Tag: GSMP

Hours 0:00-0:56

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment: the big topic is the humane pet shop ordinance, which is going to be coming back around, in January.  We saw this last year, with the Pick-a-Pet Problem.  It’s still a problem! Stay tuned.

Item 16: Meet Mystic Canyon:

The developers have agreed to run some sewage lines in a way that preserves a few heritage trees. 

Tuesday’s item was genuinely no big deal, but I figured we could have a brief explainer on Mystic Canyon, especially in light of the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone discussion (which is coming in the last part of the meeting).

So, Mystic Canyon? It was approved in 2018. Here’s how the vote went: 

(Pre-covid, the council members used to vote on little Jeopardy-click devices, so they couldn’t copy off each other’s answers.) So both your candidates for mayor voted yes, as did Saul.

And in fact, both Max Baker and Mark Gleason were on P&Z together at the time, so we also know how they voted (although P&Z did not use the little Jeopardy-clickers).

The P&Z Vote: Mystic Canyon should exist?
Yes: Mark Gleason (and also Kate McCarty, Lee Porterfield, and Jim Garber)
No: Max Baker (and also Angie Ramirez and Betseygail Rand)

In case anyone from the city staff reads this: your website lists Matt Mendoza as having voted at that meeting, which is nonsense because he only joined P&Z in 2022:

But here, you can watch the video – it’s Matthew Havriland that was on the committee back then.  Someone fix this, stat!  (The votes look screwy because that is a motion to deny. So “For” means deny, and “Against” means pro-development.) 

It’s not the sprawliest sprawl, but we still shouldn’t be developing over the recharge zone. More on the topic of the Edwards Aquifer to come.

…..

Item 15: I have no idea what’s going on here, for two reasons:

  1. Clearly there’s a lot of backstory.  Is this an Executive Session Secret?
  2. The item is an approval to say San Marcos does not consent, and then we denied it. 

Here’s the actual item:

We denied this by a vote of 6-0.  So the Hillert Tract gets their Crystal Clear water after all?  

My guess is that this was dealt with in Executive Session:

Sounds like someone got in trouble!  OooooOOO!   

So: what’s the Hillert Tract? I went down a short rabbit hole.  We acquired it in 2008. It shows up in Executive Session roughly yearly. It seems there’s some drama going on with Martindale. Finally I found a map, from 2014:

So it’s sort of next to Redwood, and next to the currently-controversial Riverbend development.

Side note: why are we drawing I-35 almost horizontally?! Check out the little compass in the top left. I mean, if that’s how you like to look at the world, knock yourself out.

….

Item 20:   This one is really important!  We have a board called the Economic Development Board of San Marcos, or EDSM.  

Here’s what EDSM does:

So the EDSM is supposed to look out for the best interests of the city. Then the city turns around and contracts things out to the Greater San Marcos Partnership, or GSMP.  GSMP is a nonprofit that wants to grow and groom the business community of San Marcos.  You can imagine – or at least I can – that what’ s best for the business community is not always aligned with what’s best for San Marcos.  

Last spring, Max pointed out that it is a conflict of interest for GSMP members to serve on EDSM.  If they’re on EDSM, they’re supposed to advise council on what’s best for San Marcos. But then, whatever they approve goes straight to GSMP. It’s not a great look.  

Now, GSMP is entitled to one non-voting representative on EDSM. The problem is people serving in at-large seats on EDSM who also happen to serve on GSMP. Max also made the point that this reduces the number of EDSM seats available for the rest of the community.

The issue got sent to committee, and the committee has agreed.  So tonight, they amended EDSM to say that members can’t also serve on GSMP.  This is great!

The business community is still relatively small, and we’re still drawing on the same pool for both committees, so clearly everyone still knows each other.  But one key to having an ethically-run city is not to create opportunities for temptation.  It’s good to put some daylight between these two groups.

Also, this is a great example by Max of the kind of small-but-good thing that progressives do differently at the local level. Put activists on city council, and they’ll do good things.

Hour 4:12-5:20, 7/5/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Items 37 and 38: Plans for the fall election.  

Max Baker wants there to be more outreach for election workers and better pay.  Both seem reasonable.  

  • The county appoints election workers, and Max would like it to be a joint appointment with the city, in order to diversify the workers.  (Really, it’s hard to find people besides retirees).
  • The pay is very low ($11-$12/hour). Could that be made more reasonable?

A small bit of pettiness: Max brings this up during Item 38, but it’s a better fit for Item 37, so he moves to reopen Item 37.  Everybody votes yes except Mark Gleason, who snips “no” , appearing to aim to be a petty little thorn poking Max in the side. 

The vote: County and city joint appointment of election workers? 
Yes:  Everybody but Mark Gleason
No: Mark Gleason

The joint selection passes.  

For raising the pay, Max suggests the Hays County average wage, in order to give a changing benchmark which moves with inflation.  Mark Gleason frets that this will be just too hard to implement, due to the shared math between Hays County and San Marcos. 

The vote:
Yes:  Max Baker, Alyssa Garza
No: Mayor Hughson, Mark Gleason, Saul Gonzalez, and Shane Scott.

So this one gets voted down. (Mayor Hughson and Saul Gonzalez both say that they’d support it in the future, just not for this fall.)

…

Item 41: City Representatives to the Greater San Marcos Partnership (GSMP) committee.  GSMP is the business community.  There will be the Mayor, City Clerk, and two city council members.

Max Baker, Alyssa Garza, Mark Gleason, and Shane Scott all volunteer.  So there are two progressive and two conservative choices.  Alyssa makes a rather cute plea for support. (Right at 4:50:10.)

She gets five votes and Shane comes in second, and so they’ll be the representatives.

A small bit: Mayor Hughson voted for Mark Gleason and Shane Scott. That annoyed me, to go for the two conservative dudes. I’d expected her to vote for one from the left and one from the right.  She was the only person not to vote for Alyssa Garza.

…

Item 42: The Library board is proposing going fine-free.  Ending fines is very important – besides being an equity issue, it also drives people away due to the shame that lingers when they owe money.  They state that fines make up 0.25% of the library budget. 

City Council agrees to bring this forward as an issue that they’re interested in discussing.

While we’re on the subject of libraries:  we have a terrific library staff and lovely new facility, but very short library hours.  It’s got this beautiful lobby which should offer extended hours with free internet, but instead the library doesn’t open until 1 pm on Sunday, 10 am on Saturday, and 9 am during the week.  

Also, the number of books in circulation is too low, particularly in the children’s section, and the supply of e-books is low, and they are frequently unavailable.  None of this is the library’s fault – it’s all funding – but it would be nice if it had more books and longer lobby hours.

…

Item 43: COLAs for Council Appointees:

Yes: Everyone.
No: No one.

I only include it because we’ve discussed this before. 

…

Item 45: We got a letter from the Mayor of Austin! We’re so fancy.  The letter is from mayors across Texas, together with Amtrak. We’re going to sign it.

Here’s the letter:

Will it do any good?  I am pretty pessimistic about this state’s ability to ask for free money to help improve the lives of Texans.  (See also: why don’t we expand medicaid, Greg Abbott?)

Comparing I-35 to the Hamburg-Berlin train line seems so ill-suited for a Republican audience that, to me, it reads like a tacit acknowledgment that the Texas Department of Transportation is going to wad this letter up and throw it in the trash. But maybe not!

Having a functional rail system in Texas would be amazing, and I’d love to take the train all over the place.

Hour 1, 5/17/22

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:

The landlords are very mad about the three-month eviction moratorium.   It was implemented in March 2020. We’re one of the few holdouts that haven’t lifted it yet, mostly because Hays County did a spectacularly abysmal job giving rental assistance to tenants. The idea was that with a few extra months, maybe more money could be dispersed and keep people in their homes. Evictions lead to homelessness, which derails lives permanently.

This time, the landlords were arguing that the moratorium is bad for tenants, because it allows them to rack up more debt, which then counts against them when they are eventually evicted anyway.  Their other argument is that the job insecurity caused by the pandemic is long gone.  (Their actual argument is that they would like to collect rent every month. This isn’t itself a crazy argument!)

Look, landlords are generally a problematic group.  They leach off renters’ income by virtue of the fact that they had wealth earlier than the renter did. They benefit from a housing crisis and generally try to absorb as much of someone’s disposable income as they can.  However: asking landlords to forgo the money that they’re legally entitled to is also a problem.  

So here is the key question: is the eviction delay a worthwhile way to prevent homelessness?  

Glad you asked – we actually had a council workshop on homelessness just two weeks ago!  What are their recommendations?

(From here and here.)

Oh. Those are very high-level.  That’s a whole ‘nother geologic time scale from 90-eviction moratoriums.   

So here are some more immediate things I would like to know:

  1. What is our total housing stock, broken down by affordability?
  2. What is our total housing need, broken down by affordability?
  3. What were the recommendations in the 2019 Housing Needs study? 
  4. How is the implementation going?

Those questions should be front and center, every time we are discussing zoning, housing, short-term homelessness, or affordability.  

In 2019, San Marcos did a major housing needs assessment. There is tons of good data in it, most of it from 2017.  We desperately need to be updating this every year.  

So for example, here is our rental stock from 2017:

(From here.)

This should be updated every 2-3 years!
– the 3rd/4th columns should come from Census and American Community Survey data, which is released every few years.
– We know the number of new units that get occupancy permits each year. This is already aggregated here and here.


But the hard part would be finding out how much apartments are being rented for. Since 2017, those 15,884 total apartments have all risen in cost, so they’re not in the same categories as they used to be. For example, the 4163 units that were under $875/month in 2017? Those must all be in the < $1250 or < $1875 categories by now.

So the gap is presumably way worse in 2022 than it was in 2017, but we don’t know by exactly how much. Still, two questions down.

  1. What is our total housing stock, broken down by affordability?
  2. What is our total housing need, broken down by affordability?
  3. What were the recommendations in the 2019 Housing Needs study? 
  4. How is the implementation going?

So I dove into question 3 next. I found this, and got excited:

Three year implementation! Why, if we started in 2019 then…[counts on fingers…2020…2021…]…we should have really made some great progress!

So I got into the housing needs assessment.

Table of contents:

That looks like the right spot.…flipping to chapter IV…

There are four top needs, starting on page IV-2:

  • Additional affordable rentals for residents earning less than $25K
  • Displacement prevention
  • Starter homes and family homes priced near or below $200K and increased ownership product diversity
  • Improve condition and accessibility of existing housing stock.

Yes, yes! Those are big needs! (And “Displacement prevention” is right there, tying into the the 90 day eviction notice debate.)

So what is the action plan? What is in the “Addressing Needs” section?

Oh hrm. What the hell.

There are actually some useful recommendations in the glossy brochure version of the Strategic Housing Action Plan, but it was labeled as the draft version. I was trying to find the legal version. But that’s when I realized that everything was still labeled as “draft”. Then I saw this on the city webpage:

So did we really spend a year and drop a bunch of money on consultants, and then just…never adopt the plan? It’s just sitting there in draft form? Or is it just that the website was never updated?

Oh, this is such a riot.

At this point I was rabidly curious. I found the city council minutes from October 15th, 2019, but it wasn’t there.  It turns out that it didn’t go to P&Z until October 23rd, and it finally went to council on November 6th, 2019. 

The Strategic Housing Action Plan came from P&Z with a number of edits. At council, they discussed it, and punted to a Council Workshop. 

So I went hunting for the workshop. Finally I found it, 12/3/19. It wasn’t a workshop on the Strategic Housing Action Plan, it was on the new Comprehensive Plan. Workshops don’t have minutes, and I didn’t watch the video. But this is taken from the packet:  

So it was never approved, because it got absorbed into the Comprehensive Plan process, which is in progress. This is VisionSMTX. It still has at least another year to go.  And Comprehensive Plans are vague – they’re not going to promise funding or commit to specific details. So it will be years until someone puts together a new housing plan. (I have vivid memories of the SMTX4All housing project – I just assumed it had been passed and implemented!)

To recap: we’re sitting on housing recommendations from 2019, with data from 2017, while we dither about what we might like to look like in 2050.

I really do believe in longterm planning.  But waiting to address a housing crisis like this is just lazy and infuriating. 

The problem is those “controversial policy-related items” referenced in the workshop snippet. You can read what P&Z wanted to kill here, on pages 17 and 18. The Strategic Housing Plan was seen as a money grab by realtors, and only interpreted as a fight between realtors and the integrity of existing single family neighborhoods. There was no actual focus on the struggle of people in San Marcos to find homes. Basically, it’s a lot of nimbyism and fear of infill.  (Infill can be done in a shitty way! Infill needs to be done very carefully! But the recommendations from P&Z just ignored the actual problem.) But at least P&Z actually passed the damn thing, unlike Council.

So we held a massive housing plan and never implemented anything. And rental rates exploded in the meantime. That sounds about right.

(What were we talking about again? Should we end the 3-month eviction moratorium?  At some point we’ll have to, but it sure would be nice if we could get rental assistance to those in need beforehand.)

…

Item 1: Presentation by GSMP

The Greater San Marcos Partnership gets $400k/year  from the city of San Marcos, per this contract. For context, the entire city budget for 2022 is $260.5 million dollars.  So while GSMP is exasperating, we really are only talking about 0.0015 of the city’s budget.  

Per the contract, GSMP has to come get updates to the city. GSMP is doing a lot of outreach and education. They’re holding workshops – financial literacy, a mentorship thing, innovations, cybersecurity.  Sure.  A resources database.  Strengthen! Produce! Support! Identify challenges! My brain just turns to mush when I hear corporate verbs.

Max Baker is worried that GSMP will bring businesses in that aren’t good for San Marcos, and attempts to pin him on the quality of jobs at, say, Amazon.   But the speaker is perfectly skilled at side-stepping questions.  

For example: “You claim you’re working to bring in big businesses and supporting small businesses. Don’t companies like Amazon undercut small businesses that you claim to support?” asks Max, quite rightly.

“The large companies diversify our economy! There are spin offs! Different intellectual properties spin off and source locally!” the GSMP guy responds cheerfully. Which is an irrelevant answer – new spin-off companies don’t protect existing small businesses in any way. He actually has the cajones to claim that Amazon is known for having good labor practices, from what he hears. You can practically see the smoke pour out of Max’s ears.

Anyway, GSMP is dumb, but this whole thing is small potatoes. The speaker doesn’t do anything wrong exactly, but it’s unsatisfying.   

September 7th City Council Meeting (Part 2)

by The San Marxist, posted in Meetings

The other two most-important items are Items 14 and 34.

Item 14: Interlocal Agreement with SMCISD on School Resource Officers

Commissioner Baker has a list of concerns about SROs.

  • They are reassigned to different schools for failure to do their job, instead of being removed as SROs all together
  • While training is required to be an SRO, officers get placed on campuses that are not trained as SROs
  • There is language about how SROs will “promote the concept of punishment for criminal acts”. How is this useful in our schools? Some people extend this concept to undocumented community members. This is destructive.
  • “Increase students’ knowledge and respect of the law” – what about when officers aren’t due that respect?
  • May we identify the funding sources of this study?
  • Why are we putting protection of property above protection of students?
  • Why aren’t we surveying students to see how the officers are doing and if they feel safer?
  • We put a pro-SRO video on YouTube featuring an officer whose actions have raised concerns.

Commissioner Derrick weighs in with points about SROs needing mental health training. She’s had particularly negative eperienc

Broadly, I agree with all of Baker’s points. However: Chief Dandridge is consistently great when he talks to City Council. I don’t know what he’s like on the job, and I know that there are community members who are frustrated with our police. All I am saying is that Dandridge’s performance at council meetings is very good. So far, this is what I’ve seen:

  • He generally does not respond adversarily to aggressive questions from Baker.
  • He often agrees partially or completely.
  • He backs up his statements with information and data,
  • He admits when he doesn’t know something, and offers to find the information.
  • He does not offer pat solutions and does not reduce the complexity of issues.

Again, maybe he’s a jerk on the force! I don’t know! But he’s good at council meetings.

Chief Dandridge responds to all of these points, one by one. On the questions about statistics and data, he pledges to write a memorandum compiling his data and that he will send it out to council. He lists the classes that the SROs are trained in. It includes restorative justice, mental health, developmental psychology, suicide prevention, and many more. He doesn’t try to dispute Baker’s points per se, but provides context for how these things play out in San Marcos. And he’s supportive of ideas like surveying students.

In the end, they vote to postpone and have work session. So nothing is resolved here, but I’m glad to see these issues discussed.

Item 34: Greater San Marcos Partnership, GSMP

GSMP is a pro-business organization that works across the entire county to bring business in and support existing businesses. San Marcos kicks in $400k/year. Several issues are raised:

Does GSMP make life better for San Marcos residents? Commissioner Baker wants GSMP to conduct a survey to quantify the impact of GSMP on San Marcos residents.

Mayor Hughson seems rather obtuse on this one, repeating several times that San Marcos already conducts a detailed quality of life survey and there is no need for GSMP to duplicate this. The difference is that the city survey is attempting to ascertain the benefits brought by the city, and the GSMP survey would attempt to measure benefits brought by GSMP. One does not substitute for the other.

Amendment for a mandatory survey passes, 4-3.
In favor: Derrick, Gonzalez, Garza, and Baker
Opposed: Hughson, Scott, Gleason

Next issue up is the Environmental Social Grievance reports, or ESG. These are third party reports compiled on the externalities that a business imposes on the community. City Council has asked for information from GSMP on wages, environmental impact, and other externalities. GSMP says that for $10K, they’ll buy an ESG from a third party company.

Baker would like to read one before agreeing that this suffices. But there isn’t one to read, because they cost money and they’re proprietary. It’s a very frustrating business-y solution. “We’ve contracted out with a niche business, and obviously they aren’t motivated by the public good. What’s the problem?” It’s not exactly corrupt, but it’s annoying and full of middlemen.

Baker moves to postpone until they can see a sample ESG report and see if it is satisfactory, but the motion fails.

In favor: Derrick, Garza, Baker
Opposed: Hughson, Scott, Gleason, Gonzalez

Councilmember Derrick makes an amendment to add mental health providers as a targeted industry. This passes 6-1, with Scott voting no, like a dillweed.

A representative speaks up about how intractable the problem of attracting mental health providers is. He promises that they’ll target, but not that they’ll be successful.

This last part is the BEST. Now, Councilmember Baker has been furious since he was at the GSMP Summit last spring, and nobody was wearing masks. Baker makes an amendment to the agreement that the GSMP will have to follow CDC guidelines on safety.

This passes 5-2:
For: Mayor Hughson, Derrick, Garza, Gonzalez, and Baker
Opposed: Just Gleason and Scott.

The whole discussion takes FOREVER, but the poetic justice of Max getting to force GSMP to wear masks is so sweet and worth every last bit.

(Finally, the actual agreement with GSMP passes unanimously.)