Citizen Comment: We’re going to focus on the SMART/Axis Terminal here. (It’s not otherwise on the agenda today.) There’s a group, Citizens Against SMART/Axis, which is holding a public meeting at the library on Sunday (6/11) at 3 pm. Here’s their flyer, off Facebook:
Ie, if you’re reading this on Sunday morning and you’re free this afternoon, why not head on over? They seem like nice people.
The big day will be July 3rd, when City Council votes on the Heavy Industrial zoning. If it passes, then we’ve given a massive blank check to a jerk who will then decide which industries come to San Marcos. Right now, there’s a lot of money in batteries and tech fabrication plants and things involving toxic rare metals and lots of water, and Texas has very lax environmental restrictions. That’s the kind of scenario that I’m particularly worried about. (I also think the sheer scale of it is bonkers.)
And if the zoning doesn’t pass? My guess is that there’s a contingency clause in the development agreement – if the zoning doesn’t pass, it invalidates the contract. Then the company could either develop under county regulations, or walk away for a year, or come up with a different proposal.
Have you all seen the yard signs around town?
I think they’re pretty effective. Partly because they put council members on notice that the community is willing to launch a public campaign: vote down Heavy Industrial, or the next public campaign may be against you.
Bottom line: Council shat the bed. It’s really astonishing how they passed this development agreement under so much quiet and stealth. It’s 2000 acres, for god’s sake!
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Item 6: Community Development Block Grant money. (CDBG) The city gets federal money to spend on nonprofits. This year, we’ve got about $700K to distribute.
Here’s the criteria that staff uses to assess projects:
And here are staff recommendations:
Saul Gonzales asked about Habitat getting $0 for Housing Counseling.
The answer: Habitat is really good at lots of things, but counseling ain’t one of them. Plus they’ve still got leftover money from last year. In general, we’re still partnering with Habitat, but just not for counseling.
As for the Housing Rehab program getting $0: somehow this is good for the city, for reasons I didn’t quite follow.
Alyssa Garza mentions that she hears a lack of trust in the nonprofit community about how these funds get allocated, and that increased transparency would help. I don’t have the expertise to read between the lines! But transparency generally sounds good to me.
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Item 7: P&Z is going to gain some new powers: the powers of AIRPORTATION. Specifically, some height hazard zone regulations and compatible land use zonings. A lot of this is regulated by the FAA, but P&Z will get to weigh in on the remaining bits.
Whenever the airport comes up, everyone speaks cryptically about scandals that I’m uninformed on. We saw a snippet of it here. Even LMC weighed in on some convoluted past event from ten years ago. Frankly, I’m pretty sure I’m not capable of fully understanding whatever the hell went down.
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Item 8: The city has a lot of 2 hour parking downtown. Now some of those sites will be relaxed, to 4 hour parking. Here’s where it will go:
Take your time! Shop around! You’ve got four hours now.
Council members asked some worried, nonsensical questions, as though we were tightening up restrictions instead of loosening them. Everything will be fine.
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Item 9: We’re pretty terrible at paying parking tickets:
So the city is going to start putting boots on cars, if you have 3 or more unpaid tickets.
(We discussed this before, but now we mean it.)
The point is to force the worst offenders to get in touch with the city and come up with a payment plan (or maybe schedule some volunteer hours instead – more on this later.) The plan is not to turn the screws on someone who is teetering on the edge of economic catastrophe. Of course, it always just depends if the program is implemented in good faith or not.
Stay tuned! There is a lot more discussion of parking coming up at the end of the meeting.
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Item 10: This is the Oak Heights neighborhood:
The top left and top right roads are Craddock and Old 12, where The Retreat is. This is the Crockett elementary neighborhood. The speed limit used to be 30 mph.
Now it will have a new, lower speed limit of 25 mph in on these streets:
Good for them! Drive like a grandma, everyone. Your car is lethal.
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This is Uhland Road:
It runs from Post Road to I35, and then jumps north, and runs east to Harris Hill road.
Here we’re only looking at the part west of 35. These lucky folks are getting some speed cushions here:
Good job! Drive safe.
Jane Hughson wraps up by saying, “All right! We do listen to our residents! …um …when we’re talking about speed cushions. And changing however many miles per hour you can go in a neighborhood.”
That is hilariously self-aware of Jane Hughson. And it’s true: sometimes we listen to our residents. Other times, we don’t.
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Item 13: $250K more to GSMP to fund a small business program. Seems fine, as far as capitalism goes. The only reason I noticed it was because Matthew Mendoza made a special point of praising this accomplishment.
The San Marxist 