Tag: HEB

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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 – 1:24, 10/15/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen Comment:

  • Texas Disposal Systems is the trash/recycling company. They’re up for a five year contract renewal tonight. This topic had the most speakers.
    – There were people saying what an amazing job TDS has done, and how we must renew with them.
    – There were people from other waste systems saying that they can also do a great job, and if we’d just open up bids, they could show us.
  • One speaker made an interesting point about HEB: as long as we’re getting a new HEB, why don’t we revisit the almost-HEB, and see if we can acquire that land?

Here’s what he means:

There was almost an HEB here, back in 2016:

That is when HEB was the controversy of the day. HEB applied for a rezoning to put a grocery store on that corner.

The community was furious. Purgatory Creek had flooded just one year earlier, and it’s very environmentally sensitive. Traffic is already mess at that intersection. The WonderWorld extension was new, and part of the deal struck was that no new curb cuts would occur on WonderWorld. People were worried that HEB would close Little HEB.

But Council approved the rezoning anyway. (Jane Hughson and Jude Prather were two of the yeses.)

Zipping along to 2024: clearly HEB never built the grocery store there. This week’s big announcement is the new HEB on McCarty and I35 instead.  (See item 10.)

So… can we buy this old land from them?  Can we at least approach them for this land? It’s right there, where we’re putting all these trails down. Why don’t we at least ask?  

Great question! 

….

Onto the meeting!

Item 12:  Rezoning a little over an acre, out on Hunter Road:

in other words, just to the right of this Shell station:

as you’re headed south on Hunter.

It got zoned Neighborhood Commercial, so it will definitely not be apartments. Some kind of office or store.

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Item 2: After four years, we have a new Comprehensive Plan! VisionSMTX is now officially approved.

Backstory here. There are lots of big thank yous, and no major changes.

So how exactly did the committee thread the needle?  If I had to summarize, they:

  • Added back in the language about walking, biking, and transit. How close are you to parks, schools, and stores, without needing to drive?
  • Added ADUs, duplexes, and triplexes back into low intensity areas.
  • But kept one of the major P&Z changes, which was to split “Neighborhood Low” place types into two sub-types: Neighborhood Low-Existing and Neighborhood Low-New.

They did a great job of carving out a compromise position.

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Item 4: We lease land to the Chamber of Commerce for $1/year:

On CM Allen, on the edge of the river parks.

They’ve been there since 1977. They are raising money to build an extension, but for the time being, they want to extend this contract until 2031.

Here’s what Jane says at 58:00 minutes in:

“Whenever the Chamber got ready to expand, the city discovered that there were a lot of back lease payments that we had never advised the Chamber to pay.  And the Chamber didn’t know they needed to pay, and the Chamber president came to me and said, ‘If you add all this up, and the penalties and interest, the money that we just raised for the expansion kinda goes up in smoke.’ So I brought it to the council and we forgave all of that, so that the Chamber could use the dollars they’d raised for the expansion.”

I can’t find any Council discussion of this, so I assume it happened in top secret executive session?

This bit was boxed red in the packet, so I assume this is the Forgotten Lease Payments:

Look how cute that 1978 typewriter font is.

Here’s the thing: Sure, forgive Chamber’s debt – it got lost to the sands of time. Just be sure that we are equally charitable to other nonprofit organizations that may need a bit of grace.

(We did cover a bunch of debt from Together for a Cause a few years ago. One of the Place 5 candidates is involved, at that link.)

…

Just for funsies: Remember the time that we rented that land to Chamber of Commerce for $1/year, and they turned around and rented office space back to us for $28,760/year? And everyone – besides Alyssa Garza and Max Baker – voted to approve this!

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Item 5: We finalized the gateway signs business.  It’s going to look like this:

And go here:

and

This was not discussed. I just wanted to wrap up the topic.

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Item 10: Texas Disposal Systems

Staff did a pretty good job writing up the backstory, so I’m just going to cut-and-paste from the packet:

Council is kind of split. Everyone definitely loves TDS.

  • Jane, Shane, Jude and Alyssa are all fine with going with TDS now, and opening up bids for the 2030 contract.
  • Matthew, Saul, and Mark are all a little more uneasy about not going through the process of soliciting bids, and seeing what other companies can put out there. 

The vote:

TDS it is!

.

Hours 1:24 – 2:05, 10/15/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 13: Remember that time we didn’t have any commerce on the east side?

Will anybody save us from this food desert??

OH YEAH! It’s all very exciting. 

Back in May, Council approved a call for bids, saying “hey Grocery stores! We’ll work with you on tax breaks if you hit up the east side!”  HEB was listening loud and clear, and reached out to us in August.

Here’s where it will be: 

So right next to Embassy Suites, on NB I-35. 

They’ve owned this land for a long time, but HEB likes to do that: purchase potential land and then just chill with it for awhile. 

It’s a pretty ideal location: Between McCarty and I-35, you can zip pretty much all over the place. 

(This would be a great time to connect the two Leah Drives! Which are disconnected for reasons that are still murky to me:

Idk!)

So what are the terms?

Those rebates are pretty much exactly what Council proposed last May.

What kind of dollar amounts are we talking about?

I’m mildly skeptical about these sales tax numbers. Or rather, it’s not all new tax revenue to the city. Some of that money would have been spent at the existing Big and Little HEBs, and is just being diverted to the 3rd HEB. Now, a lot of folks on the east side currently drive down to HEB in New Braunfels, and so that will bring in new tax dollars if they switch to this new store. But not everyone!

What about jobs and such?

Ok, but what kind of pay and benefits? When we negotiated with Buccee’s, the company specified that they will pay $18/hour and get full benefits.

As far as I can tell, we entirely skipped this part of the negotiation. HEB will have to abide by the 2016 San Marcos law requiring companies to pay $15/hour, in exchange for tax breaks.   Does this mean that all HEB stores have to pay at least $15 an hour?

I believe HEB is pretty good to their employees, but this is poor work by Council and staff. We should always be negotiating on behalf of employees.

…

Sidebar: When we passed the 2016 (partial) minimum wage law, we did not include automatic inflation adjustments, the way we do for other contracts. If we had, $15/hour in 2016 would have automatically risen to $19.96 in 2024.

Hey council: Let’s update the 2016 ordinance and include automatic inflation adjustments! Like we do for so many things?

…

Back to HEB. What did Council say?   Mostly everyone gave a victory lap of thank yous. 

Mark Gleason added: “To other grocery stores, our economic incentive offer still stands! The east side can have more than just one grocery store!”  That’s great to hear.

Also: Mark is hearing from the community that lots of people are worried that Little HEB will close. During the meeting, councilmembers say “It’s great that they’ll keep Little HEB open” but I can’t find this actually written down anywhere. It would be good to have that in writing.

So here are my questions:

  • Would all HEB employees get the $15/hour as required by local ordinance, even at the existing stores?
  • Language about elevated minimum wage and benefits should always automatically be in these agreements.
  • Is it in writing that Little HEB will stay open for a certain number of years? 
  • Will Council please update the 2016 ordinance to peg the minimum wage to inflation???
  • Can we ask HEB about purchasing that little triangle of land next to Purgatory Creek?

The vote: 6-0.  Everyone hams it up in really cheesy ways: “Absolutely yes!” “Finally…yes!”  Fist pump. Etc.

…

Item 14: Alliance Regional Water Authority (ARWA)

ARWA is our big plan to shore up our water supply for the next 50 years. We originally signed onto it in 2008.  Instead of getting our water from Canyon Lake and the Edwards Aquifer, we’re piping it in from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer. 

(image via)

It’s just about time to start drinking that sweet, sweet Carrizo-Wilcox water! 

These are slides from the packet, but no one actually gave a presentation on it.

so I’m just winging it here.

Tonight is about extending a bond for the next part of the project.  Everyone celebrated it, but I’m not sure what the special significance was. 

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Item 16: Renaming downtown alleys

A couple years ago, Council dipped its toe in the exciting world of naming downtown alleys.  First up was Kissing Alley, in 2017.  It came with a whole revitalization effort – Kissing Alley concerts, etc.  It’s been great!

Next up came Boyhood Alley, to commemorate the movie Boyhood, which has an iconic scene shot there. This council conversation was kinda hilarious, because some councilmembers thought it sounded like Pervert Alley.

In order to dilute the pervy-sounding Boyhood Alley, Jane proposed that the rest of the unnamed alleys to be named after other movies. 

So the Convention and Visitor Bureau Advisory Board and the Main Street Advisory Board took up the charge. Tonight they’re back with their recommendations:

Four of the alleys have names already used:

That’s kinda cute about the dog.

A few others have informal names:

  • Music Alley
  • Imagine Alley
  • Railroad Alley

The committee is proposing two new ones:

  1. Getaway Alley, because some scenes from The Getaway were filmed near there:
Clockwise from top left: Sewell Park (upstream of Aquarena Drive), Texaco at 205 West Hopkins Street, intersection at West Hopkins Street & Moore Street, tire shop at 141 West Hopkins Street. Via this now-defunct website.

Steve McQueen! Ali McGraw! Haven’t seen it, but it seems like a fun romp.

2. Telephone Alley, after the old Telephone building that got torn down in 2019:

Isn’t that a very cute building? I was bummed that it got torn down. (Photo from here.) It was demolished to make room for The Parlor apartments.

That’s on San Antonio. Here’s a before and after, according to Google Maps:

I’m not actually opposed to the apartments, but I wish we could have spared the cute Telephone building.

… 

There are still more alleys without names. Jane wants to pair up the rest of the unnamed alleys with old movies, but other councilmembers want to roll it out more slowly – maybe Main Street can pick one or two per year, and figure out a good name for it. Sounds like that’s how it will go.

Hours 0:00-2:03, 4/4/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Onto the actual meeting!

Citizen comment: Mostly community members talking about the SMART Terminal. None of us can stop talking about it! But I think I should go on to other topics.

Items 1-4: Quarterly financial reports and audits and investment reports, etc.

Everything looks fine.

Item 14: East McCarty and Leah.

Developers want to make something of this land:

That yellow L-shape.

This item first came up last summer. The developer applied for Heavy Commercial zoning. P&Z said yes, and then Council said no. Council was concerned about Embassy Suites and the conference center, our beautiful prized jewel of the city. (Which the city is still paying off for another 10+ years or something, by the way.)

In November, the developer applied for Light Industrial. This time, P&Z denied it.  That means that it will take 6 votes at council to override P&Z.

So it went to Council in December. Rather than deny it, they formed a committee to try to work something out with the developer.  And now the committee is done, and it’s back for the vote.

The committee and the developer made a lot of compromises, but they got stuck on one thing: nighttime truck traffic.  Council wants Quiet Hours after 10 pm, because of the people sleeping at Embassy Suites. The developer was saying it’s too restrictive for their business model, because warehouses need to load and unload their wares overnight. Council pointed out that it’s annoying to try to sleep and hear BEEP BEEP BEEP all night long.

Finally the vote:

The vote: Should this be zoned Light Industrial?
Yes: Jude Prather, Shane Scott
No: Mayor Hughson, Mark Gleason, Alyssa Garza, Saul Gonzalez, Matthew Mendoza

So it failed. The developer can try something else, or sell it off.

Let’s just marvel at the close compassion offered to the weary travelers at Embassy Suites, shall we? What tender thoughtfulness. You can understand that a business traveler might not want to sleep next door to a 43 acre industrial site. What were you saying about the SMART Terminal again?

One final note:

At 1:25:10, the developer is trying to say that we should approve this project because no one else will want to develop it. And he says this exact quote:

“No large grocery store chain will consider this property because of the new HEB which is across the street.”

UH WHAT NEW HEB ACROSS WHICH STREET?

Across I-35? Across McCarty? Across Leah Ave (towards Amazon)? What does he know that I don’t know?

The location of a 3rd HEB has been controversial. First, constantly we’re talking about how few resources there are on the east side. The east side needs amenities.

But also, there’s history here. Back in 2016, City Council approved an HEB going in on the corner of Wonderworld and Hunter. People were furious. The main reasons:

  • The 2015 floods were just a year earlier, and now we were talking about paving a massive bit of land along Purgatory Creek
  • this would require a bunch of curb cuts on Wonderworld, which violated the agreement when the greenway was developed.

Quick digression on the Wonderworld extension. Wonderworld used to stop at Hunter Road. You took Old RR12 to go west towards Wimberly. It took decades to design and extend Wonderworld west, because it’s cutting through Purgatory Creek, which is really sensitive area. There was a complicated deal involving donation of greenbelt land and promises to take care of this area.

Given all that, this quote is hilarious:

“We couldn’t find a more environmentally sensitive area to go through,” said Sabas Avila , the city’s assistant director of public services. The area includes a flood control dam, caves, endangered species such as the golden-cheeked warbler and black-capped vireo, aquifer recharge zones and a Native American burial site, Avila said.

“Believe me, we tried! But this was the best we could do.”

(I’m being a jerk, taking the quote out of context. The speaker is probably an environmentalist.)

Anyway: it appears the proposal for the Wonderworld HEB is still on hold.

Bottom line: this developer appears to know about some new HEB, relatively close to Embassy Suites. Eeeeenteresting.