Citizen Comment:
The big topic is the Data Center. It was postponed until August, though, so it’s not actually on the agenda for the meeting.
- 9 people showed up to talk against it. It is deeply unpopular!
- Two people spoke in favor. They both happen to work for the developer.
Smaller topics:
- Two people spoke in favor of Item 22, asking council for money to help fund veterans services in San Marcos
- Two people spoke in favor of the Texas State hotel, in Item 20.
- Two people spoke on general national and international political events. (Palestine, Trump’s BBB disaster of a bill, Adriana Smith, and more.)
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Item 13: The Data Center proposal
It’s been postponed until August 19th.
😦
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Items 14-15: We’re annexing and zoning 10 acres here:
They want to zone it Heavy Commercial.
A few years ago, we signed a Chapter 380 agreement with these guys. Part of the deal was that they get annexed and zoned when they’re ready to open. This is that.
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Item 16: This is very close to the previous item!
It’s here:
It’s supposed to be this:
I mean, that’s super vague. But okay.
This is part of a whole bigger thing San Marcos is trying to do, called the East Village. It’s supposed to go here:
It’s supposed to be a dense shopping/living/working urban area. Read all about it, if you’re curious.
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Items 18-19: There is a new wastewater treatment plant going in here:
There have been a ton of developments approved down this way lately.
We’ve talked about this one a bunch:
here and here, because of its impact on Redwood/Rancho Vista and flooding, and sewage problems.
Apparently there are a boatload more developments coming:
These areas are all contributing money to help pay for this wastewater treatment plant.
I don’t recognize most of those names! And I don’t think most of those are built yet? My guess is that they didn’t need city approval, because they’re outside city limits.
What it really is, is a massive amount of unchecked sprawl. That’s a big bummer.
(However, it’s not like it was caused by this wastewater treatment plant.)
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Item 20: The university wants to build a fancy new hotel.
They want to put it here:
In other words, if you’re standing with Mini-Target on your right, facing the university, this location will be on your left:
Here are a bunch of beautiful renderings from the presentation:
and
and
ooooooh! aaaaah!
Note: You should not trust beautiful renderings like these. They’re pretty pictures, not promises.
Here’s what they are willing to promise:
All this sounds great! I can see why the university wants a fancy hotel. This is also good for downtown businesses. Everything is great.
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So why isn’t this great?
The issue is that they want a lot of tax breaks over the next ten years.
A hotel pays 3 kinds of taxes:
- Property taxes
- Sales taxes
- Hotel Occupancy Taxes, or HOT Taxes.
Category 1: Property taxes. The actual ground under the hotel is owned by Texas State. Texas State does not pay property taxes. (This is why we lost $1.5 million in property taxes when Texas State bought Sanctuary Lofts and Vistas apartments.)
Texas State is going to lease the land to the hotel people. The hotel will pay property taxes on the physical bricks-and-mortar building, but not on the dirt underneath the building.
The estimated yearly property taxes will be $241K. We’re not offering any tax rebates in this category:
Ok, great.
My guess is that if the hotel owned the land, property taxes would be closer to $750K per year. But oh well.
Category 2: Sales Tax: Here’s a big rebate.
For the first five years, they pay almost nothing. Then it steps up a little bit, over the next five years:
Ok, fine.
Category 3: HOT Tax: Also giving most of this category away:
Ok. This is starting to seem like a lot.
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Total over 10 years:
- If there was no deal in place, they’d pay $13.76 million in taxes.
- Under this deal, they pay $4.66 million in taxes.
- We’re refunding them about $9.1 million.
That seems like a terrible deal?
City staff says that unless we subsidize this hotel, they don’t have a viable business model. I think that means that… you don’t have a viable business model.
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Listen: every time a luxury thing attempts to come to San Marcos, it goes out of business. This feels like wishful thinking. Like this bit:
In other words: “People will tube the river and then stay overnight in this hotel!”
Sir. SIR. We just spent months trying to keep the river free and affordable, because everyone who comes to tube is broke. A luxury boutique hotel is not going to keep any of them here.
I’m sure that there will be some fancy parents who pay full price, and I’m sure the University will put up lots of people (at a discount rate). Overall, I’m guessing the hotel struggles to turn a profit.
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What’s in it for us?
Perk #1: They’re going to bring in some maybe-good jobs:
Amanda asks if these averages wages could be nudged up to $20/hour?
Answer: They’re open to running some numbers, and will come back with something definitive next time.
Perk #2: We’re protected if they sell the whole thing to Texas State. Since Texas State pays no taxes, the whole deal goes belly-up, and they have to reimburse us for the rebates:
But look: they could also just straight-up go out of business.
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My 2 cents: There’s not much downside for the city, but I’m pessimistic anyway.
If we’re going to do this, we should:
- Make the wages rise with inflation. Always. (We do this with every contract we sign with a vendor! This is common. We can extend this norm to low-wage workers.)
- Get them to agree to be sustainable. Here’s some examples of sustainable University-affiliated luxury hotels.
Council votes on this, but it’s not the final vote. That will come at the next meeting.
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Item 22: Veterans Funding
There’s a committee, the Veteran’s Affairs Advisory Committee. They undertook a big study over the past year, and concluded that there are four big needs in San Marcos:
- A trained case worker specializing in veteran issues
- Help figuring out transportation, especially when vets are trying to get up to Austin or down to San Antonio to the main office
- Some money for the Veterans Memorial
- Also ask the county to kick in money for the memorial
This item gets discussed for about an hour. Basically, the committee is making a very compelling case, but the city has very little money. It goes in circles.
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Item 23: Gary Job Corps
What the hell is going on?!
Background: Job Corps are free job training sites, run by the federal government. You get free room and board, and get trained in some sort of vocation. You must be between 16-24 years old. Generally you’re there from 8 months to 3 years.
In general, the point is to give poor kids a path out of poverty, so that they can land a stable job.
Gary Job Corps is the one here in town:
Everyone always says it’s the oldest and biggest in the country! (I couldn’t actually verify this. This says the first job corps was opened in Maryland. This says that our site is 775 acres, which is probably the biggest because it’s an old air force base, but I can’t actually find enrollment by campus.)
Here’s my take on Job Corps in general: there’s a huge need in this country to help young people get jobs that will lift them out of poverty. But conservatives have been trying to shut them down since the beginning, so it hasn’t been properly funded in decades. Since the program was broadly popular, Republicans settled on death by a thousand cuts, instead. Here’s a good article on the whole thing.
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The current mess
On May 29th, the Trump administration announced that it was shutting down almost all of the Job Corps sites – all the ones run by contractors. This includes Gary Job Corps here in town. They gave everyone one month to shut everything down.
On June 5th, a judge ordered an injunction. Things are currently in limbo. It’s extremely hard to find good information on what’s going on. This is why Mayor Hughson wanted an update from someone involved.
There’s a representative from Gary Job Corps here today. He gives some information:
- Currently there are 480 students enrolled at Gary.
- When the May 29th order came, everyone was sent home.
- About 400 students had somewhere to go, but the other 80 did not have anywhere to go. In other words, they were facing homelessness if Gary closed down abruptly.
- When the June 5th injunction came out, Gary invited all the students back. About 25% have returned so far.
- There are 99 sites nationwide, and 77 of them are being closed.
(He also says some strange things, such as that they were told one year ago that Gary was closing. This doesn’t seem to be true at all. In December, Biden announced they were pausing two locations, Maryland and Kentucky, but that’s all. As best I can tell, the May announcement shocked everyone.)
Jane’s big concern is these 80-90 students and families with nowhere to go. If Gary is shut down tomorrow, will they all become homeless? Very possibly, unless we work to secure some emergency housing.
Bottom line: they’re trying to work with the homeless emergency housing programs, in case Gary is in fact shut down, and 80 students and their families are abruptly turned on the street.
The San Marxist 