Tag: city hall

Hours 0:00 – 1:17, 10/21/25

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment: 

Just six speakers altogether. Main points made:

  • Four in favor of the Tenants’ Right to Organize ordinance.
  • But not the landlords from the Austin Apartments Associations. They want us to carve out protections for property managers.
  • Other speakers, in response: Please do not protect property managers. That would create a loophole. [Note: we didn’t.]
  • We need managed growth.
  • Update on the EMS thing?
  • You all need to stand for the pledge.
  • Excited for new City Hall proposal
  • How about making the new City Hall environmentally sustainable? Like a One Water approach?

Pretty breezy and quick.

…

Item 2: Tenant’s Right to Organize

We’ve seen this here, here, and here. This is the final stretch!

Lorenzo: Can tenant organizers go uninvited into apartment complexes?
Answer: No, organizers are required to play by vampire rules. They must be invited in. 

Lorenzo: Can we fix that?

Amanda:  I don’t think we should fix that.  

Amanda’s argument goes like so:

  • I wish this ordinance had more teeth
  • But Texas is a heavily pre-emptive state. (Meaning Texas micromanages its cities.)
  • Therefore I strongly recommend that we stick with the language that has held up so far in court.

City Lawyer: It would be weird to meddle in this way.  Some apartment complexes let in Domino’s pizza to put out fliers, and others have gates.  Organizers are held to the same rules as Domino’s pizza, and it would be weird to carve out extra privileges for them.

City Staff:  Plus, tenant organizers are not helpless. They can mail postcards to residents and see if one of the residents invites them in.

So we end up not changing anything.

The vote on Tenant’s Right to Organize:

It’s official!

Really great work by all the community activists! And I’ll single out Max Baker for kudos – he was really  the most visible driving force here.

Educational fliers for sharing: in English and in Spanish. (Via Amanda Rodriguez on FB.)

…

Item 10: Sights & Sounds

Last year we didn’t see nor hear the Sights & Sounds of San Marcos.  

But this year it’s back, baby!

And we’re spending $100,000 on it.

  • Half of that comes from Hotel Occupancy Taxes, which are supposed to be spent on tourism.  So S&S is a good fit.
  • The other half is for the lights, which are kept up all month long.

Sounds great.

Pro-tip: if you’ve got a kid who wants to win a hot chocolate, they might want to find out what year S&S was founded, how many light bulbs there are, and what most popular food is. It’s all very cute.

…

Item 17: ARWA

ARWA stands for Alliance Regional Water Authority. These are the folks trying to arrange water sources for us, for the next 50 years. It includes San Marcos, Kyle, Buda, and also Canyon Region Water Authority.

This started back in 2007, and it was a longterm plan to get water from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. It came online this summer! So this is great. Almost 20 years of longterm planning!

Currently we are dealing with this:

That’s all I know!

(I do worry that “stress on the ARWA participating water supplies” refers to things like Kyle Bass trying to pump 16 billion gallons of water out of Carrizo-Wilcox.)

…

Item 18: New City Hall

Look, this is a super short meeting. This is the last item. So I had a little fun with it. Be prepared for an enormous number of photos.

Whaddya gonna do, go read some other local marxist city council blog?

Background:

Here’s the current City Hall location:

and here’s what it looks like:

via

It was built in the early 1970s, when San Marcos had 18K people. So cute! Little baby San Marcos. Now we have about 70K people.

Apparently in the past year, they’ve had to evacuate multiple times due to gas and water problems. And whenever something big comes up at Council, community members don’t fit in the chambers. People spill out into the lobby and listen from there.

So the old building has run its course. We’re looking to build a new one.

…

How is the Texas State Lege going to meddle?

The state won’t let cities borrow money to build city halls without voter approval. This makes everything complicated.

My pet conspiracy theory: this was done to deliberately manipulate cities into the loving arms of local private developers. This is called a Public-Private-Partnership, or P3.

So here we are, being driven.

…

The options:

Last April, Council was given the choice of Option A or Option B.

Option A:

In other words, keep it in the current location. They’d tear down the existing site and rebuild. Council would have to relocate during construction.

Option B:

ie move across the street, onto park land.

Option B was super unpopular! A lot of community members showed up to argue against it, because of this:

Both of these are heavily used and very popular!

City Council decided that they could keep the skate park where it is. They would just squeeze City Hall in immediately right up against the skate park, looming like a big shadowy Gotham City Headquarters over your rebel anarchist skater good time. (But the dog park would be relocated.)

In the end, Council went with Option B.

My $0.02: This is a terrible option and they got it wrong! Don’t use up your park land!

…

Now, what if there was a Plan C?

Intriguing! Over the summer, an unsolicited option came in.

Here’s the new proposal:

I love this location! There’s nothing particularly sentimental or historical there.

Let’s check it out!

This is the Hopkins view.

Building 1 is this:

No strong feelings from me.

Building 2 is this:

This is a cute old building! It’s been empty forever. It used to be an Ace Hardware store.

Before that, apparently it was originally Moore’s Grocery Company Building and then King Feed Co:

It’s cute! But it’s been empty for a long time.

Number 3 is an empty lot. It used to be a Mr. Gatti’s Pizza:

and then it briefly became this:

ie a fever dream of a diner, painted all black with neon flowers. Did we collectively hallucinate this?!

Anyway. Then it was food trucks:

and since then it’s just been parking:

Number 4 used to be where we had Tuesday Farmer’s Markets.

Back then it looked like this:

whereas now it looks like this:

Progress!

…

Back to why this location is great! It would be a really healthy for downtown businesses if our city employees all worked nearby.

Until around 2011, the county employees used to work here:

I liked to call it the Supermarket of Justice:

That is now where Industry etc are:

In 2011, Hays County built the new County Government building, out on Stagecoach.

All the county employees emptied out of the downtown business area. This was hard on the local downtown restaurants and stores – they no longer had a steady stream of pedestrian foot traffic during weekdays.

So moving City Hall downtown would replenish some of that.

This is all great!

….

What else?

The developers are local. They’re all graduates of either SMHS or Texas State, or both. That’s nice!

In 2020, they pitched an earlier idea to the city – a combination City Hall-hotel-workforce-housing. Jane Hughson says, “They wanted the hotel to face Hopkins and City Hall to go in the back, which was a nonstarter.”

What other projects do they have? Well, they have ideas. They have plans with Hays ISD to build some sort of workforce housing thing, and Lockhart ISD is looking at it, too. But there aren’t any lots or conceptual plans or signs of progress on their website.

As far as I can tell, they’ve never actually completed a project?

I think this is location is a great idea, though!

…

Two more bits that I want to note:

  1. We are paying them $767,970.00 for this conceptual plan. That is a hell of a lot of money for our broke government.

    Now, we’ve saved up about $12 million towards a new city hall, so that’s the source. It’s not displacing funding for something else. But it’s a lot.

2. They’re actually drawing up plans for this whole area:

Edited to add a corrected update: The map below is not the full scope of these developers. I got it wrong above! Sorry about that.

This map below is just showing the full scope of Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C, all together. The Plan C developers are strictly drawing up plans for the downtown piece. – TSM

WHAT IS GOING ON. Why is the Lion’s Club, and the stage area, the Veteran’s Memorial, the Activity Center, the library, the skate park, and the dog park all included??!

Why would these (probably very nice) bozos have any say in what happens to ANY of those public facilities? They do not have any experience in that. What the hell.

…

What does Council say?

First off, they’re only asking questions about this part:

and not the extended map above, that went through the parks and old City Hall.

Q: What about impervious cover?
A: It’s already all impervious cover. It can only get better.

Matthew: The old hardware store is historic, and I’m worried about the elevation drop.
A: Architects can handle the elevation drop.

Q: What would happen to the alleys?
A: We don’t know yet. Maybe some kind of open air space.

Alyssa: I’m having deja vu of their old proposal.
A: The 2020 proposal was much smaller.
Jane: Plus they had the hotel out front and the city hall in back. No.

Saul: I like it! But I need to see how much it costs.

Jane: Love a hometown developer!

The vote: Should we spend $768K on this conceptual plan?

I probably would have voted yes, because the location is great. I’m just wary because these guys seem inexperienced.

…

Final notes:

Somehow, this City Hall project is going to go off the rails. Really. Not because of this Plan C option, but because the math on this next slide does not make any sense.

This is from back in April:

Let me see if I’m following: we’ve saved up $12.7 million. We think we can get $15-20 million more from private developers. That adds up to ~$30 million.

But the whole project is supposed to cost $62-98 million! Where is this magical extra money going to come from?

These are the only options I see:

  • Voters will have to vote to approve a bond to borrow the rest.
  • This project ends up being about half as big as they’re hoping.
  • This project takes 25 years to complete
  • We end up selling our souls to find an extra $50 million from private businesses

In some way or another, reality is going to reassert itself.

Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 4/16/25

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Workshop: Location of the New City Hall

We need a new city hall. Ours was built back in the 1970s, when San Marcos had 25K people. It’s falling apart and tiny. (Discussed in 2022 and in 2024.)

Last fall, we picked an advisory committee of community members. They’ve been meeting over the spring.

…

The big decision for today: should we build it on the north side or south side of Hopkins?

And here’s where the controversy kicks in. Here’s the city’s versions of those two spots:

Zooming in on the north parcel:

So this is the crux of the controversy – what happens to the skate park and dog park? The city posted about this to Facebook, where it blew up.

…

Citizen Comment: About 12 people show up to defend the parks. This is actually a huge number – both because this is a workshop, and because it’s at 3 pm on a Tuesday.

About halfway through, City Manager Stephanie Reyes breaks in and says:

Early on, consultants talked about maybe moving the skate park and dog park. But listen: We are NOT recommending moving the skate park! We really are not. The dog park, maybe. But definitely not the skate park!

I don’t know how this grew legs – it was just a committee discussion. This wasn’t concrete plans to move the skate park! Anyway, we hear you loud and clear. No one is moving the skate park.

(I’m paraphrasing – that is not a direct quote.)

Anyway, I got you Ms. Reyes! Here’s where people got the impression:

And in all the drawings – like above – and even in this very presentation:

So anyway, the community uses the skate park really heavily. City staff heard many, many comments about how much everyone loves the skate park.

The skate park will NOT be moved. Great!

…

Confidential to council: Seeing how heavily it is used, you could even expand the skate park! That would be pretty popular. Add some bathrooms and shade?

…

Ok, now that the skate park is safe, what is the presentation about?

The steering committee has been meeting over the spring. They’re inspired to bring the old razzle-dazzle:

Sugarland, Wylie, Southlake, and Frisco are all bringing it.

…

So back to the two parcels:

This area has the river, lots of railroads, and Hopkins running through it:

So there are some challenges. Like flooding:

And finicky rules, like this purple part:

The purple part is dedicated park land. In order to build a razzle-dazzle City Hall, you have to have a Public-Private-Partnership. In other words, it’s a city hall with some stores, or coffee shops, or sell some city land to a developer to do whatever.

But the city needs voter approval on the purple part. Since it’s parkland, it stays public unless the voters approve letting private companies use it.

See that little blue square in the middle? It is not dedicated parkland. It’s more flexible.

It used to be the Armory Building:

That’s Google Maps, from June 2013.

Here’s April 2014:

And here’s June 2015:

Going, going, gone!

So that little field already has voter approval – that was dedicated back in 1959. We could put a private company there, without voter approval.

(I don’t like that option.)

….

How much will all this cost, anyway?

So the cost is the same, either way.

There are still plenty of decisions for the future:

  • Surface parking or underground parking?
  • Public-Private-Partnership or go it alone?
  • Where would Council temporarily relocate, if we went with the south side?
  • Would it be a beautiful gateway on the North Side?

Here’s what the Advisory Committee said:

Here’s the summary of pros and cons:

The Advisory Committee settled on the North Parcel, but still felt good about the South Parcel:

…

So what does Council think?

Matthew: North side!

  • I’m a neighborhood man! My main concern is drainage. Water runs into Rio Vista neighborhood. Put City Hall in the north side, and install a state of the art drainage system in.
  • I like the idea of a Civic Corridor, with City Hall, the library, the activity center, and the parks all in a row.

Staff clearly states that the drainage will be all new, on either side.

Jane: South side!

  • I do like the idea of a big Northside Gateway.
  • Let’s do two uses: Keep all the business uses on the south side. The public only comes here for birth certificates and developers. On the north side, add some more recreational uses that complement the dog park and the skate park. Restrooms, improvements, etc.
  • Make the south side entrance more prominent, though.
  • The north side really does flood, too. Do we want our new City Hall to get flooded? The railroad forms a dam on the back side.

Note: I agree with Jane!

Lorenzo: Is structured parking going to drive up the cost?
Answer: Yes, but it’s probably off the table either way. Underground parking will flood. Parking garages are expensive.

Amanda: I’m freaked out by the price tag, and prices are only going to go up. I’m with the Mayor, here.

Shane: I like the North Side because I like new construction! The old one looks dreary and old.

Amanda: The north side loses the dog park, unless you pay a huge price tag for a parking garage.
City Manager: We have options for relocating the dog park . This will free up the Parks and Rec building and possibly the land near the Veteran’s Memorial. So the dog park would stay in this same corridor.

Saul: Are the structural problems of the current building caused by the train? That’s my concern with the South side.
Answer: Yes, but current architecture would be built to deal with that.

Lorenzo: If we build on the South Side, would we actually improve the north side?
Answer: Depends what kind of partnerships we can build. That’s Phase II.

Alyssa: I’m voting for the North Side.

Lorenzo and Matthew are really determined to make an economic argument that really isn’t there. They keep guessing about demolition costs or whatever. City staff keep gently correcting them – no, those costs are very small, relative to all the design decisions yet to come.

…

My two cents: The north side is a terrible idea. Really.

First: You don’t get more park land in town. This is it. Don’t use it up.

Second: a massive number of people turned up to defend the skate park. A giant, razzle-dazzle building will loom over it, literally. It will change the vibe. A skate park is not going to feel the same if it is nestled in the backside of a flashy new business park.

Build up the park side for the people! Add bathrooms, add water refill stations. Rebuild the business half of City Hall on the south side.

…

The vote

North Side: Shane, Matthew, Lorenzo, Alyssa

South Side: Saul, Jane, Amanda

Honestly, I was surprised by this! The steering committee was lukewarm in their recommendation. Their decision reads as “Both options are good, but I guess we tip towards the north.”

The public, then, said cried out, “We feel STRONGLY about keeping the north side as park land.”

And council went with the advisory committee??

…

Q&A from the press and public:

Even knowing the skate park will stay, people are pretty angry! No one seems to like this decision.

  • I love the skate park. Why was there no representation of the dog park or skate park on the steering committee?
  • Time line? And will you still push for recreation?
  • A big building with concrete and fountains is not usable by the public the way the current corridor is.
  • I have thoughts but not a formal question
  • I don’t buy the economic argument and I don’t like going with the decision that doesn’t inconvenience you personally.
  • How does having a flashy new building benefit the citizens of San Marcos?
  • Why not have the Gateway be beautiful parkland over a flashy parkland? The foundations and drainage, why not address that?
  • How do we get on this committee? What’s up with this committee?

Hours 0:00 – 0:50, 11/6/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Onto the little meeting!   

Just one citizen comment, from a community member about the Dunbar Heritage buildings that are under renovation.

…

Item 12: The good people of Riverside Drive want to ban parking on their street.

The issue is that the street fills up with river-goers in the summer. Since there is not enough proper parking around the falls, people park on Riverside Drive during the summer, and walk over. 

Look, I’m not in a great mood.  I didn’t like it last month on Sturgeon, and I don’t like it now.

  1. This is exclusionary.  The street does not belong to you.  

  2. It’s counter-productive! Street parking is a traffic-calming measure. It makes drivers go more slowly, instead of tearing through your neighborhood at 40 mph.

  3. I might be sympathetic if local residents did not have driveways, and were forced to park away from their houses and walk to get home.  But that is not what is happening. The residents of this street put out orange traffic cones to block river-users from parking in front of their houses.  They’re not putting their own cars out on the street. 

  4. The parking ban is year round. (Holidays and weekends.) There is no reason for the ban to exist during the winter.  Does it matter? No, but it’s overreach.  

Living near the river is a privilege.  The streets belong to the public, and that includes those who want to visit the river.  I’m just not in the mood for territoriality and exclusion at the moment. 

The Vote:

Yes, parking bans are great: everybody
No, parking bans are the worst: nobody

Oh well. At least I can rant on the blog.

…

Item 4:  The new HEB.

Everyone cheered and quickly voted on this, in about 30 seconds.

Here were my concerns last time:

  • Would all HEB employees get the $15/hour as required by local ordinance, even at the existing stores?
  • Can we include something about wage and benefits, to make sure our workers are given good jobs?
  • Is it in writing that Little HEB will stay open for a certain number of years? 
  • Can we ask HEB about purchasing that little triangle of land next to Purgatory Creek from them?

Here’s what council said about these questions:

[Nothing.] 

I know, we were all consumed with the election. But I still wish we’d fought on behalf of employees.

The vote:

YAY HEB 4-EVAH: Everybody, unanimous, etc. 
I hate everyone’s favorite grocery store:  nobody.

…

Item 10: The Mitchell Center

We mentioned this last time at the workshop: it’s being handed over to the Calaboose African American History Museum. 

It’s located here, tucked in the back corner of Dunbar park:

Apparently there is a covenant that runs with the land that requires the land be used for a public, non-profit purpose.   This seems like a good choice.

…

Item 13:  Naming the alleys

This also came up last time:

Those seven alleys with names in white are getting officially named. 

The remaining alleys are driving Jane crazy.  She wants to pair them up with movies or anything, and get them named.  No one else seems to be in that big a hurry.

…

Item 14:  Municipal Court

I guess we’re getting a new spot for our municipal court?

I don’t know if this is where the public will go for court, or if it’s administrative type stuff.

Here’s the building, according to Google Maps:

We signed a 20 year lease.

…

Item 17: River Bridge Ranch is this giant future subdivision:

It’s located here:

(That bit above is actually two closely related developments: River Bend Ranch and River Bridge Ranch. But the details are murky to me.)

This development makes me cranky:

  1.  In 2022, they wanted to put an industrial plant on the southern corner, which would have required an insane cut-and-fill.   This would have increased flooding in Redwood. Huge numbers of residents from Redwood turned out to argue against it, given the flooding and infrastructure.  The permit was denied.

  2. Originally, River Bridge Ranch was approved to be both housing and commerce. After all, it’s huge! And we have this long-standing issue where there isn’t any commerce on the east.  They waited for a polite amount of time to pass. Then they came back and asked if Council would just forget about the pesky commerce bit. 

    Council said “You betcha!  This way you’ll make more money!” And lo, no more commerce.

This meeting, Council forms a subcommittee on it: Saul Gonzales, Matthew Mendoza, and Jane Hughson.

So this means it’s going to be coming back around again. Fingers crossed!

…

Items 16 and 18: The New City Hall

We’re designing a new city hall.

Council has this grand idea that the new city hall should replace the dog park and skate park, and the current location should be housing:

I am not convinced! Why should we develop our parks? Why not re-build where you are?

Anyway, Council appointed a 23-person steering committee:
– The mayor and two councilmembers
– These groups all get to pick a member: P&Z, Library, Downtown Association, River Foundation, University representative, Chamber of Commerce
– Each councilmember picked two community members.
In total there are 23 people.

SO! After multiple meetings and lots of discussion, what did the DEI Coordinator say about the end result? Did we achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion? Moment of truth!

…Nothing. The DEI coordinator wasn’t there. Status quo was upheld.

This would have been the moment to verify that “business as usual” had produced a diverse committee that matches San Marcos.  We did not verify this!

Hours 0:00 – 2:10, 9/17/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Uncategorized

Citizen Comment:  

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

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

Take water as an example: 

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

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

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

….

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

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

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

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

….

Item 1: New City Hall steering committee

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

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

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

Here’s what Council settles on:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

Item 20: Parking by permit

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

Sturgeon is this street, in Blanco Gardens:

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

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

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

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

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

…

Items 21-23: 51 acres off McCarty and 123

This bit is getting annexed and zoned:

It’s right by the high school, here:

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

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

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

It’s being zoned Commercial.

The rest of it is being zoned CD-4:

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

Little shops mixed with apartments, and oodles of charm.

But it actually usually looks like this:

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

….

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

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

Who knows! No one ever provides this information!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“YAY COMMERCE!” council cheers.

…

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

Mark: IT’S THE GROWTH!)

….

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

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

And this is worse than in other states!

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

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

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

…

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

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

…

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

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

…

Item 29:  Purgatory Creek Channel improvements

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

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

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

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

….

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

I want to emphasize two things:

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

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

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

Hours 0:00 – 3:38, 9/3/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:

  • Five people spoke against the SMART/Axis road annexation.
  • A guy from the airport asked about his lease rate for his hangar

That was about it.

…

Items 2-3:  Quarterly financial and investment report.

This is the official report for Jan 1st – March 31st went.  Back in May, we got a sneak preview: sales tax was tanking below projections and we were scrambling to reign in spending. 

This is more re-hashing of that same news. Sales tax was down, so everything got pulled back.

…

Item 19:  It takes two public hearings to approve the budget.  This is the first, and then final approval will be on September 17th.

Here’s the big picture:

With highlights:

For me, the highlights are only somewhat helpful. I need context in order to makes sense of these notes. What helps me most is a breakdown of the general fund, by department.

Last year’s breakdown of the General Fund, by department:

I got that by submitting a FOIA request last year. I’ve requested this year’s General Fund breakdown, but haven’t yet gotten it.

[Let me put on my tinfoil hat for just a moment. Indulge me in the dullest conspiracy theory of all times:

– The 2024 draft budget has the General Fund breakdown by department, starting on page 82.
– But the 2024 adopted budget has no General Fund breakdown anywhere!
– the 2023 draft budget has the General Fund breakdown by department, starting on page 88.
– But 2023 adopted budget also has no General Fund breakdown anywhere!

For the past two years, it’s disappeared from the actual budget, once it was approved. What on earth.

Finally, even the 2025 proposed budget does NOT have the General Fund breakdown included. This annoys me, hence the FOIA request mentioned above.

I submitted the request back on August 22nd, so we’re past the normal FOIA response time. The information is in the budget, but it’s scattered. It would take hours of work for a layperson to extract it from the online budget, one department at a time.

END OF MY MILDLY EXASPERATING CONSPIRACY THEORY!]

…

Back to budget discussions. Utility rates are going up:

The average home-owner will pay $13.46 more per month. There’s a big discussion in the workshops about utility assistance, so I’ll cover some details later on.

We’re using the same tax rate as last year, 60.3¢.

…

Listen: I cannot stress enough how little conversation there is about any of this. Partly this is because there have been a lot of budget workshops already.  Partly this is because the community didn’t show up to complain. (Although they have one more chance.) But mostly because this council is so used to each other that they all know exactly where they all stand.  There’s nothing left to say.

…

Matthew Mendoza asks a great question. During the section on the Water and Wastewater Fund, he asks: “These contract costs keep increasing every year. Why do we keep contracting out? There’s like 4 water and wastewater contracts. Why not do these things internally?”

The answer has a few parts:

  • Some contracts are management contracts, others are infrastructure and CIP
  • The contracts for the surface water plant and the wastewater treatment plant both have automatic inflation adjustments built in
  • On the wastewater treatment plant, we’re at the end of a 20 year contract. We’re putting a provision in the new contract to have an exit clause, so we could convert staffing to in-house in a few years if we want. When it was built in the 90s, it actually was operated by city staff. We started contracting it out in the 2000s.

This is SUPER interesting! Let’s highlight some things:

  • It’s so common for contracts to have built-in, automatic inflation adjustments! You know what doesn’t? The minimum wage. Failure to peg the minimum wage to inflation is one of the most underappreciated policy failures of the 20th century.
  • The wastewater treatment plan used to be city-run! We privatized it in the 2000s! What. Privatization is not your friend. Let’s get that back.

Mark Gleason asks if trash and recycling contracts also have automatic inflation adjustment?

Answer: Yes on refuse collection.

Alyssa still votes no on the utility fund votes, because of the rate increases. But she acknowledges the workshop on emergency utility assistance. (We will cover this below.) If it were working as it should, she says she’d be able to vote for the regular rate increases.

…

Item 4:  Axis Logistics (aka SMART Terminal) road annexation.

Backstory. The giant Axis Logistics/SMART company:

wants Council to annex city land for a road:

However, the company has made total enemies of the surrounding community, by always being super secretive about their plans. In this case, the road has jumped locations. Originally it was further from houses and now it’s closer to them.

At the August 5th meeting, there was a fair amount of discussion. Everyone seemed concerned. Nothing was resolved.

At the August 20th meeting, it was mysteriously postponed.

Time for the exciting conclusion! So much drama! Buckle up for…

…zip, zero, zilch. Literally, Council spends four minutes total on this item.

The vote:

No one ever asked in public about whether the road could be moved back to the original location.  No one explained whatever Mark needed more time to research since the last meeting.

This is what I mean when I say this council is stale. Everyone knows where everyone stands on everything, and so no one bothers to say anything outloud.

…

Item 24: School Resource Officers are back, baby!  (School Resource Officers = SROs)

Last meeting, the city approved the SRO contract. 

Two changes had been proposed by SMCISD:

  • The SRO contract should be two years instead of one
  • The contract can be renewed administratively, without Council approval. 

Council renewed the contract, but nixed those two changes. They wanted to see the contract, in person, every year.

Since then, the school board met: they really want the two year contract and admin renewal.  So they held the line on those two details, and punted it back over here.

Remember last time how I pointed out that Jude Prather should really recuse himself, because his wife is the director of the organization that oversees all SROs, statewide?  

  • He didn’t recuse himself this time, either. 
  • He actually was the one who made the motion to approve
  • Superintendent Cardona even mentioned that Prather’s wife wrote the officer training.
  • At Q&A at the end, a community member (LMC) asked about this conflict of interest.
  • By that point, Prather had gone home.  LMC said it was a question for the city lawyer, but Jane Hughson ended the meeting without giving the lawyer a chance to answer the question.

This is getting into more egregious territory!  Jude certainly knows better. He recuses himself over absurdly flimsy pretexts all the time.

ANYWAY.  Chief Standridge says he could include SROs in his yearly update to Council.  Superintendent Cardona talks about how closely everyone meets and supervises the SROs.

Mark Gleason politely says “I told you so! Stability. Safety. Etc.”

The vote: Should we switch to two year SRO contracts and administrative renewal?

… 

Item 25:  This was a little confusing.

Gather ‘round, children.  Once upon a time, there was a little Municipal Utility District, on the north end of town:

That’s east of I35, on Yarrington road. The year was 2014.

It was actually kind of gigantic if you zoomed out:

But none of the townspeople ever did. 

Here’s what the developers pretended it would look like, some day:

Look at all that water! What the hell is going on here. Here’s the satellite photo of this area:

So much less water!

(Were those lunatics planning on a great new lake? Were they going to tap the Blanco, where it runs underground, to create a watery playground for rich people? Maybe!)

Back to our story.

The village council elders put a weird clause in the development agreement that allowed landowners to opt out.  Usually council elders wouldn’t do such a thing, but in this case they did.

By 2023, these owners had opted out:

The red parts had opted out.

In 2023, the rest of the land owners opted out:

So at Tuesday’s council meeting, the little village dissolved the Municipal Utility District altogether. There’s no development agreement. There’s no lake.

THE END! 

The moral of the story is: there is no moral. 

…

Item 26: New City Hall and Hopkins Redevelopment project

Back in July, we saw some pretty pictures about what the new City Hall could look like, and what Hopkins could look like, maybe someday:

Today’s task: we’re going to form a steering committee, to help shape the vision. 

Who does Council want to be on the steering committee?

Jane: We could have each councilmember pick a person, and then have a representative from some key constituents – Texas State, River Foundation, Downtown Association.

Alyssa:  Before we have this conversation, we need the DEI coordinator. Otherwise we’ll do what we always do. That leads to the status quo, and the same old people still have the same old power. 

Mark Gleason: I like each councilmember picking two people, plus the key organizations should all have representatives.

Alyssa:  Hey! You guys. We need to stop and get input from the DEI person, before we have this conversation. 

Jane: And councilmembers themselves. What about the mayor?

Alyssa:  Listen. Stop. The DEI coordinator is not here.

Matthew Mendoza: Why should Texas State get a seat on the committee?

Jane Hughson: It’s just part of being good neighbors. They also have a representative on the downtown committee.

Alyssa:  Hello? Anyone? Bueller?

Shane Scott: You know how councilmembers get their names in the building? I think we should have little bobbleheads of ourselves, instead.*

Alyssa:  LALALALALALA AM I SHOUTING INTO THE VOID HERE?

Matthew: We should require that members have lived in San Marcos for at least five years!

Alyssa:  [mumbles to self about DEI coordinator]

Jane: How about a P&Z representative?  How about a library representative?

Alyssa:  [draws pictures of a council consulting the DEI coordinator, and holds them overhead, in the style of Lloyd from Say Anything.]

Saul: Should we require that they be caught up on their taxes?

Jane, dryly: We don’t require that for elected officials. 

Alyssa:  [Launches little confetti cannons. Sends in carrier pigeons with tiny notes tied to their legs, which read “Let’s consult with the DEI coordinator”. Does an interpretive dance for the letters “D”, “E”, and “I”.] 

In the end, everyone agrees to come back next time with their final ideas for the composition of the steering committee.  City staff is going to talk with the DEI coordinator and get best practices from her, and they’ll share those next meeting.

Here’s the thing: You have to get the DEI coordinator to talk to everyone before the brainstorming. Otherwise the brainstorming will perpetuate the same old power imbalances as always.  The point of the DEI coordinator is to gently get everyone to cut that shit out, and redirect them into new territory.

*This is a real comment. I did not make this up.

Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 7/2/24

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Presentation 1: New City Hall Project

The city needs a new City Hall. (Discussed here and here.)

Laurie Moyer was handling the new City Hall project, but she is retiring. The new person basically gave a presentation to introduce herself and pitch how she sees things unfolding.

Here’s what she was handed:

In other words, City Hall is going here:

across the street from Old City Hall.

So apparently this location is settled? I don’t know how I feel about this. I also have concerns about what might happen to the old site.

However: they’ll need voter approval in 2025 to re-purpose park land as City Hall, so I guess we’ll be hearing some sales pitches. In the end, the voters will decide whether or not it sounds ok.

The new person is imagining making a whole Hopkins Project out of it:

Parts of this sound good to me!

I like the idea that Hopkins could look more like CM Allen.

P3 means “Public-Private Partnership”. This part is inevitable because the city doesn’t think that the voters would pass a bond in an election. So they want to bring in private partnerships. (More things that I feel weird about.)

This whole thing will take forever to complete. If the stars align, it will take seven years.

…

Presentation #2: It’s Sidewalk Maintenance time!

Here’s the game plan:

Here’s what’s coming up in 2025:

or if you prefer a chart:

Would you like to play along at home, over the next year? Go here:

www.sanmarcostx.gov/306/StreetsSidewalks

Would you like YOUR pet peeve to be selected for a project in 2026?

Would you like some more photos?

here you go. Enjoy!

Bonus! 3 pm workshop, 2/20/24

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

At 3 pm, there was a workshop on the future city hall.  We’ve discussed this before, back in 2022.

Basically, we can’t afford a new city hall, and Texas has a law that you can’t take out a bond to pay for a city hall. [Edit! I got that wrong. The law is that you have to get voter approval for a bond. City staff and city council don’t think that San Marcos voters would approve a bond for a city hall. Correction based on the 2022 presentation here.]

So they’re left with public-private partnerships, where some private entity goes in halvsies with you. You end up building something with both government and commercial appeal.  Bleagh, but here we are.

The first decision is location. 

This is the leading contender on location:

ie, across the street from the current city hall.

This is supposed to be a mock-up of what City Hall would look like if it were in that spot:

You’re looking at Hopkins. The old location is the lower right, and that would be converted to commercial and residential. Across Hopkins is the new City Hall, next to the retention pond. You can see the Bobcat baseball stadium in the background.

So that’s possible location #1.

Possible location #2 is where the current city hall is located, on the south side of Hopkins.

Nobody says what’s wrong with the southern side of Hopkins. What they say is, “If City Hall is on the northern side of Hopkins, it will welcome everybody coming from I-35! It will form a Civic Road of City Hall, the library, and the Activity Center.”

I guess the southern side is less welcoming because of how Hopkins bends? You’d think a big, snazzy, new building would feel big and snazzy on either side of the road, but I guess it’ll feel extra big and snazzy on the northern side.

Possible location #3 is somewhere downtown. The appeal of this is to bring back some daytime workers back to downtown. When Hays County Courthouse moved out to Wonderworld, the downtown lost a ton of people who would eat lunch at the restaurants and keep the downtown bustling during the day. It would be hard to pull off, though – we only own a tiny bit of land, and it would be pricey to acquire more.

….

Laurie Moyer is one of the assistant city managers, and she gave an extremely charming presentation about her Christmas vacation, which was spent driving all over Texas, observing the City Halls in comparable cities.

For example:

and then, her personal photo:

I was delighted by the whole thing. You should watch it here, if this is also your brand of nerdiness.

Bottom line: All these cities had city halls built in the past 20 years, and ours is 50 years old. The whole process will move extremely slowly, but we’re going to hire a consultant and get the ball rolling.

Bonus: New City Hall, some day!

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

So, the city is in a bind, because the state passed a law that you can’t borrow money to build your city hall. (Unless you get voters to approve a bond.) Our city hall is 50 years old, and staff and council constantly say how inadequate it is.

via

So city staff presents two vague plans:

(That’s a screenshot from the workshop. I couldn’t find a packet.)

The plan on the left is a bunch of new buildings on the same site as the current City Hall. The plan on the right has city hall moved across Hopkins, between the library and the dog park.

Funding is tricky, because voters are unlikely to approve a bond project for a new City Hall. So there are some creative ways to fund it, and they’ll probably kludge together a bunch of different solutions. Basically, you tie in a bunch of different purposes and get a lot of organizations to share the cost.

Max Baker and Jude Prather ask staff to consider thinking about a downtown site. The current Hays County Courthouse was built maybe 10-12 years ago. Before that, they used the strip mall that is currently Industry and Aquabrew. And that building, before it was the Hays County Justice Center, had been the old HEB.

Guys. GUYS. I was trying to find a photo online of the old Justice Center, and coming up empty. Then I recalled that I personally took some photos of it, a long time ago.

I used to call it the Supermarket of Justice:

I took that photo back in 2008, back when I was a lower case marxist.

But now I’m a big Marxist. I’ve got a blog, see? (I’m SO pleased that I was actually able to locate those old photos.)

Back to the point. In the days of the Supermarket of Justice, there was a large population of daytime employees in downtown. When the county employees all moved out to Stagecoach, the downtown became empty during the day. It has not quite ever recovered.

So putting City Hall downtown would put a serious number of employees using our restaurants and the fabric of downtown on a daily basis. It would definitely be more expensive, but maybe be worth it.

Saul and Jane are on the side of “Keep it cheap, keep it by the parks.” Max, Jude, and maybe Alyssa and maybe Mark are potentially interested in moving it downtown? I’m intrigued by a downtown city hall. But I do not want us to sell off the current land – surely we can find a quality civic use for it.

(You know what made me sad? When the Government Records department vacated southeast corner of Hopkins and Guadalupe. I’m a softie for public works.)

PS: I also took a few more photos, back in 2008:

There was a church on I-35 that sold clawfoot bathtubs:

right by Riverside Drive. I called it The Clawfoot Bathtub Church, for obvious reasons.

With this menacing Daffy Duck out front.

(I can’t figure out how Daffy is not visible from the first photo, since I would have taken both photos on the same day?! Maybe hidden behind the sign?)

And lastly, our beautiful river, doing what it does best:

being beautiful.

There is one photo that I did not take, and I regret it so much. Back then, the Chamber of Commerce was in the same building as now, on CM Allen, but it had a different sign. The font on the sign was the most ridiculous Mr. Rogers font.

In my memory, it looked something like this:

Maybe with the S, M, and C’s being even more swooping and absurd?

It looked very un-businesslike, and I miss it. If anyone has a photo of it, it would make me so happy.