Tag: Electric vehicles

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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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:

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.