the proposed student housing on Lindsey street (much, much more to come)
San Marcos Civics Club, inviting Councilmembers to drop in.
In favor of turning the Mitchell Center into an African-American History museum, overseen by the Calaboose board. (This is an item on the Executive Session agenda, so I don’t have any other info on it.)
Five people spoke in favor of a council resolution calling for ceasefire in Gaza. (Discussed a bit last time.)
Items 1-3: Financial reports. All about Q3 2023, which is last June-September.
How did last summer go?
We came in under-budget and over-revenue. Great.
They also went through the special funds: Electric, Water/Wastewater, Stormwater, Resource Recovery, Airport, and Hotel Tax. It all seemed like normal fluctuations to me, but knock yourself out if you’re curious to know more.
Item 16: We’re knee-deep in next year’s budget. I haven’t watched ANY of the budget planning sessions, because they’re dull as rocks, and I say this as someone who finds council meetings riveting.
I think this is the key part of the Budget Policy Statement:
What does “Eviction Services” mean? We’re helping the tenant and not the landlord, right? We’re not the baddies, are we?
In part A, “Mental Health Diversion” sounds promising. None of this got any discussion at Tuesday’s meeting, though.
I’m not sure what distinguishes As, Bs, and Cs. Funding level? Different departments? Urgency?
We bought it, but it wasn’t inside city limits. So now we’re annexing it.
Google maps tells me that it looks like this:
Nothing I enjoy better than the derelict remains of former wealth, as it returns to the common good!
….
Item 18: LIHTC projects are low income housing complexes, where the developer gets some tax breaks in exchange for building affordable housing. (We talked about LIHTC projects last month.)
These guys want to build affordable housing right behind the high school:
Great!
How affordable is “affordable”?
What this means is that there are 348 apartments, and all of them will be priced so that they are affordable for people making $58,401 – $70,080.
What does “51-60% AMI” mean?
AMI stands for “Area Median Income”. In other words, the AMI is the middle income in the town. So then “51-61% of AMI” means these apartments are for people earning roughly half of the middle income, or a little more. On the poor side of the AMI though, for sure.
Hopefully you’re thinking, “Wait, what? How is $58K-$70K on the poor side, for San Marcos!?”
It’s not! Here’s where the hocus-pocus comes in. San Marcos is part of the Greater Austin-Round Rock Metro statistical area. The median income for a family of four in Austin is $122K. And therefore 51-60% of that gives you $58,401 – $70,080.
People earning $58K-$70K in San Marcos are above the median income. These households are on the richer half of San Marcos. Not actually rich, but relatively well off for San Marcos. It’s completely absurd to call this apartment complex “affordable” or “low-income”. These are regular, market rate apartments for regular, old San Martians.
But here’s the thing: they’re not applying for tax breaks from the city. They’re only applying to state tax breaks. So this isn’t costing the city anything.
Still, they’re getting tax breaks from the state. Are they at least providing services that go above and beyond?
Eh, not really. Pretty bog-standard.
City Council is happy with this because we’re not giving away any money. So they give it a thumb’s up.
Look, as far as San Marcos goes, this is fine. It’s housing.
But they’re still jerks! They’re diverting funding that would otherwise subsidize actual low-income housing. They’re getting a subsidy, without helping the people it’s supposed to help. It’s not technically illegal – we’re within the Austin MSA, so officially our median income is $122k. Just kinda shitty of them.
Item 47: Reefer madness! Mano Amiga gathered over 10,000 signatures to get a measure on the ballot this November, decriminalizing weed in San Marcos.
It always sounds a little silly when politicians discuss pot, but this really is a gigantic civil rights and moral imperative. Lives get derailed all the time in this stupid, punitive state over possession of marijuana. The criminal justice system wrecks lives. That’s the serious part.
The city council has a few options:
Approve an ordinance on the spot which would decriminalize pot.
Add the ordinance to the ballot, in November.
Add the ordinance to the ballot, and in addition, add a second ordinance of their choosing.
From the beginning, Saul Gonzalez and Mark Gleason both clutch their pearls about 4 oz of marijuana being too much for personal use.
Max Baker explains that 4 oz came from the state of Texas – it’s the state’s cut-off for a “low” amount. He also reminds them that it’s the cut-off used in the cite-and-release policy. Back then, the police clarified that they can identify dealers by their possession of things like scales and other dealing paraphernalia. They’re not concerned about the 4 oz.
Still, Mark mopes around, and suggests an alternate ordinance with a cut-off of 2 oz. So he wants two nearly-identical proposals on the ballot: a proposal that got 10,000 signatures over six months, and a second proposal that makes Mark Gleason less mopey.
Everyone else thinks this will be needlessly confusing, thank god. So the second proposal goes up in smoke. (WINK.)
Jude Prather speaks up. He thinks pot should definitely be decriminalized. He thinks that city council should just approve the ordinance on the spot, tonight, and keep it off the ballot. He doesn’t want it to be politicized, since this is a big election coming up.
Let me spell this out: yes, he wants pot decriminalized. But he also doesn’t want lefty candidates to benefit from the extra voter turnout, on the rest of the ballot in November. He’s worried that the kind of voter who will show up to decriminalize pot will then vote liberally on the rest of the ballot.
Alyssa Garza responds, neatly dodging the voter turnout question. She just says that this policy will have more buy-in from the community if it gets strong support from voters, in November. To his credit, Jude graciously says that he’s convinced, and drops the issue.
Mark Gleason does make one very good point: This only binds SMPD. It does not affect Texas State campus cops or Hays County sheriffs. The public still needs to exercise caution and keep themselves safe.
Item 36: raises for City Council members
Here is the ethical position: you need to pay City Council representatives enough that any citizen can afford to run for office. If you don’t pay much, then only people with sufficient extra income can run.
At first, it can feel a little counter-intuitive and fiscally irresponsible to pay elected officials a salary. It feels weird for councilmembers to personally benefit from their positions. But that kind of thinking is a trap. Volunteer positions are mostly only feasible for people with disposable time and income, and so City Council should not be a volunteer position. It’s too important.
How much are we talking? Currently they get $17,400/year. This would bring them up to $22,200/year. And if I had to guess, most of them put in 30-50 hours/week. It’s an insane time commitment, for peanuts.
Alyssa Garza, Max Baker, and Shane Scott are all in favor. Mayor Hughson, Saul Gonzalez, and Jude Prather are all opposed.
Mark Gleason dithers back and forth. He has a new baby, and I believe they live rather frugally. He desperately wants the extra money to be foisted upon him, while he protests that it wouldn’t be right to accept it. He does not want to have to act like he’s in favor of the raise.
Unfortunately, he’s the deciding vote, so he’s in exactly that position. He votes yes, but rationalizes that he just wants it brought back for a second reading. He didn’t want to vote yes for his own benefit, see?
…
Item 48: Abortions. I assume that I’ve got a pretty sympathetic group of readers, and I don’t need to spell out the horrors of denying women health care. We’re all in this dystopia together! So what’s a city government to do?
Austin passed the GRACE act. The idea is to try to salvage parts of it for San Marcos, as best we can. There are several parts:
San Marcos should not use city funds to arrest or prosecute anything abortion-related.
No abortion-related discrimination from city employees or contractors
Information and education about birth control and vasectomies
City employees should get time off from work and help funding out-of-state trips to get abortions
Max Baker co-sponsored this with Alyssa Garza. It’s 1 am in the morning by now, and she’s coughing her brains out, and so he takes the lead. (The entire evening, Max is his best self. He’s congenial and has facts at his finger tips, and brings about collaboration instead of defensiveness.)
So let’s take these one at a time.
Police should not look into abortions.
Chief Stapp is on the call. He starts off saying that Chief Dandridge sent out a memo to all the officers, back in mid-July, saying that they should not arrest/investigate/anything to do with abortion, unless a woman has died or suffered major injury. So Chief Dandridge has pro-actively implemented this already, in a really pro-woman way.
It always feels faintly traitorous to say this, but here goes: Chief Dandridge truly seems fairly progressive (for a police chief). He supports cite-and-release. He took the initiative to not investigate abortions. Whenever he’s come and talked about school resource officers, or funding for staff, or whatever, he does not sound like a lunatic. I don’t know what the reality is on the force, and I generally have a healthy distrust of officers. But I have not yet seen negative parts of Chief Dandridge at City Council meetings.
So that one is more-or-less taken care of.
No abortion-related discrimination from city employees or contractors
Jane Hughson leads with “Why is this needed?” but comes around. To be clear: you need it so that when a woman needs to travel for an abortion, she doesn’t risk getting fired in the interim. There are other reasons as well, but that’s the most immediate one.
Mark Gleason, the whole time, keeps harping on “We shouldn’t need it” because medical information should be private and discrimination shouldn’t happen. I mean, he can fuck right off. Discrimination shouldn’t happen, so it’s not a problem?
Information and education about birth control and vasectomies.
Originally the interim city manager, Stephanie Reyes, is very cautious against this one, because we don’t have a health department like Austin does, and therefore we should stay in our lane.
Max points out that we often link our community partners and help residents find the right resources, like with Covid testing or whatever, when the service is not available through the city. Apparently Community Action offers a vasectomy fund, for example (although there’s no mention of it on their webpage). Gradually everyone comes on board.
Mark Gleason has to say, “The website should also link to adoption services!” Sure, Mark.
City employees get time off from work and help funding out-of-state trips to get abortions.
Right off the bat, Max acknowledges that Austin can do this kind of thing because it’s larger, wealthier, and so on, and that he’s not expecting San Marcos to follow in kind. Everyone voices concerns that we could get sued, because of of the Texas Bounty Hunter law against aiding women seeking abortions. It’s unlikely this will go anywhere.
At some point, Jude Prather also speaks up. His point is that abortion is a complex, nuanced topic, and the state of Texas wants to make it black and white. So he positions himself as a centrist here. Fine.
(For the record, I don’t find abortion to be a nuanced topic. Elective abortions, medically-needed abortions, party abortions? Have ’em all.)
Mayor Hughson asks if anyone is interested in putting together a committee, which would further hash these ideas out, conduct further research, and keep an eye on the state legislature.
Mark Gleason is not interested in a committee. He doesn’t see the need for it. Everyone else is okay with it.
Gleason pisses me off in this whole topic. He implies that he and his wife have had to consider or employ medical abortions, and thus he understands that sometimes they are necessary. However, at every step he’s the one to minimize the dangers to women, promote links to adoption agencies, protest the need for a committee or an antidiscrimination clause, wax on about how he’s against elective abortions, etc. Just shut up, dude. It’s not about you at all.
Let me say one last thing tactfully: there are only two women on city council, and one of them recently helped organize her 50th high school reunion. There are five guys, none of whom have uteruses. That’s not great representation regarding who is at risk of an unwanted pregnancy.
The committee will be Jane Hughson, Max Baker, and Alyssa Garza. As weak as our position is, as a small town in Texas, I appreciate them moving forward in these small-but-supportive ways.
Item 42: Quail Creek Park
San Marcos used to have a country club with a golf course, out on Highway 21, near Gary Job Core/Softball Complex:
The city is buying it for $8.5 million, and the county is putting $6.6 million towards it (as best I can tell).
In general, I’m always in favor of the city acquiring land, because I think that amenities should be publicly owned. However, we desperately need meaningful parks and investment in the east side of town, and while this is indeed east, it’s not a very useful location. Traffic on 80 is a mess. This isn’t walkable.
So: as long as no one pretends that this park meets the needs of the people who live east of 35, then yes, this is great.
Max Baker is annoyed that it might be a SportsPlex. I’m a little less opposed to this than he is. The thing is, I’m guessing this land is already landscaped within an inch of its life. So letting a lot of it go to seed and return to nature would be good, but (ideally) that would mean planting a lot of trees. Turning some of it into baseball fields is better than destroying existing nature for baseball fields.
City-run sports leagues are a different beast than private clubs. For private clubs, picture travel teams that cost parents a lot of time and money. For city leagues, picture something being run by a group of volunteers. Coaches are all volunteers. Fundraising is haphazard. Scholarships are available and costs are kept as low as possible.
It’s good for kids in middle school and high school to have an extracurricular that they care about enough that they’ll buy in to the premise of school. Think band/art/theater/sports. That can make the difference between squeaking by to graduation vs getting sucked into a downward spiral. So having city sports is a public good.
However, what you really need are fields very close to houses, or practices that happen at the schools. If you want to serve working families, activities need to be designed so that they don’t require extra transportation from working parents. This Quail Creek thing is not that.
The Parks Department will poll the community and explore different options. It could become lots of different things. I like trails and playgrounds, too. Nothing is set in stone.
The San Marxist 