Citizen Comment
Here are the main things people care about:
- CM Allen district – we want Option 2! There’s too much student housing and not enough parking. Last riverfront property.
- CM Allen district – we do not want Option 2! There’s not enough housing and not enough parking, and there’s better ways to spend money.
- CM Allen district Option 2 was conceived in the dead of night behind closed doors, and we object to being locked out of the process.
- Big $36 million grant available for river restoration. Letter of intent deadline is coming quick. Could use this to study Cape’s Dam? (SMRF)
- San Marcos does a miserable job of making this city accessible for people in wheelchairs.
- San Marcos does a miserable job of taking care of our heritage trees. You all recently cut down a big one on the town square, and another one across from the Veterans Memorial.
- We’re going to sue you if you pass those airport rezonings.
We’ll get to the Great Option 2 Debate when we discuss the Downtown Master Plan. The rest of the topics raised don’t really show up again this evening.
(The airport rezoning passed with the Consent Agenda.)
….
Item 13: The bus.
Everyone loves the Austin Powerplant sign for using that Gotham City font, but may I humbly submit that the San Marcos Station font is a serious contender for charming font choices?
(I think it’s actually the same font, but we don’t go making such a fuss about it.)
Anyway, good news: Buses are free in San Marcos! Paratransit services are free, too! These have all been free since the beginning of Covid, actually. Maybe there’s a route that suits your needs?
This is all very good! No changes are coming.
All they did on Tuesday was set up a procedure so that someday, if service or fares do need to change, there’s a procedure in place, which includes a public hearing. Also good!
The vote: 7-0. Good job, Council!
Item 14: VisionSMTX++
We are almost to the sad end to an excruciating process.
Background:
VisionSMTX++ is the Comprehensive Plan, the big vague guiding document for how we want the city to grow and change over the next ten years. Or rather: growth is coming regardless of whether or not we want it, so let’s have a plan for where to put it.
A 30-person citizen steering committee met with consultants for two years to produce VisionSMTX. Tons of extra community input was solicited.
Mayor Hughson and P&Z read it and got mad about it. So they formed a subcommittee and made 74 pages worth of changes to a 300 page document. Given that a lot of the 300 page document is fluff and filler – pretty pictures, etc – you can see that they really dug in and tore it apart. (We first discussed this here.)
A lot of the committee – including me! – got mad about it. P&Z held a workshop and approved the new version. (Discussed here.)
City staff adds an extra “+” to pour one out for their homies, each time P&Z wrecks something important. So by now, it’s become VisionSMTX++.
Public Hearing:
It is almost entirely people mad about the subcommittee changes.
- P&Z subcommittee destroyed all the community input that was solicited for original plan.
- Original is the right version, not the P&Z shadow version
- In their effort to protect the Historic district, they’ve now hamstrung all the other neighborhoods from getting basic services
- Support for a second city center on the east side, but please be sure to commemorate the El Camino Real trail running through it.
(Guys. GUYS! You know how our whole thing is “A River Runs Through Us”? We could have a companion piece, “This Historic Trail Also Runs Through Us.” Yes, yes?)
- More people saying the original Vision SMTX is better
- Rosie Ray reiterating her two main points from last time:
1. please remove “vehicle” from the definition that’s meant to deal with reducing car dependency.
2. Please add “multiplexes/duplexes/condos” to the things that are currently found in neighborhoods where they currently exist.
What exactly are the substantial changes?
There are roughly three camps:
1. People passionate about the Historic District. We love Belvin and San Antonio street.
2. Developers who want to maximize profit.
3. Lefties who are worried about sprawl, the environment, and unaffordable housing. Hi!
Group 1 holds all the power in this discussion. They have a majority on P&Z and Council. The P&Z subcommittee, plus Jane Hughson, was overwhelmingly Group 1.
Group 1’s perspective:
– They are extremely worried about Group 2 destroying cute old houses and putting up giant apartment complexes in the middle of neighborhoods. To be fair, this is a thing that Group 2 would cheerfully do, if allowed.
– They think Group 3 is kind-hearted idiots who will do inadvertently the bidding of Group 2.
In order to prevent this, they locked down the Historic District into carbonite and said, “We hereby declare that nothing shall ever change!”
However, they actually locked down all single family neighborhoods. This was not an accident. They see a black and white world, where the only two options are this:
- For The Haves:
The Haves get massive sprawl, high prices, and car-dependency
and 2. For the Have-Nots:
The Have-Nots get massive utilitarian apartment complexes.
Group one believes there is absolutely no other possibility. (Weirdly though, you need a lot of rules to pretend this.)
The problem is that there is a 3rd possibility: gently densify your neighborhoods.
– Allow accessory dwelling units (ADUs)
– Allow housing that the have-nots can afford, like duplexes, triplexes, or other smallscale affordable housing. You want the neighborhood to still feel like a quiet neighborhood, but just not be such a jerk about keeping poor people out.
– Focus on ways to reduce car-dependency, by providing necessities nearby. In other words, people like having a corner store where you can pick up some groceries or a sandwich.
So: Is Group 3 actually a bunch of well-intentioned idiots? Is that fantasy impossible?
No! It’s very, very possible! It’s the Historic District. There are actually a ton of mini-complexes hidden throughout. Pretty much every single house along Belvin has an ADU. Isn’t that great? And they can quickly reach little HEB and all of downtown without driving.
It is great for them! Just not for anyone else.
Here are the specific major changes from the subcommittee:
– Remove ADUs from being allowed in single family neighborhoods.
– Remove smallscale multiplex from being in low intensity areas.
– Measure “walkability” by what you can drive to. Like, in your car.
– Declare that all existing low-intensity neighborhoods only contain houses. They don’t, but we’re declaring it!
– Infill must match existing housing types. In other words, if there are only houses as far as the eye can see, then that’s what you’re stuck with. Forever and ever.
– Remove language that helps people bike around town for transportation. (Seriously, what are you, a grinch? You can’t enjoy yourself if someone else is able to bike to work?)
The list of changes is 74 pages long. Just the changes!! Many of them are minor, but it’s a nightmare to wade through. ( I got to page 26 and gave up.)
But now I’m going to step back and try to see things from a bird’s eye view:
How much does a comprehensive plan matter? I don’t know. I can see it both ways:
1. Not that much: Developers will continue to build single-family sprawl and massive complexes, because fundamentally they’re not in it for social change and progressive rallying cries. They play it safe, because they want profits to be safe.
2. Matters a whole lot: Incremental change adds up over time. These little nudges towards affordable housing and against car-dependency wouldn’t solve problems, but they’d help keep us from making things worse as quickly as possible.
Ultimately I think it matter quite a lot, or else I wouldn’t spend my Saturdays writing all this out, over and over again.
The Council Debate:
Jane starts off with her apology tour, which I found wholly unconvincing. Basically:
- The shadow P&Z committee was supposed to be a good thing! The point was transparency! If she’d saved her concerns for Council, fewer people would have had a chance to see all the changes.
- She just wanted to protect existing neighborhoods. (She seems to think this is an unassailable good thing, instead of the utter heart of the issue.)
- She talked to a wise person who explained the accusation of “watering it down”: the issue was this word swap from “objectives” to “considerations” and so Jane has changed it back.
Jane is truly missing the point. She’s unable to consider that the content of her changes is why people are mad.
…
Side note: I don’t know if city council reads this blog. They are all aware of it, because I’ve emailed them as The San Marxist, and included a link (and also because San Marcos is small and gossipy).
If a councilmember claims they want as much community input as possible, then they should be reading this blog.
If a councilmember chooses not to read this blog, I am going to infer that they don’t actually want to maximize the amount of community input that they hear.
Jane seems wholly unaware of the arguments I’ve made over and over and over. In fairness, she also seems unaware of the public comments that were made 10 feet away from where she’s sitting, 15 minutes earlier. So who knows.
…
Let’s dive in!
Jude: So how big are these changes exactly? Why are we taking out ADUs? Why not incentivize diverse housing types? Why so many 4th quarter changes?
Answer from staff: We were focused on transparency!
Jude: I feel uncomfortable with making all these changes by the seat of our pants. We should respect the process.
Jane: I made these changes back in March. Hardly the seat of our pants.
Alyssa: You’re saying the subcommittee rewrite was justified because it was open to the public and transparent. But look, the subcommittee really does not reflect our community. When considering these issues, I try to use two questions as guideposts:
- Who is this leaving behind?
- Are we doing something that we’ll have to undo later?
People feel like they’ve been dismissed. We can see who we’re leaving behind based on the composition of P&Z. When we are taking suggestions from a tiny body, we can expect to have to rewrite things. I support the original plan.
[Note: I like these two questions. We are leaving behind most of San Marcos. We will definitely end up having to undo this comp plan eventually. ]
Shane: I’m not ready to vote on this tonight. More research is needed.
Mark Gleason: I don’t have a problem with the changes, philosophically. I’m ready to move forward.
Saul: I’m okay moving forward.
Matthew Mendoza didn’t weigh in at this point, but he’s so obviously pro-neighborhoods-in-carbonite that it’s unnecessary.
…
So at this point, the game is over. The new plan has the four votes it needs. Its fate is sealed. Here is the status of all the existing neighborhoods now:
The thing that’s absolutely wild is how little time Council spends discussing any of this.
- The original community group spent 2 years on this.
- P&Z took eight months and a workshop, and a re-write to wade through all of this.
- The above conversation takes about 20 minutes.
After this, Jane has a bunch of worthwhile amendments on other issues – after all, the entire thing is 300 pages long. But they’re on new and different details.
All those changes described above? ADUs, walkability, definitions, etc? Just absolute radio silence.
Why not take these large issues one at a time, and discuss them? Why not offer up an amendment, or hunt for a compromise, or at least make the majority defend their reasons? Why not do something?
Obviously Jane, Mark, Saul, and Matthew all like the new plan. (I disagree with all of them.)
But Shane, Jude, and Alyssa all don’t like the new plan! My dudes. You could dig in and try to repair it. You’ve been spoonfed two mild, palatable amendments by Dr. Rosie Ray, on two separate occasions! The very least you could do is offer those up.
Jude even explicitly asked about ADUs and diverse housing types, but then lets it go! (Which is his signature dance move, of course.) And Shane – “I need to do more research” – Scott is also being absurd. He was on the actual steering committee for two years! Be a councilmember, make an amendment, hammer out a compromise.
The actual final vote is next meeting. Maybe one of them will surprise me.
Should LBJ and Guadalupe Stay 1-Way Streets?
Next Jane makes a series of amendments. Most of them are minor and fine. The one that’s more notable is about LBJ and Guadalupe downtown. In the Comp Plan Appendix, they bring up converting them to be two-way.
Jane’s take: Over the years, we’ve debated this thing until we were blue in the face. We voted and laid this issue to rest. Plus, the price tag to reverse course now is super steep, and it would mess up the bike lanes.
Saul: It used to be 2 way.
Jane: I remember! It switched in 1971, right before I got my license.
Jude: Longterm, we all know they will have to be 2 way.
Note: We do? Why is it a foregone conclusion that eventually we’ll have to have two way streets?
I do remember the debates on this, but I wasn’t paying close attention. My memory is:
- Businesses prefer two-way because it’s easier for people to locate their store
- People seem to like one-way out of preference for the status quo
- Possibly traffic moves better with one-way?
I personally am used to one-way and it seems to work pretty smoothly, and so I stand with those who prefer the status quo. Plus, I don’t want to undo the bike lanes. But I’m open to hearing the arguments for two-way, especially if it’s supposedly “inevitable” and all.
The vote on one-way streets:
Keep ‘en one-way: Jane, Saul, Matthew, Mark
Two way is the future! Shane, Jude, Alyssa
Alyssa stated earlier that she’s a “no” on all of this, protesting the process. So she is not necessarily weighing in on 1-way vs 2-way streets here.
…
Jude ends by saying he’s still super concerned about the process. Not concerned enough to make any actual amendment. Just concerned, y’know, in general.
The first vote on the whole VisionSMTX++:
Lock down the sprawl! Jane, Mark, Saul, Matthew, and Jude
I’m protesting the process! Shane and Alyssa
Like I said, this will come back one more time, in November. (Feel free to read the whole thing yourself – all the versions, and the summary table of changes. Go nuts.)
The San Marxist 