Last fall, we saw that Riverside Drive killed its street parking. They were sick of people parking in front of their houses and walking over to the river. Now you need a resident permit to park there on weekends.
This pink part of Rio Vista neighborhood wants to join the fun:
They don’t want rivergoers to park on their streets, either.
…
These guys live by one of the Spring Lake trail heads:
They also don’t like hikers parking in front of their houses. They want to require parking permits, too.
…
You know me: I’m a world-class scold on this topic. I did not like it when they did this in Blanco Gardens, I didn’t like it on Riverside, and I don’t like it now. I think this is all bullshit.
It’s a privilege to live walking distance from a major park. You’re very lucky! But the street does not belong to you. People should get to park there.
That said: it is super gross when park visitors leave trash behind in people’s yards! But surely there’s a better solution than quasi-privatization of public streets.
…
Anyway, Council approves both the Rio Vista streets and the Panarama streets:
It’s two different votes, but they both went the same way.
So now only residents get to park on those streets.
…
Item 26-27: CDBG money.
CDBG stands for Community Development Block Grant. This is money from HUD for local projects. This year we have $750K to distribute.
There are some rules:
Council has priorities, and they also had a survey and public outreach to see which categories to focus on.
The committee waded through a bunch of recommendations, and is recommending these amounts:
There’s some explanation that goes with these amounts:
Salvation Army, Southside, and Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid are all getting other funding from the city.
Thorpe Lane just needs a little more funding to add to last year’s funding. They got $650K last year.
Long Street and Cuatehtemoc Hall are just too expensive for this particular fund, and Cuatehtemoc is getting some other city funding.
Calaboose is getting roof repairs instead of a new roof, and the city is paying for that instead.
Now we get into the weeds. These next five items are pulled from the Consent Agenda by Amanda Rodridguez. This means that Staff guessed that no one would want to discuss anything, and Amanda said, “Not so fast!”.
(Alyssa and Jane also pulled items, but just had a quick question on each one.)
The five items are: – Mailing parking tickets directly to people – New bathrooms at Dunbar park – Covid money for mental health collaboration between SMPD and a mental health treatment center. – SMPD buying seven new Tahoes for $350K – SMPD applying for a grant to start a Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Unit
A few observations:
First, Amanda is thorough. Holy moly. She is reading everything with a fine tooth comb.
Second, what is Amanda’s point?
Her larger point is that these are the kinds of things we approve automatically. Taken together, these five items add up to $709K. (For perspective, keep in mind that we budget $550K yearly on social services.)
We just aren’t this generous – both in dollars and spirit – in other areas. Recall how it took Alyssa years of banging on about it to get $115K extra Covid money set up for emergency housing. Why is $350K for police cars so easy, and $115K for emergency housing so difficult? What Amanda is doing in these next five items is scrutinizing items that usually pass uninspected.
Honestly, I would vote in favor of all five items. I don’t actually think they are abusing city dollars.
It’s just that this level of generosity should be the standard, and it’s not. When it comes to my pet issues – homelessness, holding landlords accountable, transit, the parks department, etc – we should be as quick and gracious to fully fund them, as we are when it’s time to spend $350K on new police cars.
“BUT WAIT!” you cry, “We can’t afford to spend a million dollars all over the place like that! We’re broke!”
The parking lot next to the Lion’s Club is going to become a pay lot. Supposedly it’s going to be free for residents (but the details are murky). Out-of-towners will get their parking tickets mailed to them. (We discussed this last time.)
The first issue: In general, there’s an Early Bird discount – 50% off! – if you pay your tickets off early. You get 14 days to get the discount.
But if you’re mailing tickets out, you’d want to extend that window to account for the mail. Staff said 17 days. Amanda wants 30 days.
This is a little tricky because there’s also a late fee that kicks in at 30 days. Council decides to extend the Early Bird discount to 29 days on tickets-by-mail. The very next day, the late fee deadline will kick in.
Amanda Rodriguez has a number of other notes:
She wants to fully fund the parks department, but not through fees and fines. (This is a big issue, nationwide. Map here showing that San Marcos is not a big offender, though.)
There’s a bunch of murkiness in the policy language: operators versus car owner? Standing vs parking? Are robots writing tickets here?
They clean up the ordinance a little bit. Robots are only scanning license plates as you enter or exit the parking lot. The rest of tickets are being written by people, and the system mails them automatically.
You’re supposed to be allowed to load and unload for up to 30 minutes in this lot. But right now, the ordinance is ambiguous:
The Vote: Should we clean up language to allow for lawful loading and unloading?
Yes, of course: Jane, Amanda, Alyssa, Saul, and Mark HELL NO! Ticket them to smithereens: Matthew Mendoza.
Okay Matthew, if you think that’s best.
…
Amanda’s next point: Paid parking for out-of-town residents reflects an “Us vs. them” mentality. We should welcome our visitors, not shake them down.
The counter argument to this is put forth by Mark Gleason and the city manager, Stephanie Reyes:
San Marcos residents don’t use the river, because they’re too full of out-of-towners.
The out-of-towners aren’t spending money in our downtown, or hotels, or restaurants. They pack in a cooler and leave town after they get out of the river.
The parks and river are getting trashed and destroyed, and there’s a lot of drunken fights and medical problems. San Marcos is stuck paying for this unless we can collect some money from the out-of-towners.
Jane also has a good point: why is this ordinance so narrow? Right now, it’s only city park. Why not write it to include future paid parking lots? (This does not get fixed.)
More points from Amanda:
This is 6 am – 11 pm every day. No free parking after 5 pm? Holidays or something?
Registration process for San Marcos residents – how will that work? It’s supposed to be free for them.
Answer: there will be a big education campaign! We’ll hold events at the library.
Alyssa chimes in: San Marcos has a big problem with roll outs. How many people have microchipped their pets? How many people have signed up for the Enhanced ID at the library? How did the can ban PSA go?
All of those public information campaigns sounded great in paper, but in practice, we just don’t connect with people.
(Note: good public outreach is extremely time-intensive. It’s not enough just to translate everything into Spanish and promote things on social media. You basically need to maintain close and healthy relationships with a lot of community leaders who are in close contact with your hard-to-reach populations. What church does your population go to? What barbershop? Etc.)
Finally: This is just a pilot program. If Council wants to shut this down next year, there will be an opportunity.
As Parks and Rec director Jamie Lee Case says, “City Council will have a chance to decide if the juice is worth the squeeze.” She wins my most-favorite line of the night, hands down.
The final vote: Should we mail parking tickets from the City Park parking lot?
Amanda and Alyssa are both no, mostly due to lack of details on how the registration process will work.
I probably would have voted for it? It seems like a pretty cautious step.
…
Note: The vast majority of conversation these days is between Alyssa Garza, Amanda Rodriguez, and Jane Hughson. Just because I’m a shit-stirrer and this made me laugh:
At 3:01: Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, and Matthew Mendoza are all clearly on their phones. I guess someone does not find the intricacies of parking violations as thrilling as I do? Talk about a violation of Municode Chapter 23.46, Section 3.0045, paragraph 8.243.
…
Item 6: We’re spending some Covid money on installing new bathrooms at Dunbar.
Amanda Rodriguez is thorough. Like thorough.
She catches that the contract does not include baby changing tables nor little trashcans for used period products, and asks that those be added in.
Everyone agrees that this is a good idea.
….
Item 8: Oh, so confusing.
Here’s the caption:
But here’s what was originally posted, back in November:
The problem is that there’s no such thing as “the City Mental Health Court Program”. So they changed it on the agenda to SMPD. (Currently this is how the program works: SMPD mental health unit identifies people who need mental health or substance abuse treatment, and refers them out to Evoke Wellness for treatment. Then Evoke Wellness provides in-patient and out-patient substance abuse and mental health treatment.)
What Amanda brings up, though, is that there’s an entire contract in the packet between the City, the treatment center, and the non-existent City Mental Health Court Program.
No one seems to know what’s going on.
This gets postponed. However, this is Covid money, which expires on December 31st. So it absolutely has to get squared away at the next council meeting.
…
Item 9: SMPD wants $371K to buy seven new shiny Chevy Tahoes.
Ideally they like to replace police cars every five years. But due to Covid shortages, these are more like 7-8 years old.
Amanda Rodriguez points out that plenty of people drive cars much longer than that.
Chief Standridge explains that the game is to optimize resale value. The Tahoes we’re selling are 7-8 years old, have about 80-85K miles on them, and about 6500 idle hours. (Reddit tells me each idle hour is equivalent to 25 miles driven.) If they wait any longer, repair costs go up and resale costs go down, and everyone gets bummed out.
Each car is $52K, plus each car gets its own fancy Police costume. Installing the costume on the Tahoe, inside and out, is about $20K per car.
Alyssa Garza follows up: SMPD officers use police cars to do their off-duty work. So they’re putting wear and tear on these cars. Can the private companies pay to offset the cost of the vehicles?
(Max Baker and Alyssa actually first brought this up back in 2021. )
Chief Standridge says he actually just met with someone about this just last month! Nothing happened. One of the off-duty employers is SMCISD, and we don’t want to spring it on them.
(I mean, it’s been over three years.)
They also say that we should be leasing SMPD vehicles instead of buying them. This is cheaper in the long run. But because of the tax shortfall this summer, we couldn’t budget for an ongoing expense, so we have to use special one-time money to purchase them.
The vote:
…
I warned you that these items were weedy! There’s still one more to go.
…
Item 14: Autocrimes Unit
SMPD is applying for a state grant for $177K. This would pay for establishing a Motor Vehicle Crime Prevention Unit, with one full-time officer and a bunch of license plate cameras.
It’s not free – the city pays $35K in matching funds.
Amanda points out that there were 157 stolen cars last year. Out of 70,000 residents, that’s 2.2 vehicles per 1000 people. Her point is that this is inflated in people’s minds. Everyone acts like it’s a giant issue, but that’s actually fairly small.
Here are some other problems, for perspective:
27.7% of San Marcos residents live under the poverty line. That is 277 per 1000 people.
I don’t know how many jobs pay minimum wage, but it is definitely more than 2.2 per 1000 people. We could raise the minimum wage.
As of 2017, we needed almost 6000 more low-income housing units. Obviously housing prices have gone up, but let’s use the 6000: that works out to 85 units needed per 1000 people.
The uninsured rate in San Marcos is 16.1%. That works out to 161 uninsured people per 1000 people.
Chief Standridge is a hard no on any mitigating context! He wants zero crime!
Amanda grills him on the value of education, and why is it deprioritized in this grant application?
Chief Standridge argues that they do tons of other education! Also, out-of-towners come in to take cars. We can’t educate out-of-towners. Education is only one piece of the larger approach.
Mark Gleason is furious. This is an epidemic! There is a 50% increase in stolen vehicles from 2023 to 2024! These stolen vehicles get used for crimes!
Mark and Amanda have an angry exchange. If you want to listen, it goes from 4:30:49 – 4:34:15.
Mark is furious that others aren’t taking car theft seriously. He sees a stolen car as derailing someone’s livelihood, and he’s furious that Amanda is challenging Chief Standridge’s plan to reduce this epidemic.
Amanda is furious that we don’t take other problems as seriously as we take car theft. Yes, it’s super shitty if your car gets stolen. But here we are, prepared to drop $35K to match a grant without any discussion, and we don’t apply this same eagerness and dollar amounts to issues that affect a lot more people. As policy makers, council’s job is to figure out how to compare apples and oranges and apply some consistency across many different issues. Right now it’s wildly inconsistent.
Alyssa and Matthew Mendoza also get snippy with each other – if you want to listen, it’s at 4:29-4:30.
Saul doesn’t get snippy with anyone! But he does ask: How do we pay for this two years from now, when the grant runs out?
Answer: It’s a recurring grant. We expect to get it again.
The vote:
…
Phew! That’s it for the items pulled from the consent agenda.
…
The rest of the meeting is extremely short.
Item 24: Tantra is going to get reimbursed the $750 fee for appealing the noise violation. Yay!
…
Item 25: Right now each councilmember gets $12K to travel to conferences.
Shane Scott wants to double this to $24K. City Manager Stephanie Reyes gets a little faint at the notion of magically locating $84K extra dollars in the budget for this.
This will come back around, with more details. Like do all the council members even spend all their money? Maybe they can share the pool a little bit amongst themselves.
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.
This is exclusionary. The street does not belong to you.
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.
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.
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.
…
Item 4: The new HEB.
Everyone cheered and quickly voted on this, in about 30 seconds.
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.
…
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.
…
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:
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.
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!
…
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!
Council hemmed and hawed, and asked staff to bring two more final choices back.
So these are the two finalists:
I like these rocks better! These look like river rocks, not suburban masonry. But the new heron is worse. It was better off-center with the blue outline, I think.
The one on the left reads: “State Park, but make it Business-Professional.” I’m okay with that vibe.
They will be located at these two locations:
I always enjoy it when staff draws the city sideways. Look at that wonky compass in the corner:
What’s reality anyway, man? Time is a construct! North is an illusion! You’re not the boss of me!
What does Council think?
Mayor Hughson, with a pained expression: So these are our only two choices?
Staff: You literally told us to only bring back two.
Mayor, deep sigh, clearly repressing the urge to say, “But I didn’t mean this crap.”
Matthew Mendoza: Maybe it’s because I live in Rio Vista, but I love the heron! It symbolizes conservation and the environment. Option B for Bird.
Alyssa Garza: I like the bird. Ever since I first visited San Marcos, I’ve seen those beautiful white birds. Option B.
Jane Hughson: The bird does not represent the whole city. It could be a neighborhood sign, but I don’t like it here. Option A.
Mark Gleason: The bird is not the mascot of San Marcos. It’s distracting. Option A.
Saul Gonzalez is also for Option A. (Jude and Shane are absent.)
So it’s 3-2. Council argues about whether to wait until Jude and Shane are back, so that one option can get a full four votes. Alyssa weighs in: “I truly don’t care. We are spending way too much time on this. I’ll switch my vote.”
So the State-Park-But-Business sign wins with a clean four votes. And City Council gave the bird to the bird. (Ba dum ching.)
….
Matthew: Can we cycle through different colors for the lighting? Purple on Rattler nights, Maroon on Bobcat nights, holiday colors around the holidays?
Answer: Yes! As long as it’s static. TxDOT just says no moving parts.
So there you have it. At some point this year, these harmless little welcome signs will appear on I-35.
…
Item 9: Rezoning 18 acres behind the outlet malls.
This has come up before. It’s part of a larger chunk of land:
Mostly light industrial, but with this one little piece for apartments. These were never built, either!
The current owners want to change the yellow square to Light Industrial, to go along with the rest.
Saul is the only one who asks questions:
What is the expected tax revenue for this?
Staff says, “We can’t give an estimate.”
What is the impact on the neighbors?
Answer: They’re all doing the same thing.
It passes 5-0.
…
Item 11: We are fiddling with little parking details, as discussed here.
Among other things, we are raising the parking ticket fees, for the first time in 50 years:
I didn’t really know what to make of this. Are the little cities price gouging? Or are the big cities subsidizing bad behavior? So I emailed the chair of the parking committee (Rosalie Ray), who tells me:
– By state law, your fine for illegally parking in a handicap spot must be at least $500. So those cities with cheaper fines in that category just haven’t updated their fees since 2009, when that law was passed. (We hadn’t updated ours since 1974!)
– To avoid price-gouging, the committee has a couple things in place:
you can opt for community service instead of a fine,
you can get a payment plan, and
you can get your fine cut in half by responding within 14 days. (Council could extend the 50% discount to double-parking and blocking alleys, if they want.)
– The main targets are things like FedEx and delivery trucks. They’re the ones blocking alleys and bike lanes or double-parking. So we want them to pay their fair share.
Item 14: “ARP” stands for “American Rescue Plan”, ie Covid money. We’re down to our last $3 million. We started off with $18 million. This last bit has to be spent by the end of 2024, or we have to give the remainder back.
Here’s what staff is proposing, based on instructions from council:
The controversial part is spending $1.3 million on Uhland Road quiet district. Here’s what I think that means: Every time the trains cross the road, they blast their horns. If you want that to stop, you have to construct automatic traffic arms, and turn-around barriers, and some other safety things. We’ve done this in other neighborhoods.
Staff is trying to get the quiet zone funded through other grant money, but their most recent grant application was denied, so they stuck it here. It’s not really connected with Covid, though.
Alyssa Garza makes the case that ARP funds should be used to address direct needs. In other words, we shouldn’t be spending $2 million on the two parks and a quiet district. Direct needs are things like financial emergencies, mental health care, and violence prevention programs. Alyssa focuses in on that last one: other cities are using ARP money to pilot communiy violence prevention programs. Why not us?
She’s making a clever case: all of you who are obsessed with the police and crime rates? Let’s address violence in a preventative way. Wouldn’t that be better than just being reactive?
Objectively, Alyssa is right. (Let’s pretend I’m objective.) Support for police departments is generally shrouded in language about public safety and rising rates of violent crime. But police departments respond to violence. They’re reactive. That’s different from proactively working to reduce the causes of violent crime. If you claim you care about public safety, then you should support community violence prevention programs.
So Alyssa asks point blank: Can we re-arrange this money to pilot a violence prevention program?
And…. <crickets> … the silence dragged out, and no one joined in.
The problem is that the rest of council has a semi-acceptable excuse: there really is a fixed deadline to spend this money. Staff’s recommendations are all shovel-ready programs. So the rest of council doesn’t really have to entertain what Alyssa is saying, because momentum is on their side.
Should we be furious at them? It depends on what happens next.
Possibility 1:
Alyssa brings up community violence prevention programs at the next CJR subcommittee meeting.
Mayor Hughson and Shane Scott respond enthusiastically!
They work up a pilot program for Council.
Council enthusiastically finds some funding and moves forward with it!
In this case, everyone is forgiven for squirming uncomfortably and avoiding Alyssa’s proposal to use ARP funding right now.
Possibility 2:
Alyssa brings up community violence prevention programs at the next CJR subcommittee meeting.
It gets bogged down in the slow wheels of San Marcos city government.
Everyone says nice things, but also sandbags the process.
It stays in the background as a nice idea, and never quite makes it into implementation for the next several years.
In this case, City Council is making it clear: “Public safety” is a code word for “We love the police!” and they are going to prioritize SMPD over actual public safety whenever given the choice. Vote the jerks out of office!
…
Item 18: Here’s Trace development, way down south, past the outlet malls:
That’s where Rodriguez Elementary is.
Some sort of development wants to go in here:
The Trace developers are definitely worried about something industrial right going in right behind people’s backyards. Council decides to form a subcommittee: Jane Hughson, Matthew Mendoza, and Jude Prather are going to take care of business for ya.
…
Item 19: File this one under “victories are anticlimactic”: eight months after Max Baker loses his city council seat, they officially change the rules to allow subject matter experts to attend subcommittee meetings. (Discussed here previously.)
This was a flashpoint with Max – he’d bring up new issues, and everyone would cock their heads like a confused golden retriever, and then ignore what he was saying. Max wanted to bring in experts to explain complex issues, so that others would take him seriously, but he couldn’t even get experts in, because no one took him seriously. (Partly, this was because Max generally had 50 issues to solve simultaneously, and everyone kind of just got woozy at the overload. But partly, they just didn’t want to consider new ideas, like the environmental impact of the SMART/Axis Terminal.)
But this can also be abused, as noted by Markeymoore and Forrest Fulkerson in the comments here. If you have councilmembers who are shmoozy with a developer, and they invite the developer to the subcommittee meeting, you may essentially have a developer writing their own agreement with the city.
There’s also a little path to a bridge over the river, which leads to some trails. And there are some art installations, right where you’d head from the parking lot towards the river.
More art is coming!
I am not sure where it will go, but I’m guessing with the other art installations. (Not at the falls, despite that picture.)
It’s big:
This is the winner of a nationwide call for artist submissions, and then an open house forum, and finally the arts commission picked this one.
I didn’t find the price tag anywhere, but I generally think that arts enrich a community, and it’s worth spending money to compensate artists fairly.
Item 20: Finally! I promised you more parking news, and you stayed for it. Here’s your big pay-off:
Things in the works:
Parking Benefit Districts: this is not paid parking, but it’s a necessary pre-condition.
Parking Mobility Funds: if we had paid parking, we’d need a bucket to put the revenue in.
COLAs for fees
Currently, our parking tickets cost $20. They’ve been at that rate since 1974. That’s almost 50 years! Congratulations, $20 parking tickets, you’ve had a great run.
(Just for funsies, I went to an inflation calculator: a $20 ticket in 1974 is equivalent to a $126 ticket in 2023. What a bargain we’re getting!)
What’s proposed is having fees drift upward automatically with inflation. In other words, every three years or so, you’d just set a new, higher fee rate to match inflation. (COLA stands for Cost of Living Adjustments.)
Jane Hughson cracked me up again: “This is a good idea. We should just get it automated, so we don’t have to update it every… fifty years.”
Here’s why I like this so much: First, Jane says that we do this already with other fees that the city charges. Second, we do this with certain city employees. In other words, we are already well-versed in COLAs!
Which brings me to my hobbyhorse: Automatic COLAs for minimum wage. San Marcos does have a minimum wage of $15/hour for any business receiving tax breaks from the city. LET’S PEG IT TO INFLATION! If we can do this for parking tickets and city employees, surely we understand why this is so important for our neighbors earning minimum wage.
But wait! There’s more!
An amnesty/incentive program. Suppose you rack up a huge amount in fines. Maybe you even got booted. This is the program that will make it easier for you to settle up with the city – like signing up for volunteer hours instead of owing money, for example.
Everyone loves this idea. I love this idea, too.
5. Dynamic pricing. In other words, a little sign that says “Violators will be fined $20-$60” or whatever. So if you park illegally in off-peak hours, it’s not so bad. If you park illegally in the middle of Sights & Sounds, you get charged more.
(They claimed this was about deterrence, but surely it’s about making more money. It’s hard to see how dynamic pricing would make a dent in the decision-making of the shmuck clogging up Sights & Sounds, in the middle of four different choir performances.)
All of these will be fine-tuned before Council officially votes on them. But it’s clear: our widdle San Marcos is gwowing up.
The development agreement has been opened back up! Cue angels singing.
First order of business: who is going to do the actual renegotiating with Franklin Mountain?
Staff?
A subcommittee of council?
The entire council?
If you picked 1, then you agree with Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Mark Gleason, and Mayor Hughson.
If you picked 2 or 3, you have the company of Alyssa Garza, Matthew Mendoza, and Saul Gonzalez.
So option 1 wins, and it will go back to staff to renegotiate things.
Alyssa Garza brings up the issue of dialogue: the community has been asking for a back-and-forth conversation. They’re not getting it. Jane Hughson points out that council has heard hours of comments from the community, and she had a three hour conversation with three of the community members. I kinda see where both sides are coming from.
Straight talk: do community members really want dialogue? No, they want the SMART Terminal to be cancelled. But they’ll settle for dialogue because they suspect they’re going to lose the war, the moment they stop talking. If they truly believed that a majority of council was fighting hard for their interests and was willing to cancel the whole SMARTGASBORG, then I bet community members would feel comfortable relinquishing control.
Dialogue without changing the outcome is infuriating. No dialogue, but a responsive government who shuts down the whole SMART boondoggle would be fine. Dialogue is important, but I kinda agree that there’s not a whole lot of team-building to be done here.
Next order of business: which issues should be renegotiated by staff?
The planning director, Amanda Hernandez, gave a quick presentation. They amalgamated the 12 concerns from the community (that I posted here last time), along with an email from Ed Theriot and one from Virgina Parker. In addition, the emails were all included in the packet.
However: you know whose email wasn’t included in the packet? MINE. Since they had specifically invited the community to email any additional suggestions, I sent one in about labor practices, and specifically indexing the minimum wage to inflation.
And….<crickets>. So city staff: I hope you feel the mighty burn of my stink-eye, aimed in your general direction, from the safety of my own living room.
(Jane even asked, “Is that everything that was sent in?” And still they suppressed my wee little marxist voice! For shame.)
Matthew Mendoza proposes that we send all the issues to the negotiating table, and see where it lands. Everybody seems on board with that.
…
Item 14: Coming up in future discussions:
Car boots. Apparently we bought a bunch in the 90s and never used them, in part because we needed a court order to do so.
They’re going to discuss a policy where you can get booted if you have three unpaid parking tickets.
The idea is not to be punitive. In order to get the boot off, all you need to do is get in touch with the city and come up with a payment plan.
Item 17: Eviction Delay: Currently we have a 3 month eviction delay. This is still under the auspices of the Covid Emergency Declaration, which is still in effect.
There’s a couple things going on:
Some landlords are ignoring the delay and illegally evicting tenants early.
Some renters are intentionally skipping out on the last three months of rent, knowing they can’t be evicted
Rents are insanely high in San Marcos, especially with regard to the median income
So there’s bad circumstances all around, plus some bad actors on both sides.
Alyssa is very concerned that we will not be able to properly notify community members that the extension is coming to an end. This is grounded! We’re really terrible about outreach. Or rather, outreach is incredibly hard to do well.
Mayor Hughson puts a call out for media outlets to help spread the word. I GOT YOU, MAYOR HUGHSON! From your lips to my ear! I’m doing it!
There are a lot of details to hammer out, but expect to see it end around July 1st.
So what is the resolution of the Camacho Street Warehouse? Well, the owner pulled the application.
Is this a win? It’s hard to say! Did he pull the whole project, or just decide to go forward without the permit?
What needs to happen is that the entrance on Camacho needs to be closed. The property should be accessed via Black’s BBQ parking lot. I am guessing we don’t have any mechanism to make that happen.
…
Item 24: Downtown Parking Committee
They’re going to set up a park-and-ride shuttle to help move employees back and forth.
2. Paid Parking is not coming to downtown, at least for the foreseeable future.
The San Marxist 