

Alyssa Garza:
– The river is big with large working-class Hispanic families. There are not a lot of free ways to get your family together in San Marcos and cool off, in the summer.
– Public buy-in is going to be very important.
– The equity coordinator needs to be involved in this. The cultural piece needs to be handled well.
– I know what la gente will say: “First they came for our charcoal grills, and now the giant coolers?”

A word on the giant coolers, because I also found it odd. This is a 30 quart cooler:

So the proposed rule is that each person can bring in one of those.

Why is it better for a big family to bring four of those, instead of one of these:

?

It did not make sense to me, and we’ll get back to this point. Sit tight.

Jane Hughson: There are a few questions that we need consensus on.
1. Should this be just beverage containers, or also include single-use food containers?
2. Should this be enforced on the river, in the parks, or both?

Let’s take these one at a time.

Should we also ban single-use food containers?

  • The parks board didn’t want to stomp on birthday parties and the Texas Water Safari, where people are going to bring plastic forks and plates and so on.
  • Anecdotally, the vast amount of trash is beverage-related

So that’s why they recommended only beverage containers.

Shane Scott: What about vape cartridges? Can we ban those?

Answer: We already ban vaping in the parks, so there’s no good way to make it even MORE not allowed.

Mark Gleason: Could single-use food containers only be allowed on rented pavilions? Maybe with a permit?

Alyssa: Come on, parents are tired. No one wants to do the dishes after a park hang. You all should come down for some carne asadas, though. 

Jane: I’m also not on board with restricting single-use food items to permitted uses. That’s just a barrier to many. And the logistics of enforcement would be impossible.

Staff says again that the majority of trash is beverage-related – beer cans, straw wrappers from Capri Suns, etc. So even just ban on single-use beverages alone would reduce a lot of litter from the river.

The consensus seems to be tipping towards just beverage containers.

Should the ban be enforced on the river, or in the parks, or both?

  • As I mentioned above, there’s legal concerns that the state will override a river ban.
  • Everyone agrees that without the river, it will be a little futile.  So we want to regulate what happens on the river.
  • Does anyone want it to be just the river? And not the parks?

Jude does! Because of uniformity.

Jude Prather: You know how passionate I am about UNIFORMITY!!  New Braunfels only regulates the river and not the park. So we should do that, too.  Also, New Braunfels charges $25 per picnic space, and there’s a waiver for residents.  UNIFORMITY!!

Jane Hughson: Yes, but they have restricted river access.

Jude’s being silly, and fortunately no one else agrees with him.

Here’s the thing: New Braunfels parks are used very differently from San Marcos parks.  In New Braunfels, there are a ton of businesses making money off tubers. (In fact, the business owners were the ones who took it to court to get the ban overturned.) Tubing is more separated from hanging out in the parks. (Honestly, I haven’t spent a ton of time in the New Braunfels parks, but this is my impression.)

Whereas here, it’s much more blurred.  There’s the Lion’s Club, but tubing the San Marcos river just doesn’t take very long, unlike the New Braunfels rivers. Large families set up giant day-long picnics, and everyone is in and out of the water to cool off.  Lots of people skip tubing altogether.

Regulating big family picnics on the bank of the San Marcos river is very different than regulating the massive tubing industry of New Braunfels. 

Which brings us to the coolers issue. What’s wrong with these?

It turns out that New Braunfels bans them, so we’re proposing to ban them, out of UNIFORMITY!! Jude must be so pleased.

The reasons that New Braunfels bans coolers over 30 quarts:

  1. They cause traffic jams of tubers when it’s time to get in and out of the river, because they’re big and awkward.
  2. They capsize sometimes and make a giant mess.

And that’s why uniformity is stupid.  We don’t have river traffic jams the way New Braunfels does.  And basically no one takes giant coolers like that on the river, because the tube ride isn’t long enough to need it.  

Anyone who is tubing and has a cooler that size has some family or friends camped out by the falls who is hanging out with the coolers, the babies, and grilling the food.  You just don’t need a giant cooler on the river. In San Marcos, a ban on giant coolers would be nonsensical.

Some final thoughts:

New Braunfels only bans the river and not the parks. We really need to contemplate Alyssa’s point about what it means to ban single-use beverage containers on the river banks, and how a large family spending the day on the river is going to avoid single-use beverages containers. It’s a really big ask for them, much bigger than asking college kids to switch from beer to a hydroflask of spiked Hawaiian Punch.

If I’m planning an all-day picnic for a big family, without using single-use beverages…I guess one of those giant Gatorade dispenser things with water or juice for kids? It means keeping track of a bunch of water bottles, though, because you can’t use dixie cups. But the adults are presumably going to want a beer at some point, and I’m not sure how that part works. A little party ball keg? Into what kind of cup? You’re not bringing Solo cups.

It’s just tricky to ask people to incorporate a lot of changes into their life.

But at the same time:

(photo by Christopher Paul Cardoza, taken from here)

You can’t destroy your only river. There are not infinite resources. Anyone who wants to use the river needs to do their part not to destroy it.

Finally: everyone wants to collaborate with Texas State on this, and get Sewell Park operating under the same rules.  We have no power over Texas State, so it can only happen by building relationships and goodwill.

Here’s what happens from here:

  • Council is going to have a workshop in January, to hammer out some details, and the legality of regulating what happens in the river.
  • Council passes a policy
  • Staff figures out funding and enforcement
  • Finally, implementation, hopefully by summer 2024.

Hours 4:07-5:45, 9/19/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 20: Updates to the Land Development Code. 

We went over the proposed updates last month.

Public Comment

  • We relaxed parking restrictions downtown and it is having unintended consequences – The Parlor has bought up several private parking lots.
  • Several speakers talk about the development agreement notification radius again. They use that the radius needs to be “proportional to the size of the project”, and my little blogger heart swelled three sizes.

Council Discussion

One of the changes being proposed is to increase the occupancy restriction from 2 to 3 unrelated people.

(What does this mean? In San Marcos, in single-family zonings, you get only one roommate. You cannot have three unrelated people living together. This is a great way to maintain wealth segregation. And yes, this is totally unenforceable but we do it anyway.)

Matthew Mendoza starts off with a rousing cry against it.

You guys: the speech Matthew gave made my little blogger heart shrivel back down to the size of a blackened pea.  I could not disagree more with him.  

Matthew’s basic claim: if we let three unrelated people live together, then we’re on a slippery slope to ending single family zoning.  He claims that Minneapolis tried this, and it failed so hard that they’re undoing it.

For what it’s worth, it looks like he got every detail of the Minneapolis example wrong. They ended their occupancy restrictions, and then liked it so much that they doubled down.

And then, Minneapolis did exactly what Matthew is scared of – in 2019, they were the first major city to end single-family zoning. So far it’s providing gentle, incremental densification, the way it’s supposed to. (But rents and housing prices are actually falling there for an entirely different reason – elimination of parking minimums.  But yowza, we cannot handle a topic that spicy on this particularly epic-length entry.) Since then, several states and many cities have ended single-family zoning.

Matthew!! Why are you micromanaging everyone’s lifestyle? Let people have a goddamn roommate.

But also: YOU ALL JUST BEMOANED HOW EXPENSIVE TAXES ARE. LET GRANDMA RENT OUT AN ADU, FOR GOD’S SAKE! Let people live with their friends!

See how crazy-making this meeting was? The cognitive dissonance fried my wee brain.

(Alyssa does respond to Matthew, wearily: Who are we to dictate what counts as family, anyway?)

Here we go:

The vote on occupancy restrictions:

Restrict back to 2: Matthew Mendoza, Saul Gonzalez, Jane Hughson
Relax it to 3: Shane Scott, Jude Prather, Mark Gleason, Alyssa Garza

So it barely passed.

A stray thought: Jane voted 6th in line. She was a reluctant yes when this was discussed 18 months ago. I think she switched her vote mid-stream, because she could see it would pass either way. If Mark had voted after Jane, he might have switched his vote to match hers, and the whole thing might have failed.

Bottom line: It should never have taken 18 months after extensive discussion to bring this to a vote. It almost undid all that hard work.

But whatever: it passed.

…

Still on the Land Development Code: Businesses that serve alcohol have to get a Conditional Use Permit. (CUP). These get renewed by P&Z every three years. Should we separate out bars from restaurants, and only make the bars go to P&Z? Staff is proposing this, because it would save time and effort.

Jane Hughson makes a motion to say no, and stick with the current situation – all CUPs, both restaurants and bars – should go to P&Z for renewal.

The reasoning goes like this: sometimes restaurants are jerks, and are bad neighbors to nearby residents. Noise complaints aren’t addressed by the police. But at P&Z, neighbors can state their case and the restaurant owner will actually pay attention because they don’t want to lose their CUP. Then P&Z can attach conditions to the CUP – make the restaurant come back for renewal in one year instead of three, put quiet hours on the restaurant, that kind of thing.

I agree with Jane here. And sometimes you do get a lot of people from a single street, all pissed off about the same restaurant. This is a really important opportunity for community input, and we shouldn’t take this power away from community members.

As Jane puts it, “Sometimes our biggest problem child is a restaurant.”

One extra thought: It’s already a thing where bars try to pretend that they’re restaurants in order to get more relaxed treatment. If you let restaurants skip P&Z approval, even more bars will try to get reclassified as restaurants, to avoid scrutiny.

The vote:

Restaurants have to go to P&Z: Matthew Mendoza, Mark Gleason, Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzalez
Let restaurants skip all that: Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Alyssa Garza

So it passes 4-3.

Finally, Mayor Hughson has a few issues that are queued up for next time:

  • In the new (poorly named) “business park” zoning, Jane just doesn’t want truck bays for 18 wheelers. Little delivery trucks are fine, but she doesn’t want semis.

    The point of this new zone is to be “good neighbor industrial” (which is what I’d name it). I agree that 18 wheelers are less neighborly than delivery trucks. Staff is worried that no one will apply for this zoning if you rule out 18 wheelers.
  • Notification radius for development agreements: Jane is listening. She agrees that it should be larger for larger projects.

    She also wants you to know that the city already goes above and beyond the notifications that are required by state law. (Sure, kudos. But state laws are mostly written by jerks, so that’s a low bar to clear.)

    At any rate, getting her on board here is a huge win, because no one else was responding.
  • A month ago, Mark Gleason got really mad about some house on Sturgeon with a rooftop patio. In response, staff is proposing that rooftop patios count as a “story” if they cover 25% of the roof.

    Jane wants it to be much lower: any rooftop structure counts as an extra story.

    My opinion: stop being a bunch of killjoys. Let people have their rooftop patios. Quit harshing my mellow, man.
  • Developers have to either donate parkland, or pay a fee. We’re updating the calculations to be more fair. If you’re only developing 4-8 lots, you can skip the fee.

    Jane: Why wouldn’t people in the 4 or 8 houses use our parks? Why exempt them from park fee? I’ll bring this back next time, too.

So there are a lot of fiddly details still to hash out.

The first vote, which is not the final vote:

Yes, let’s update the code: Everyone besides Matthew
No, I’m still mad about occupancy restrictions: Matthew

…

Item 21: SMPD body cams.

We rent them from this company called Axon. The company’s prices are going up. If we renew early, we can stay at the old rates. Save a million dollars.

We have 10 drones, btw. 

Alyssa: There are multiple grants available for body worn cameras. Did we seek any of these opportunities? 

Chief Standridge: We do not have an Equal Employment Opportunity Plan (EEOP) so we can’t apply for grants. We are aware and trying to fix that.

This is an interesting point. It turns out that we can’t apply for a lot of federal funding until we have an EEOP. It includes any Department of Justice or SAFER grants. We are definitely taking this seriously and working on one.

The vote to re-up on the body cams:
Yes: Everyone but Alyssa
No: (no one)
Abstain: Alyssa Garza

Alyssa explains that she hasn’t reviewed our SMPD body cam policy since it was last updated, and she can’t in good conscience vote on these in the meantime.

…

Item 23: Single use container ban!!

You guys. It’s been SUCH a long meeting. This last item is so popular and great – it’s a shame that I’m just now getting to it.

If you’ll recall, five hours earlier we had boatloads of community members show up to speak in favor of banning single-use containers from the river and parks. Volunteers pull out epic tons of trash from the river as often as possible, and we just can’t keep up. It flows down river and to the gulf. It’s bad for the river itself. 

So what happens tonight?

This is just the very beginning of the process. Mark Gleason and Matthew Mendoza are bringing it up to see if council is interested in moving forward with this.

So who’s in?

Mark is a hard yes. 

Jude: let’s do it!

Saul: Me too!

Matthew Mendoza: I live in Rio Vista! I’m desperate to see this pass.

Alyssa: Let’s focus on the education piece, and secure the buy-in of the community. Lean on park ambassadors instead of marshalls. Best practices. No unnecessary policing of our neighbors.

Jane: I’m in to move forward.

So everyone is enthusiastic! It’ll take some time and work.  I definitely want to give Mark and Matthew props for initiating the issue, though.

…

Q&A from the Press and Public

Listen, Max Baker spoke as many times as possible this evening, and he has a tendency to pack ten ideas into a three minute speech. So I’m cherry-picking, because this was entertaining.

First, Axon is the company that makes the body cams. Max accuses, “Are you all aware that there is a SUPREME COURT CASE against them for antitrust issues? Do your homework!!”

He’s right but he’s wrong: It’s exactly that – some anti-monopoly wonky lawsuit brought against them by the Federal Trade Commision. But I can’t see how that’s a big scandal.

Max also says, “This same company wants to design TASER DRONES. Lotta concerns about civil liberties in that regard.”

Max is entirely correct – they are batshit crazy and they definitely wanted to design m-f-ing taser drones. But also, shortly thereafter “Axon halts its plans for a Taser drone as 9 on ethics board resign over the project.” So at this point we can just marvel at the human capacity for inventing really, really bad ideas.

I’m not saying this company is any good. But given that they’re involved in an anti-trust lawsuit, I’m guessing we don’t have terribly many choices either way. Have fun dreaming about TASER DRONES!