Tag: HSAB

Hours 1:20-2:37, 12/19/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 4: ”Citizen Comment” vs. “Community Perspectives”

Shane pulled this item from the Consent Agenda. 

Backstory

Mayor Hughson decided to clean up the city ordinances on committee meetings. She flagged a bunch of things that were inconsistent or unclear. One thing she noticed is that “Citizen Comment” is a terrible phrase, because you don’t actually have to be a citizen in order to comment. It sends a bad message.

We’ve discussed this here and here. Jane suggested “Community Perspectives” and in the past two months, no one ever protested it.

Here we go:

Shane says that he doesn’t like “Community Perspectives” because it implies that each speaker represents the entire community, instead of their own individual opinion.

Look, clearly “Community Perspectives” is a bit dippy. It sounds like a church bulletin board. But Shane’s complaint is also silly. No one is going to think that some rando speaker is supposed to represent everyone in town. It’s not “Community Spokesperson.”  

Jane, wearily: We’ve talked about this on a bunch of occasions.

Shane: I’ll just vote against it.

Jane: The entire list of all the changes?!

Shane: No, just this one. 

Jane: You can’t just vote against one.

Shane: Oh right. 

So Shane makes a motion: Keep it “Citizen Comment” after all. Alyssa seconds it.

Saul: I’m fine the way it is. Citizen Comment.

Matthew: I don’t care either way.

Jane: Honestly, I was concerned about changing it, because it’s been called “Citizen Comment” for years. Everyone is used to that. But I just don’t want anyone to feel excluded.

Alyssa: I appreciate that. But maybe we can just say something on the website.

Mark: I’m on the fence. Everyone knows it as Citizen Comment. 

The vote to amend:

Keep calling it Citizen Comment: All seven councilmembers

Change to Community Perspectives: no one.

On a scale of 1-10 of importance, this is maybe a 2. Nevertheless, they got it wrong! “Citizen Comment” is bad because “citizen” is exclusive. Jane is exactly right here. 

Off the top of my head, they could have gone with:
– Community Comment
– Open Comment
– Civic Comment
– Citizens-and-Not-Citizens Comment (okay, now I’m getting punchy)

I know they’re worried that changing the name would up-end years of familiarity. But that’s tunnel vision from being in the center of the action for too long.  Most of San Marcos is not paying any attention to City Council at all! Those who know the phrase “Citizen Comment” are not emotionally attached to it. You can switch to “Open Comment” and we’ll all be okay.

They didn’t want to go with “Public Comment” because it sounds very similar to “Public Hearing,” which is a specific different thing. 

Oh well!

The vote on all the little changes that Jane proposed:

Yes: Everyone.
No: No one.

….

Item 21:  Gary Softball Sports Complex is getting renovated.

We’re spending $1,238,000.22 on the following:

  • Roadway, drainage, parking, water/wastewater improvements.
  • Parts of the fields are 20+ years old

There were no slides or pictures for me to nab for you.

….

Item 23: Human Services Advisory Board (HSAB) Funding Policy

We’re going to spend some time on this item, because it drove me batty.

Backstory

Earlier in December, we allocated $650K in grant money to local nonprofits. There were 34 applications. Each nonprofit got between $5K and $34K, except for the Hays-Caldwell Women’s Shelter and the Hays County Food Bank, which got $50K and $80K respectively.

I griped last time that Council makes these nonprofits jump through a lot of hoops, while we just hand out other money seamlessly and invisibly. 

Guys. guys. We are about to get SO MUCH MORE micromanaging of this whole mess. We are going to nitpick this thing to death.

The current issue

Recall that the HSAB committee assigned points according to this rubric:

Jane is mad about Council Priorities being neglected. It’s only 15 points! Nevermind that people with nonprofit experience developed priorities 1-4, and that Council Priorities are somewhat redundant.

Here are the things that Jane’s mad about:

  • It’s not punitive enough if performance reports are late.
  • The Council priorities should add up to 25 or more points!
  • We want to know where the board members live. Do they live in San Marcos? Do they live in Kyle? In Austin?
  • They should spell out all acronyms. No unclear abbreviations. (I acknowledge this one. They really should.)

Complaint #1: Those Pesky Performance Reports:

Because last year was so weird, the money wasn’t approved until March. So the whole calendar was up-ended. The nonprofits were supposed to turn in mid-year reports when they re-applied for new funding in August. One nonprofit was late by one day, due to turnover in staffing. One other nonprofit was later, but ended up withdrawing altogether. 

So there is not really a problem here: nearly everyone turned in their mid-year reports on time. Final reports will be due at the end of January.

First off, everyone seemed really confused about the calendar. It is legitimately confusing, because it was never spelled out clearly up front.

Here’s the normal situation:

A funding cycle is three years:

Year A: You apply and get your money. (Applications are due in August, money awarded in December.)
Year B: You spend your money. (It’s a calendar year, Jan-December)
Year C: You turn in your final report. (It’s due by January 31st)

If you are re-applying for funding, you’d apply again in Year B. So your final report from the previous cycle isn’t available yet, because you’re still spending that money.

Jane is acting like it’s a two year cycle, and that it’s just incompetence that keeps nonprofits from having their final report on time. The staff member gently tried to explain, but Jane kept misinterpreting the explanation. (Jane kept acting like the issue was nonprofits that skipped an application cycle, and she’s say things like “If they didn’t apply for a year, then they should just turn in the most recent report.”)

Alyssa: Working for a nonprofit, you are constantly dealing with so many grants, and this is a small amount of money. These are good people, overworked on a shoestring budget, and we’re offering them 50¢. Can’t we have just have grace for our neighbors? Let them work it out on a case-by-case basis with staff?

I’m going to skip about 20 minutes of haggling between councilmembers, but suffice it to say: No. We cannot have grace for our neighbors. Matthew Mendoza is the biggest hard-ass of all, harping on how everything needs to be promptly on time, no exceptions. 

Jane: How about this: the report is due in August. We’ll accept late reports, as long as the final report is in before the committee needs to consider applications. 

The staff member tries to explain again: this year, only half-year reports were due Oct 15th. The Board considers applications in November. So the nonprofits really can’t get final reports in by decision time. They can submit final reports eventually though. 

Jane: We’re going to need to see the final report!

Answer: The final reports are due January 31st. So they could easily submit that for the following cycle, in August?

Jane: Yes. Have them print it out again.Thank you.

Bottom line: if you’re funded in Year A, you’ll submit that report two years later, when you re-apply for funding August of Year C. No one could possibly be late with their final report, because it was due seven months earlier, in January.

Alyssa, “This is really insulting, because it’s not actually a problem. Bigger granting agencies handle extenuating circumstances with grace all the time. We’re the ones treating nonprofits like they can’t handle being professional.”

Alyssa is right. The whole tone of this conversation is that nonprofits are naughty wayward children, and if they carry on, they shan’t have any figgy pudding. 

Such naughty, naughty non-profits.

Complaint #2: Council priorities should add up to more points!

We’re talking about this slide again. Jane suggests that the points allocated should be:

2 years San Marcos Service (5 points 10 points)
Office in San Marcos (5 points 10 points)
Funding creates increase in service (5 points)

Everyone nods compliantly. 

Alyssa:  What’s the rationale behind increasing the first two and leaving the third the same?

Jane: No reason! We could do 10/10/10, make it 30 total!  

This is exactly how haphazard this all is. She’s not actually making a claim about the relative merits of the bullet points. Council just felt neglected, since their priorities were only worth 15 points. (I think they settled on 10/10/10.)

Complaints #s…: Other Things

  • Jane would like to know which cities the board members live in. She doesn’t need to know their address, but she is interested to know if they live in San Marcos, or Kyle, or Austin, or what.
  • Jane wants to require them to spell out acronyms. (One application didn’t.) 

No one objects to these two criterion, although I assume Alyssa rolled her eyes. I mean, it’s good manners to spell out your acronyms, but I wouldn’t make it a rule.

Matthew: Can we ask them what percentage this grant is of their total budget? 
Answer: We already know this, based on the information provided.

Jane: Could they could have a coversheet that divided the applications, with the organization’s name and their San Marcos address with their requested amount?
Answer: no problem.

(I actually find this one quite reasonable. It’s just about improving the readability of the applications. And staff can implement this without inconveniencing the nonprofits.)

Jane: Will Council be able to review and vote on the final draft of the application and rules?
Answer: No problem.

Alyssa has one final comment. “Can we see this level of accountability and reports when we talk about the police department, or the fire department, or public works? We give the police $322 per resident. We give the fire department $218 per resident. And we give public works $141 per resident. Yet we are wasting all of this time over the HSAB board, which works out to… $7 per resident. Can we carry this energy when we talk about budgets in general?”

Jane responds: That’s different. Those are all city departments with department heads that report to us.

Let’s analyze this last bit. Who gets micromanaged, and who doesn’t?

  • It is true that micromanaging city departments is different than micromanaging contracts and grants to external groups. 
  • However, all of those departments have many external contracts that run between $5K and $35K, and those contracts do not get scrutinized by council. We just trust the department.

In fact, immediately before this item, we approved a contract for $1 million, for improvements at Gary Softball Complex. We did not check whether the contractor was a local company. (They are not local.) We did not ask the private company to explain what all the acronyms meant! We did not second-guess how council priorities were weighted in the selection criteria. We just voted yes, because we trusted the city staff that recommended the construction agency.

Furthermore, there are at least two Very Special Nonprofits that the city negotiates with directly.
1. The Greater San Marcos Partnership, or GSMP.

Back in 2021, we signed a three year contract with them for $400,000 each year. They get $1.2 million dollars! Isn’t that something. 

GSMP has to submit a yearly report card. The last – and only! – time they gave an update to City Council was back in May 2022. I can’t find any yearly report cards on on the San Marcos website, so transparency is nonexistent there. From the GSMP website, here’s their yearly report from 2022. It reads more like a promotional brochure than a detailed report, though. Is that the same as a yearly report card? I have no idea!

Things no one on Council cared about:

  • Where the board members live. Do the GSMP board members live in Wimberly? In Austin? Who knows. Because no one cares.
  • The exact date that the report was submitted, or whether yearly reports are happening at all. City Council has not hyperventilated about this yet.
  • Whether all the acronyms were spelled out precisely. In fact, there are a lot of abbreviations!
  • What percent the San Marcos money is of their total budgets.

What a funny thing, right? (I actually wrote about the contract with GSMP here, but I was a newbie blogger and was still trying to get the hang of it.)

2. San Marcos Chamber of Commerce

We give the Chamber of Commerce $28K/year. They get two automatic yearly renewals. We got some details because we gave them more money this past fall, reallocated from Covid money.

There has not been any discussion that I can see about this money since a work session in 2020. I did not watch the work session, but the powerpoint slides are very vague and uninformative. 

Here’s the thing: I don’t think we should micromanage GSMP or Chamber of Commerce, either! We could have a philosophical conversation about how they benefit the community, but I think they basically do what they say they’re doing. (I’m not opposed to the idea supporting small, locally owned businesses. We can quibble about dollar amounts some other time.)

The point is that we treat these groups like professional adults. If they’re late, we pick up the phone and give them a call. If there’s a confusing acronym, we shoot them an email. We don’t act like a grumpy school principal who posts an additional rule on the bulletin board every time someone misbehaves.

Finally: it helps small locally-owned businesses if we lift people out of poverty. Middle class people can eat out downtown more than poor people can! Supporting the most vulnerable members of our community is actually best for everyone.

…

Item 24: Should we postpone VisionSMTX?

Right now, VisionSMTX is supposed to come around on January 16th for a final vote. In the meantime, a subcommittee had been meeting, and they’re recommending that we do more community outreach.

There’s a brief discussion, and Jane checks with everyone informally. It’s really hard to hear who is a “yes” and who is a “no”, but I think this is how it goes:

Check-in on January 16th, but not the final vote: Everyone except Matthew Mendoza
Final vote should be Jan 16th: Matthew Mendoza

I’m not sure what Matthew is hung up on. He clearly has some strong opinions about this process, but didn’t quite say what’s bugging him.

Hours 0:00 – 1:51, 12/5/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Citizen comment: The two main topics are the Can Ban and HSAB grants.

Can Ban:
– A bunch of people speak in favor, many who have spent years cleaning up the river
– Can it be a restriction on single-use beverages but not single-use food containers? Texas Water Safari folks need some single-use food containers,
– City Council member from Martindale describes how well their can ban has worked.
– The Eyes of the San Marcos River does regular clean ups just past where city contractors stop picking up trash. It’s a lot.

Speakers promoting their nonprofits for HSAB Grants:
– Outsiders Anonymous representative describes their free addiction recovery program.
– PALS for free spay/neutering and low cost pet care

All these things in due time!

…

Item 9:  We are rezoning about 1 acre here:

Currently it looks like this:

That is the restaurant Sakura.

Sakura is staying, but it’s gaining a bunch of little apartments behind it.  They can put up to 9 apartments there.  This seems like a good place for apartments!  Infill does not need to be scary.

…

Item 10:   There’s a little road you’ve never heard of here:

called Flustern Road.  It’s up in Whisper Tract:

Whisper tract is gigantic, and slowly getting built out.

Flustern Road has exactly one resident, a company called Manifest Commerce. They asked if they could get the name changed from Flustern Road to Manifest Way.  

However, Flustern Road will eventually cross Opportunity Blvd, and connect with Celebration Way: 

 From the POV of the fire department and EMS, it’s better to have roads that don’t change names.  So as long as we’re changing the name anyway, we’re going to go with Celebration way. 

Also, don’t the names all sound like someone from the 1960s was dreaming of a brighter tomorrow? Celebration Way, Opportunity Blvd, Technology Way, Manifest Way… Flustern never really fit in, did it.

Nevertheless: would you like to know what Flustern means? [drum roll] ….it means “to whisper.” And it was in Whisper Tract. Aww, very cute. But over!

…

Item 11: Consolidated CBDG funding report.

All of our CBDG money originates with the Federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) department. We have to regularly write reports to them, documenting that we’re using the money according to the rules.

Alyssa Garza feels like the report isn’t widely circulated enough. Maybe fewer neighbors would harass her about wasting money if they saw how meticulously nonprofits have to account for every last nickel.

I’m more cynical than she is. People just like to gripe.

…

Item 5: We’re buying a generator, for $445K:

Technically, we’re buying a 600-kilowatt diesel generator, automatic transfer switch, electrical installation, and associated engineering services.

Technically, it’s Covid money that’s paying for it.

And technically, it will be located in San Marcos High School, so that the high school can serve as an emergency shelter in the future.

…

Item 12: Citizen Comment will now be called Community Perspectives.  (Mentioned before here.)

  • We’re getting rid of “Citizen” because you do not have to be a citizen to have a comment. This is good!
  • We didn’t want to name it “Public comment” because we already have “public hearings”, and those might sound too similar.
  • Not sure why we didn’t go with “Community Comment”. “Community Perspectives” sounds a little bit like a hokey small town newspaper op-ed column, but hey, sometimes we are a hokey small town. Did you have a chance to stop by Sights & Sounds this weekend?

…

Item 13: Human Services Advisory Board  (HSAB) Grants.

We put $550,000 of our city budget towards grants to nonprofits. This year, we also have $100,000 of the last bit of Covid money to distribute as well.  HSAB is the committee that meets, looks over applications, and recommends to council who should get money.

Last year – for reasons I was never quite clear on – the process was deemed a shitshow. Council made HSAB go back and do it all over again. Then Council tinkered with the results anyway.   After all that, HSAB thoroughly revised their process for evaluating grant applications. 

It seems everyone likes the new process! You can read all the applications yourself here, as well as a bunch of other reports and information.

So this year:

  • 34 nonprofits applied.
  • 5 board members rated them independently on a huge matrix of things:
    • All the nonprofits pass the Risk Assessment
    • One nonprofit needed to get their nonprofit status back
    •  They were ranked according to some evaluation criteria

Here’s the evaluation criteria:

The committee met weekly, all fall long, and discussed all of the nonprofits individually. They heard presentations from all the nonprofits. It sounds like a massive amount of work.

Here’s the full scoring matrix on the Evaluation Criteria, if you’re so inclined:

Evaluation Score DetailsDownload

(I know it’s tiny, but you should be able to zoom in and scroll around.)

And here’s the summary table of the scores:

(scores were re-centered across committee members, for consistency.)

Finally, here’s HSAB’s complete funding recommendations:

Scoring matrixDownload

So what does Council think? Let’s dive in.

Council Discussion

Alyssa Garza: Last year, Council deviated from the recommended HSAB funding in a really haphazard way.  I’m glad to see a really systematic process. This is good work, I support the recommendations. 

Matthew Mendoza: Great job! But I want to tinker with it.  Any Baby Can is centered out of Austin.  Let’s deduct $7K from them and give it to the San Marcos Youth Services Board, because that’s centered in San Marcos.

Jane Hughson: Any Baby Can has an office here in San Marcos. Make it $5K and I’ll support it.

The Vote:  Should we take $5K from Any Baby Can and give it to SMYSB?

Yes: Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, Jane Hughson, Matthew Mendoza
No: Alyssa Garza (who explains that she just wants to stick with HSAB process)

Abstain: Jude Prather, because his wife serves on the board of the food bank.

So now:
– Any Baby Can requested $30K, recommended $25K, and will get $20,000.
– SMYSB requested $39K, was recommended $20K, and will get $25,000.

This is a good example of haphazard meddling. They’re both good organizations!

But let’s take a moment anyway:

Any Baby Can is providing early childhood intervention for birth-3 year olds, for kids with medical diagnoses, developmental delays, or any impairments.  (Getting interventions in early is huge.  This majorly redirects the trajectory of kids’ lives.)  According to their application, they served 159 children and families in San Marcos last year, over 29,600 hours. They expect to serve 165 children in San Marcos this next year.

SMYSB is an afterschool program for 11-17 year olds in San Marcos. They’re asking for rent for their new facilities, which is $2700/month.  Their application doesn’t say how many kids they’ve served, but looking at their progress report from last year, SMYSB got $10,000, and served 16 kids in the spring and summer.  They used to be located at Southside Community center, so I’m guessing that they’re working with kids dealing with housing instability or homelessness. This is a super vulnerable population! They need this kind of one-on-one care to navigate what they’ve gotten handed to them.

Both are good programs, staffed by hard-working, underfunded organizations!   But the committee took their job seriously when they evaluated the benefit to San Marcos.

I guess I’m harping on this because it’s, well, haphazard. It didn’t feel like Matthew Mendoza read all the applications super closely and then felt compelled to shift this money around. It felt like someone from SMYSB picked up the phone and asked him if he couldn’t find a few more dollars for them. He did, but it comes out of someone else’s funding.

The vote on the entire thing:
Yes: Everyone but Jude
No: No one
Abstain: Jude Prather

…

Because I’m an insufferable prig, may I make a comparison?  

  • Just now, we generously gave out HSAB grants which cost the city $550,000.
  • We also give all homeowners a $15,000 homestead exemption on their property tax.

How much does that cost the city?

Basically, the city is donating of $1,100,000 towards the worthy charity of home owners.

  • The elderly and disabled people get a tax exemption of $35,000. This works out to a $211 discount on their tax bill.
  • Everyone else gets a $15,000 tax exemption. This works out to a $90 discount on their tax bill.

This is fine! I’m not mad about this. But it’s invisible. And we don’t call it “charity”, we call it a tax break.

Bear with me for a moment more:

  • We’ve got about 7000 owner-occupied houses (as of 2021) who get to share that $1.1 million. There’s a tiny bit of paperwork, but that’s it. Each person gets either $211 or $90, no strings attached.
  • There are 22,219 people below the poverty line (as of 2021). The HSAB money isn’t exclusively for poor people, but it’s a good place to start.  That works out to $25 per person.

And there are SO MANY STRINGS attached. Thirty-four nonprofits fill out extensive paperwork. A six person committee meets for weeks and scrutinizes the applications. Council scrutinizes the recommendations further. Afterwards, each nonprofit writes ongoing grant reports on each person they helped. It’s an extremely labor-intensive, highly visible process. Someone has to maintain the website charting all these details.

To recap:

  • $1,100,000 on charity for 7000 homeowners.
  • $550,000 on charity for at least 22,000 people in poverty.

Haha, weird, right!  [hard stare at city council.]

Hours 1:01-2:06, 3/7/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 15: Human Services Advisory Board . This is an item that’s dragged out for months. 

The city allocates $500K from the General Fund for nonprofits every year. A bunch of nonprofits apply for it.  HSAB reads the applications and recommends to council who should get how much. Council takes the recommendations and then redoes it all, re-allocating money all over the place, which is what happened tonight. 

The difference this year is that the first set of HSAB recommendations made everyone so mad that Council came up with new guidelines and then asked HSAB to meet again and re-do everything. So the allocations are several months behind schedule this year.

I think HSAB tried to be exceedingly objective and impartial, and ended up being rather algorithmic.  What I can’t tell is:

  1. Does council want HSAB to go deeper than this algorithm approach, and evaluate the merits of each individual nonprofits?  In other words, is Council annoyed that HSAB kept it so formulaic?
  2. Or does Council ultimately always want to be the ones to make the individual judgements about the merit of each nonprofit? In other words, this is exactly how it’s supposed to go, and no matter what, Council is going to re-do everything HSAB does?

Anyway, they re-do it all.

In case you’re curious, here are the recommendations from HSAB – both last December’s recs, and then revised for Tuesday’s meeting (but not necessarily what Council adopted):

“CORN” is in a big circle because that nonprofit doesn’t exist anymore. (I guess it didn’t have the juice.)(Sorry, that was corny.)(I’ll stop now.)

This discussion started during the 3 pm workshop, and then wrapped up during the official council meeting.  

First, Council reduced the funding for a bunch of agencies:

Reductions:

MELJ/Iron Sharpens Iron: from $33K to $0.

HOME Center/Emergency Motel Program: from $20K to $15K.

Treasured Protégé /Protégé  Program: from $13K to $0

Rough Draft/Superhero Art Program: from $3K to $0.

Communities in Schools/Counseling SMCISD: from $7K to $3.5K. 

ACCEYSS: From $35K to $30K

Here are some things to note:

  • Every agency has a worthwhile mission
  • I am not closely tied enough to the nonprofit world to know how to tease apart the effectiveness of different nonprofits.
  • But neither is most of Council.
  • Except for Alyssa Garza, who is not happy about many of these reductions.

Rationales weren’t given for every reduction. Of the ones that were:

  • HOME Center duplicates Southside, which has been doing emergency housing longer.
  • Treasured Protégé  is just one school. Not all the schools. (I can’t tell what that means from the website.)
  • Rough Draft isn’t a basic need, like food and housing.
  • Communities in Schools should be funded in collaboration with SMCISD.  

So if my math is right, that saved them roughly $70K to dole out. (Including the CORN money.) During the 6 pm meeting, they increased funding like so:

Increases: 

Hays County Food Bank: $30K to $40K

Combined Community Action/Meals on Wheels: $3K to $15K

Nosotros La Gente/”Viva Zapatos” Shoe Drive (no website): $5K to $10K 

Salvation Army/Emergency Assistance: $27.5K to $35K

St. Vincent de Paul: $16.5K to $20K

School Fuel/Weekend Food: $19.5K to $24K

Youth Service Bureau: $4.4K to $10K

Southside Community Center/Specific Assistance: $4K to $16K

One last one that Jane referred to as “Emergency” to $30K .  I lost track of what this was and can’t figure it out. I can’t tell if this is something that was reduced to $30K or increased to $30K. 

Alyssa reiterates that she’s particularly angry about reducing MELJ/Irons to $0, and HOME Center from $20K to $15K. In my summaries above, I didn’t really convey how frustrated she was with the fickle and random shuffling of money above.

On MELJ/Iron Sharpens Iron, I agree: Council really dropped the ball.  (Also, they kept calling it “MELI” instead of “MELJ”, which doesn’t instill a whole lot of trust.) Here’s the blurb from their application:

Iron Sharpens Iron uses a multi-faceted approach to address the challenges that reentry poses for nearly 40,000 individuals annually in the city of San Marcos. Iron Sharpens Iron program model assists those persons who’ve been incarcerated by determining what their needs are during the intake process that will enable them to be successful in the community in which they are living. We have support mechanisms in place that will enable this population and their family members to have somewhere to go to seek assistance with financial issues, substance abuse referrals as well as discussion of academic interests, employment and any legal situation that may have not been resolved. This includes sharing ideal strategies and best practices for living a crime free life. This particular project will have a large reach to multiple entities including those that have been or parole and their families. We’ve learned that those persons who have lived experience that are included become the best educators on social justice change as it refers to “imprisonment” and successful re-entry back into their respective communities. This project will allow us to increase awareness to corporations and municipalities to participate in inclusion of those labeled a felon-as well supportive things for the population that we are currently serving and extend more to the family members.

Council keeps saying that community safety is their highest priority, and they’re freaked out about crime. But they only seem aware of punitive, authoritarian ways to combat crime. They don’t seem to see the point of nurturing and supporting people who have committed crimes in the past. (Except Alyssa. All of this is except Alyssa.) It’s like it’s off-putting for them to consider the humanity of people who’ve been incarcerated.  

First, that’s gross. You judge a society by how it treats its prisoners, not its princes.  

But second, it’s impractical.  If you want crime recidivism to decrease, you should do things that help people transition out of incarceration and into stable lives.  Instead, we’re taking an authoritarian approach.  Keep making life harder for them!  The beatings will continue until morale improves, as they say.

…

One final thought, and I hope I don’t offend anyone: I feel a little weird about School Fuel.  Kids get sent home with brown bags of food that is supposed to help with food insecurity over the weekend.  But it puts poor kids in a weird, possibly stigmatizing position to have to get a Poor Kid’s Food Bag right in the middle of a social situation, and take it home on the bus with a bunch of other kids.  

I’m not really criticizing anyone who is taking time to help others in this community. There’s a lot of need, and it’s important that a kid knows they’ve got some dependable food over the weekend. And there’s probably not that much stigma in a community that’s pretty used to widespread poverty. It’s just something that crossed my mind.

…

Updated to add: The 40K number in the MILJ application above – “nearly 40,000 individuals annually in the city of San Marcos.” – can’t possibly be right. The whole town is only around 70K. I don’t know where they got that from, but it’s nonsensical.

Hours 2:21-3:58, 1/17/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 29: Riverbend Ranch

We’ve seen this proposed development before, and after P&Z denied their cut-and-fill. Residents of Redwood mobilized like 30 people to come talk to P&Z that night. It was really amazing.

The major issue is that Riverbend Ranch will be on the hill immediately above Redwood. Redwood is home to a lot of extremely vulnerable community members and is dealing with flooding, raw sewage, and significant health challenges due to sewage contamination.

The council could force Riverbend Ranch to be developed in such a way that it helps Redwood tie in to San Marcos water and sewage. Or the council could allow them to develop in a way that increases flooding and sewage contamination. This could be done really well, or it could be a nightmare.

Matt Mendoza, Alyssa Garza, and Saul Gonzalez all volunteered to be on the Riverbend Ranch committee.  I am relieved.  You can trust Alyssa to remember to protect Redwood, and Matt Mendoza was personally the one who went down and talked to the Redwood community prior to the P&Z council meeting, so he’s also invested. And Saul is generally sympathetic to people without financial means to protect themselves from developers (although he usually takes the safe route when it comes time to actually vote).

….

Item 30: Paid parking in the Lion’s Club parking lot. 

We have a lot of out-of-towners who come to tube the river and go to football games.  We want to recoup some costs by charging them to park in the Lion’s Club parking lot.  So we’re launching a 3 year pilot program.

It’s supposed to be free to San Marcos residents, which means that there has to be some system to tell who is a resident and who is not a resident.  It sounds like you go online and ask for a sticker to put on your car? You would either have a license or some sort of photo ID, or something with your address on it. (I might be wrong about the sticker.)

Alyssa gets them to include library cards on the acceptable forms of ID, which is good.

It’s pretty pricey for non-residents:

The biggest discussion came about whether or not the machines should be cash-less.  Mark Gleason doesn’t like cash-less machines out of general get-offa-my-lawn old man vibes. (He’s not wrong!) Alyssa doesn’t like them because poor people are less likely to have credit cards. (Also correct.) So the compromise is that there will be one machine that accepts cash, and the others throughout the parking lot will be cashless.

I share Alyssa’s uneasiness about the invisible barriers that arise when you implement cashless payment systems. At the same time, in this case, those bonkers prices are their own impediment for poor people. You can get like three eggs for that kinda money!

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Item 31: One last time with the Human Services Advisory Board.

San Marcos donates money from the General Fund to nonprofits.  The funding process this year was a shitshow (apparently – I don’t really know details) and so council stepped in to give new instructions.  So now, on this third meeting on this topic,  council is nailing down the final details of how they want grant applications to be evaluated. There are two main sticking points:

  1. Grant money is only available if you’re serving San Marcos residents. The issue is what kind of track record is required. Should nonprofits from Austin and San Antonio who want to expand their service to include San Marcos be allowed to apply for city funds? Or should money be restricted to nonprofits who already serve San Marcos?

Jane wants the nonprofits to already be serving San Marcos. Saul agrees.

Alyssa makes the case that in certain categories, like mental health, we have a dire need for providers.  Nonprofits from San Antonio and Austin will be more successful finding other grant money to use on San Marcos if they can use this grant to demonstrate a need here.  

Mark Gleason and Matthew Mendoza want to give preference to San Marcos-established nonprofits, but not exclude the others from applying.  I didn’t catch what Jude preferred, but this is where Council lands as a whole.

  1. Jane Hughson feels strongly that nonprofits should not depend on this money. She doesn’t want anyone to lose their job if the city has less money one year and can’t fund as many nonprofits.  In light of this, there is a rule that no full-time employee should be funded. You can ask for money to fund a part-time employee, but not a full-time employee.

So the issue is: can you split the workload of a full time employee, and ask for partial funding? Can a grant ask for 30% of the salary of the full time employee who is assigned to work on the program for 15 hours per week? Or do they have to hire a standalone part-timer for 15 hours per week?

Jane is a strong no. You must hire a literal part-timer for 15 hours per week. No carving up the time of a full-time employee. 

Good news! We have an actual nonprofits expert on council! Alyssa has tons of non-profit experience, and is currently employed writing grants for her job. She explains that this is standard operating procedure in the world of nonprofits. Nonprofits are used to piece-mealing their employee’s salaries together across several grants. As long as the non-profit is basically competent and experienced, they will have a Plan B in place so that no one loses their job if San Marcos doesn’t offer these funds one year.

Out of everyone, Mark Gleason is the only person who seems to hear what Alyssa is saying. Weirdly, Jane keeps marking down that Mark is on Jane’s side, but Mark is persistent in correcting her.

But on the whole, it is the most infuriating goddamn conversation.  Everyone is sure that they know what’s best for nonprofits and no one is listening to Alyssa.  It comes off as paternalistic and arrogant.

Jane keeps requesting that any councilmember who wants to allow partial funding of full-time employees must give a specific numeric cap. Alyssa keeps explaining that that is arbitrary and counterproductive – the nonprofit will have to justify their request, and the HSAB can make an informed judgement.

They settle on a 20% cap: you can ask the grant to cover up to 20% of a fulltime employee’s salary. Because they know best.