Tag: community survey

Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 12/16/25

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Workshop #1: San Marcos Community Survey

Every three years, we run a community survey. The first one was in 2022, and so 2025 is the second.

Methods:

They try to get a random sample of people by sending mailers out to households. They also open the survey up to anyone, online.

The responses are overwhelmingly older white homeowners in Kissing Tree.

I’m really not kidding:

where “Charlie” is the blue #3 area below:

and yes, they are mostly white home-owners:

This is a well-understood phenomenon by people who run surveys – different groups of people respond to surveys with different participation rates.

So they correct for it. What you do is you take the actual composition of San Marcos, based on census data. Then you weight your survey responses until they match the actual proportions.

For example:

Loosely speaking, if you’re 18-34 and you filled out the survey, your answers will get multiplied by 3. If you’re 35-54, your answers will get multiplied by 1/2, and if you’re 55+, your answers will get multiplied by 1/3.

…

So how’d we do?

Oh, fine! It’s all fine.

and

I don’t have any big, glorious conclusions.

Full data here.

…

Workshop #2: Office of Community Support and Resource Navigation, and Participatory Budgeting.

We’ve got things in progress! Here’s two new things that Council put into this year’s budget:

  1. Office of Community Support and
    Resource Navigation
  2. Participatory Budgeting.

Office of Community Support and Resource Navigation

That name is a mouthful and doesn’t really capture the gist of it? To me, it sounds like a helpline.

This is actually about safety from a non-policing framework:

This is basically catnip for me. Yes, please, all of that.

Here’s the basics:

It’s still in the baby stages.

Keep an eye out for Town Hall meetings as this ramps up!

…

Participatory Budgeting

We’ve got $200,000 with YOUR name on it!

Here are some sample ideas:

So, y’know, look around and see what annoys you!

Some details:

So, sadly we cannot submit “Open the Activity Center on Sundays!” because that would be a recurring cost. But that’s one of my fondest wishes.

Anyway, start brainstorming! Ideas are due in February.

You don’t have to know all the details. They’ll help build your spark into a flame. You just dream big, kiddo. (Well, dream medium. It’s only $200K.)

…

Workshop #3: Airport updates

Our little airport is growing?

First off, we have a cute old air tower. Would Council mind if we move it?

Here’s the journey it will go on:

Second, there’s a new road that needs named:

We’re going to name it after this guy:

He was a POW in WWII, among other things. Sounds good to me!

Bonus! 3 pm workshops, 8/5/25

by The San Marxist, posted in 3 pm Workshops

Workshop 1: Community Survey

Back in 2022, the city put out a community survey, to find out how happy people are with life in San Marcos and with city services. Now it’s time for the 2025 follow-up survey.

This workshop was mostly about tinkering with the five freebie questions that the city gets to individualize. It was pretty mundane, so I didn’t bother to write it up.

Keep an eye out for the survey over the next few months! And share it with people who don’t generally respond to city surveys.

…

Workshop 2: Utility late fees and reconnection fees.

This has been a discussion for the past year, most recently here. Bascially, there was a lot of money available to help people pay their utility bills, but very little of it was getting spent on people who needed help. They’ve (hopefully) fixed that by making the application form much shorter and easier.

The second issue was late fees and reconnection fees. If you already can’t pay, do we really need to charge you more as punishment? The Citizens Utility Advisory Board (CUAB) is bringing back recommendations on what we could change.

There are two main questions:

  1. How much of a penalty do we want to charge people, once their bill is overdue?
  2. How much does it cost the city to disconnect and reconnect someone’s water/gas/electricity?

Penalty:

We used to charge a 10% late fee. CUAB is recommending a 5% late fee.

Disconnect/reconnect:

Here we’re just trying to cover our costs. It’s not a punishment. Back in 2014, we set $40 as the fee. In 2025, it now costs $95 to reconnect the utilities.

The problem is that if you decrease the late fee by 5% and then increase the reconnection fee by $55, they kind of cancel each other out:

So Council is a little bummed out over this.

Jane: Can people get late fees and reconnection fees paid for by the Utility assistance program?
Answer: Just late fees, but not reconnection fees.

Jane: That was an oversight. I wish we’d talked that out when we were dealing with utility assistance.

…

They end up going in circles for awhile – should they send it back to CUAB? Should they split out water from electricity? Should they subsidize disconnection/reconnection fees? What if the state passes restrictions affecting late fees?

In the end, they decide to accept the proposal for now, and also reduce the water disconnection fee to $40. This will come back around for final approval during a council meeting.

Hour 1, 4/19/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen comment:

  • The intersection out in front of the Methodist Church, back behind to Little HEB.  It’s dangerous and needs a four way stop sign. Several people spoke about this. They are probably right!
  • Many people spoke against the warehouse in Victory Gardens. Strongly opposed.
  • A lot of people spoke against the Texas Aviation Partners. I gather that they run the airport, having gotten a contract from the city in 2012.  They sound like total shitheads? Everyone basically described them as inept at best, and vindictive and corrupt at worst. 

The Victory Gardens warehouse is the only item on the agenda, though, in Hour 2. 

Item 1: Upcoming Community Survey

Council wants to know what’s important to us all.  Right now they’re fine-tuning the questions that the survey-people will add in, specific to San Marcos.  Like: Why do San Martians go to New Braunfels and spend our money there? Are we doing enough to protect the aquifer?  Do San Martians realize how much money we drop on the Greater San Marcos Partnership and do we feel it’s worth it? 

(That last one is courtesy of Max Baker, who loathes GSMP. While I agree GSMP is mostly a bag of hot air, I can’t imagine that a survey question will reveal much.)

And lastly: should the survey go out in the summer, and exclude the college students, or should it wait till fall, and include the college students?

The main argument put forward (by Councilmember Garza) was that outreach efforts will be hindered if the public schools are closed.  Max Baker agreed with this.  (I am still mildly curious if they actively prefer having college students participate in the survey or not.)

Shane Scott straight-forwardly says that it will be biased without college students, and so we should include them.

The vote: 

Exclude them: Saul Gonzalez, Max Gleason

Include them: Alyssa Garza, Max Baker, Shane Scott, Jude Prather

Mayor Hughson avoided sharing her opinion. After Jude voted, she just said, “So that’s four for September” and left it at that.