Citizen Comment:
Only six speakers! (Contrast that with P&Z – about 100 speakers. We’ll get to that!)
Topics covered:
- Community Action is stoked about renewing the lease for the senior citizens center
- Please postpone the Historic Preservation Plan
- Oppression is violence. Your neglect is violence against us.
- A list of names of people killed so far by ICE
- Reappointing the chair of the San Marcos Housing Authority
That was about it!
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Item 17: River Bridge Ranch PID
River Bridge Ranch is way out here:
It came up in December, here, when it shrunk to the new, smaller size.
They want to put homes out here. It’s part of this larger cluster of developments that have been in the works for years and years:
I have never liked ANY of these, whatsoever. They all fail four of the five criteria:
Price Tag to the City: Will it bring in taxes that pay for itself, over the lifespan of the infrastructure and future repair? How much will it cost to extend roads, utilities, on fire and police coverage, on water and wastewater?
Hard fail. Cities lose money on remote developments. The developer may cover the initial cost of infrastructure, but the longterm maintenance is on us. Plus running fire, EMS, and police services way out there. The property taxes will not cover the cost to the city.
Housing stock: How long will it take to build? How much housing will it provide? What is the forecasted housing deficit at that point? Is it targeting a price-point that serves what San Marcos needs?
It’s claiming to provide affordable starter homes. This is something that people want, yes.
Environment: Is it on the aquifer? Is it in a flood zone? Will it create run off into the river?Are we looking at sprawl? Is it uniformly single-family homes?
Not on the aquifer. Somewhat close to the river. But it’s textbook sprawl, and sprawl is bad for the environment. Most likely entirely single-family homes.
Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?
Not meaningfully mixed income. Not close to any schools or amenities. Not walkable. Council gave away potential nearby commerce spots in 2023, in exchange for more sprawl.
The San Marxist Special: Is it a mixed-income blend of single family houses, four-plexes, and eight-plexes, all mixed together? With schools, shops, restaurants, and public community space sprinkled throughout? Is it walkable?
Ha, no.
River Bridge Ranch also has a weird backstory. Here’s what seems to have happened:
2008: There’s some 563-acre property called The Mayan Tract, and the owner wants to be annexed into San Marcos. Martindale agreed to this.
2014: New owners buy the property.
2018: The new owners file a lawsuit to challenge the validity of the annexation. Martindale joins the suit.
2020: The suit gets settled in 2020. This thing called a PID is formed as part of the settlement. (We’ll get to what a PID is.)
Max Baker described the settlement as “They strong-armed the city into forming a PID.” He was on council then, so he was there. But he also tends to use inflammatory language to describe things. So that may not be the universal opinion – I have no idea.
2021: Lennar Homes purchased the land and they get the PID.
In other words, people have been trying to do something with this land for 10-15 years, unsuccessfully.
…
So what is a PID?
PID stands for “Public Improvement District”. What this means is that all the home owners will pay a surcharge on top of their property taxes. That extra money is used to make the neighborhood nicer.
Here’s how much people might pay:
So that is on top of your regular property taxes, which is 65.15¢.
I don’t love PIDs. They are a little bit of a shell game – you can list houses at a cheaper price, because you didn’t have to include the cost of the neighborhood improvements. Instead of paying extra on their mortgage, the homeowners will pay extra in yearly taxes.
It’s fine as long as all home-buyers are perfectly wise and have access to enough wealth. Late-stage capitalism, eh?
Why is this coming to council?
Lennar Homes wants to change the terms of the PID. They want to reduce the size to match the new smaller footprint, and then increase the dollars.
The new size:
(Also discussed in December.)
The new PID budget:
Like I said earlier, I think this project is terrible sprawl. It will cost the city more to maintain services out there than we’ll bring in, in property tax revenue.
No vote tonight. The PID changes will get voted on at the next meeting.
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Item 18. San Marcos Historic Preservation Plan
We’ve seen it before, back in October. We’ve been working on this for awhile:
They tried hard to get community input:
What’s it supposed to do?
Great! What else?
- If we adopt this plan by mid-February, we qualify for a $5K grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
- We’re out of money, anyway. We’re using some consultants and we’ve given them just about the whole sum.
HOWMEVER!
The letters have been coming in, and people have a lot of complaints.
Here’s what I gathered: What’s here isn’t bad, but it doesn’t give a clear roadmap of how to proceed.
– What should be prioritized?
– What’s the order of operations?
– How do we implement this big list of lofty ideals, on a shoestring budget?*
Staff protests that they’ve had a TON of outreach, and that these complaints can be addressed, even if we pass the plan first. They seem worried that this will drag out forever.
Bottom line: Staff is going to compile a comprehensive list of all the proposed changes, and try to categorize them as short term or long term, and bring it back.
* Hat tip to Ryan Patrick Perkins for walking me through this.
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Item 19: Rezoning
This church is right by campus:
It’s used by Christ Chapel and United Campus Ministry currently.
It’s right between campus and mini-Target:
It sounds like it will be a 6-story apartment complex, owned by the church, with church things on the ground floor.
The minister gives his pitch:
- The church is going to keep owning the property. We won’t sell it.
- They’ve thought hard and long about this
- It’ll be great!
- If we don’t get this rezoning, we’d have to sell it. Who KNOWS what you’ll get!
Will the old church building itself get torn down? No one asks this question. I assume it’s a goner. (Maybe they’ll let the new building eat the church, like Sanctuary Apartments did, a few blocks over?)
What do I think? Let’s check the five criteria!
Price Tag to the City: Will it bring in taxes that pay for itself, over the lifespan of the infrastructure and future repair? How much will it cost to extend roads, utilities, on fire and police coverage, on water and wastewater?
Very low cost to the city – this area is all built up and well-supported already. I don’t know if it will bring in much tax revenue, because it’s still owned by the church. But no concerns here.
Housing stock: How long will it take to build? How much housing will it provide? What is the forecasted housing deficit at that point? Is it targeting a price-point that serves what San Marcos needs?
I have no idea on any of this. It’s a pretty tiny lot.
Environment: Is it on the aquifer? Is it in a flood zone? Will it create run off into the river? Are we looking at sprawl? Is it uniformly single-family homes?
All of Texas state is uphill of most of San Marcos, and it’s mostly paved over. The pre-existing situation is terrible for flooding. This does add more pavement.
Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?
Extremely walkable and close to the university.
The San Marxist Special: Is it a mixed-income blend of single family houses, four-plexes, and eight-plexes, all mixed together? With schools, shops, restaurants, and public community space sprinkled throughout? Is it walkable?
Well, no, but you wouldn’t really put a San Marxist Special in the middle of downtown.
On the whole, I’m fine with this! You want density in your downtown.
The vote: 7-0.
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Item 12: Hays County Senior Citizens Center
This little Senior Center is run by Community Action:
It’s tucked away in Victory Gardens:
They do a lot of great things!
They lease the building from the city. It’s time to renew, for another ten years. It’s an old building, so they’ll let us know if there are any concerns on the walk through.
Great!
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Item 20: Bitcoin scams
What’s the opposite of a warm, nurturing senior citizen center? Maybe scamming old people with a bitcoin ATM?
Apparently there are Bitcoin ATMs:
You can buy and sell cryptocurrency on these.
Google tells me they’re all over San Marcos:
As a crotchety old Marxist, I don’t like it. But here we are.
Apparently the scammers are here, too:
We’re going to require stores to put little warning signs by all the BTMs, saying “hey! Here’s some red flags that you might be getting scammed!”
It’s better than nothing, but wouldn’t it be nice if we had a functional federal and state government that cracked down on predatory scams?
[Sidebar: I don’t understand how bitcoins are untraceable. Isn’t the whole point that it’s a block chain that grows a little bit longer with every transaction, recording its whole history of where it’s been so far?]
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That’s it for the regular meeting! Now comes the spicy stuff.
The San Marxist 