Tag: CM Allen

Hours 0:00 – 1:39, 11/6/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Uncategorized

Citizen Comment: 

VisionSMTX++ is supposed to be approved tonight. The public has opinions:

  • Go back to the original. The new version constrains the housing market, forces sprawl, and jacks up prices!
  • Keep the new version! We love sprawl and jacked up housing prices.
  • Renters need protection!
  • We live in a cottage court. Stop pretending these don’t exist in existing neighborhoods.

Downtown Area Plan is also supposed to be approved tonight.

  • Protect the river!
  • Protect against flooding!
  • Too much asphalt!
  • We’re going to become Baltimore!
  • The water table is very shallow under CM Allen. And there are a bunch of endangered species in the river here.
  • If you plan for development, you can specify environmental improvements you want. If you plan for parks, you’ll get stuck with the land owner’s choices when they develop it anyway.

…

But before we get to all that, we have a zoning case.

Items 8-9: This is an 18-acre patch at the corner of 123 and Wonderworld:

It’s right behind this little strip:

It sounds like they want to put a little retirement village there. 

Saul Gonzales definitely had something on his mind, but I couldn’t figure out what.  Here’s how the conversation goes: 

First, Saul asks about the cost and tax revenue of the future plot.

Staff answers:
1. the cost to the city is $0! They’re responsible for any extensions of water, sewer, and electricity. 
2. We can’t know the tax revenue until it’s built!

This is not a good answer. It evades what Saul is getting at.   What Saul wants to know is, “Will this help or hurt the budget, in the future after it’s built?”  Right now the costs are extensions of water, sewer, and electricity, but once it’s built, there will be ongoing services, namely police and firefighters.  

Here’s my guess at the real answer: 
1. Cost: This will not require much from future city budgets. We’re already providing police and fire department coverage to things that are further out than this development – this is infill.
2. Revenue: Since this will be apartments, it should bring in more tax revenue than we spend on it.

So my expectation is that this will be good for the budget. 

Next, Saul asks about flooding. He’s told that it’s not in a flood plain, they’ll do an environmental analysis, and everything looks fine.

The Vote:
Yes: Everyone but Saul
No: Saul

Clearly the answers that Saul got didn’t resolve whatever he’s worried about. So either:

  1. He doesn’t believe the answers, in which case I’m interested to know why.
  2. There’s another reason he’s voting against it, in which case I’m interested to know why.

Just for funsies, let’s apply the five criteria:

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?

Per Saul’s questions, I’m guessing that it will pay for itself, yes.

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?

As always, we need a regularly updated housing report. It sounds like the city has picked back up on the one they dropped in 2019, so maybe this will materialize?

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?

Not in a flood zone. Not environmentally sensitive. It’s supposed to be one-story apartments for seniors, which doesn’t sound like sprawl.

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

No idea on the mixed income part. Potentially it’s near some future retail, but currently not much.

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?

It never is.

But on the whole, it’s more good than bad, in my opinion.

….

After items 8 and 9, we doubled back to Items 1, 2, and 5. These were pulled off the consent agenda for discussion.

Item 1: VisionSMTX++

Your two-second summary:
Original community plan: weakly opposed to sprawl and jacked up housing costs.
P&Z rewrite: we LOVE sprawl and jacked up housing costs!

Read all about it here, here, here, and here.

The Final Approval:

Immediately Alyssa Garza moves to postpone. 

Alyssa: Too many people are expressing frustration with the process.  She’s gotten a flood of feedback in the past two days.  There are too many barriers for people to engage.

Saul agrees: he’s getting input, more time won’t hurt. 

Jude says he doesn’t want to postpone.  He thinks just a few tweaks are needed to get it done.  He’s got some amendments proposed for some of the missing middle stuff: cottage courts, multiplexes, etc.  

I would be very interested to know what these amendments were going to be! But legally, they can only discuss the postponement. Since there’s a motion to postpone, you can’t discuss amendments to the actual plan.

Eventually they settle on January 16th, with a committee to discuss the matter.  The committee will be Shane Scott, Alyssa Garza, and Matthew Mendoza. 

The vote to postpone to January: 6-0.   (Mark Gleason is absent.)  

My $0.02:

  1. Yes, the procedure was total garbage. The P&Z-plus-Jane subcommittee rewrote a document that had reflected the input from the town.
  2. But also, the new content is total garbage. It’s not just a problem of procedure. The subcommittee inserted a ton of NIMBYism that made the comprehensive plan worse.  

Yes, I would like us to fix the procedure and solicit a bunch more input from the community. But I’m nervous about it all being performative. If nothing actually changes in the comprehensive plan, then we’re just playing a game called Let’s All Perform Community Input. If the garbage content stays, then this was an empty exercise.

Item 2: The Downtown Plan

Your two-second summary: (Discussed previously here and here.)
There are four properties along CM Allen.

Right now they’re owned by private citizens who can do whatever they want. But would we really like those to be parks, instead?

Options 1, 2, and 3:

This choice sort of landed like a bomb out of nowhere, and conversation has been intense and emotional.

The Final Approval:

Everyone wants to postpone this, as well.  Clearly the community is all worked up over Options 1, 2, and 3.  This whole thing unfolded in just one month, unlike VisionSMTX++, which has taken three years, so everyone feels panicked and rushed to weigh in. Taking a beat is a good idea.

  • Jude wants to nail down specific environmental benefits to Option 3.
  • Jane wants us to land somewhere between Options 2 and 3.

Staff comes forward with a proposal to break off the CM Allen district from the rest of the downtown plan, and pass the remaining bit.  Everyone is glad about this, and it passes 6-0.

So what’s next?

The CM Allen District will then become its own area plan, possibly combined with the rest of the riverfront properties along CM Allen to make a River District. But there are six area plans queued up ahead of it, so it’s not going to happen for another year or two.

Hours 1:58 – 4:01, 10/17/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 15: The Downtown Area Plan

The Downtown Area Plan is more than just the CM Allen District, but that’s definitely the part that sucks up all the oxygen in the room.  (Discussed here last time.)

Still, let’s take a moment to pay attention to the rest:

And here are the major points:

The thing is: downtown is already owned and zoned. You can’t demand or legislate hardly anything. All you can do is entice and form partnerships and collaborate with the people who run the things located there.

So let’s move onto the CM Allen District, which we discussed last time:

There was a Downtown Area Plan committee, who came up with Option 1:

Option 1:

Five Story Loaves of Bread:

Similarly to VisionSMTX, the shadow subcommittee of P&Z plus Jane Hughson was horrified, and rewrote it.

Hence Option 2:

Given that the city doesn’t actually own all that land, the Planning Department tried to thread the needle and come up with a compromise option:

Option 3:

Colorful, vibrant, smaller loaves of bread:

At P&Z, we heard about the unaffordability of Option 2. P&Z voted for Option 2 anyway.

This time the staff presentation spends even longer on the complete unaffordability of it:

  • Basically, downtown land is worth much more than anywhere else in town. 
  • Right now, the 6.25 acres are mostly undeveloped, but they bring in this much taxable revenue:

The whole thing is 6.25 acres, so I’m going to ballpark the yearly revenue at $456K for the three lots marked.  A community member says that if they were developed, they’d pull in $3 million/year for the city.  Maybe?

No one can really say how much it would cost to acquire the parks, but if we had to say, staff puts the market value at $27 million dollars.

The city staff are always so professional, and so they presented all options neutrally, but I definitely got whiffs of Springfield Monorail from Option B:

Besides the magical thinking of the price tag, there’s also serious equity issues here.

Here is how the current parks are distributed throughout the city:

You may notice that there’s barely anything east of 35. People who live east of 35 have noticed this too, and are not amused. (They’ve also noticed a bunch of other patterns of systematic disregard. Isn’t that something!)

So what does the public think?

MO-NO-RAIL! MO-NO-RAIL!  Ahem.

  • Giant student housing will make parking way worse downtown.
  • There’s a shallow water table under CM Allen, and drilling into the rock wil fracture it.
  • If Texas State buys this land, we’re hosed.
  • The procedure was not democratic. Option 2 preys on emotions.
  • There are serious accessibility issues downtown for people in wheelchairs. This plan doesn’t address any of that.
  • The college students run downtown and grown ups don’t feel welcome.
  • We can find much better ways to spend $27 million dollars than this.
  • Car dependency is bad, it’s better to put more housing in walkable areas like downtown.

In actuality: there are three in favor of Option 2, five opposed, and one speaking on accessibility issues.

Council discussion:

Mark Gleason goes first:

  • He loves the vision of #2. He wishes we could afford it.
  • There’s absolutely no way he can go face constituents on the East Side and tell them he voted to spend $27 million on more West side parks.
  • It’s already zoned, it’s not undeveloped like the Woods
  • This won’t stop flooding.
  • Not ideal, but #3 is best. We must to something to help the rest of town.

I certainly agree with all of that! He also talks about how there’s going to be a trail around the whole city, which is a reference to the Elsik Tract.

(I can see the marketing now! “A River Runs Through Us, That Historic Trail Also Runs Through Us, and a Loop Runs Around Us.” Practically a spaghetti bowl of significance!)

Jane goes next: She literally says “I need to do some ‘splaining,” which is endearing.

  • Her ‘splaining: The graphics freaked her out, and she wanted some green space. Never pictured golf course style mock up. Never said “Eminent Domain” or millions of city money. 
  • The idea was that if you don’t explicitly ask for green space, you’ll get zero. If you do ask, maybe you’ll get a little.

Jude: There are better places to turn into parks than this. Could City Hall move here? Hotel, civic space?

Alyssa: I don’t like any of them, but I agree with Jude and Mark. 

Shane: What about a splash pad downtown? I’m here for families! Families first! These are the last tracts along the river. Option 2!

Saul: I’m born and raised in San Marcos. There were no skyscrapers back then. Whenever I talk to anyone, they say “Why are there so many skyscrapers downtown? Why is there so much student housing?” That’s not San Marcos. Plus, it’s a slippery slope. What’s next, high rises all the way to 35? What if Texas State buys it? They don’t pay taxes or fees!  It’s for the kids. Bring back how it was!

[Side Note: “Why is there so much student housing?” Because the town loses their goddamn minds if students live anywhere else. Students are actually people, and they’re entitled to live in this town.

Sometimes students act like jerks! But so do rich people, and also middle-class people, and also poor people. People are jerks.]

Matthew: I had been a big fan of #2. Rio Vista Relief! But paid parking is coming. Where would this park’s parking be? 

We had a community meeting with Blanco Gardens on crime. Wasn’t well attended, and just me and Mark. They kept saying, “Why does the west get EVERYTHING?” Park distribution is not fair. East side is always neglected.

Matthew gave this huge impassioned speech about the plight of the east side, and then finished by saying, “And that’s why I’m on the fence!” which made me laugh. Way to undercut your own passion. 

Saul: Cape’s Dam is coming to the east side!

Matthew: But not, like, anytime soon.

The Vote on the CM Allen District:


Love me some Option 3!: Mark Gleason, Jane Hughson, Alyssa Garza, Matthew Mendoza, Jude Prather

Option 3 Gives Me a Sad: Shane Scott, Saul Gonzales

So there you have it.

The entire downtown plan will get revised to incorporate Option 3, and then will come back on November 6th for a final vote.

…

Item 12: Sights & Sounds

Apparently people ask Alyssa every year to keep an eye on S&S.  The former city manager gave her the runaround when she asked for documentation.  She asks if she could please get some straight answers. She’s told “no problem!”

…

Item 16: Land Development Code:

Last meeting, we were going to kick this back for two months, to give committees a chance to meet.  Now the planning department is asking if we could please just pass it, since it’s holding up a bunch of stuff, and they promise the committees will all meet promptly.

Sure: 7-0. So that’s that.