This week: contracts for SMPD and SM Fire Fighters, with a win for transparency. Also a Dunbar Historic Walk, some election talk, and a call to support our school librarians.
Here we go!
Hours 0:00 – 2:29: Basically all about contracts for SMPD and SMFD. How transparent should the process be?
But first! Two quick bits on the election and school libraries.
1. Well, we had an election.
Matthew Mendoza won re-election against Chase Norris.
Saul Gonzales and Josh Paselk are headed to a run-off, on December 13th.
I’m still grossed out by that PAC dumping $50K to sway a local election towards their preferred candidates.
Here’s the problem: we actually have some local limits on campaign donations:
If you receive more than $300 from someone, you must recuse yourself from votes related to that.
No one can donate more than $500 to any campaign, period.
Now look at the donor amounts to the Brighter Future for San Marcos PAC. Almost all are over $300, and most are between $600-$10,000. (And that list is not up to date.)
That PAC spent $35,000* supporting Matthew Mendoza and Josh Paselk. But they don’t donate it to campaigns, so the local laws don’t apply. The PAC just directly buys mailers and newspaper ads. So Matthew and Josh benefit, but would not be required to recuse themselves from votes that benefit the donors.
This is legal, but it’s deliberately sabotaging the intent of our local laws. What bullshit, right?
*also out of date. My understanding is it’s more like $50K+.
2. Our school libraries
At the past two school board meetings, around 10 or so people from New Braunfels, Seguin, Corpus, etc have shown up to harass our district. They find the spiciest parts of any book at any school library, and berate our school board for it. (They also post the spiciest parts to social media! Everyone gets titillated at the thought of saying such naughty words in public.) Then there’s a whole procedure where they flag books, we have to pull the books, review them, and bring the recommendations to the school board.
It might be nice to have some local voices supporting our librarians, our libraries, and our school district at these meetings?
Obviously say whatever you want, but if you’re stuck, I think the major points are things like:
you trust the judgement of our school librarians that they’re only including books with mature themes when there’s age-appropriate value to the book.
Parents are free to monitor the reading choices of their own children, but shouldn’t enforce their personal rules on everyone else.
Want to speak in person?
The next meeting is at 6 pm on Monday, November 17th, at the Felipe Reyna District Offices located at 1331 Hwy 123. (Right by Goodnight Middle School.)
You are supposed to sign up ahead of time. Swing by the Superintendent’s office (same address) or call (512) 393-6700 ext. 6767.
Malachi Williams: Seven speakers, including family members. They want justice for Malachi. Several of the speakers focus on the detail that Malachi ran because a cop pulled a gun on him. Before the videos were released, this detail wasn’t mentioned. It shows how the officer escalated the situation instead of de-escalating it, which then ended in tragedy.
Human Services Advisory Budget funding: Council is thinking about increasing HSAB funding for next year. Three speakers advocated for this.
Cape’s Dam and the Mill Race: Two people talk about how much they love the river, east of I-35 and want council to keep it. We’ll unpack all of this!
Tenants’ Bill of Rights: The San Marcos Civics Club made this a focus, and got Council to put this in their visioning statement. Now council will need to make it happen. Two speakers focus on this.
Ceasefire in Palestine: four speakers. They still want the city to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
…
Onto the meeting!
Items 1-4: A bunch of audits and investment reports.
We got the audit reports for CDBG funding and the 23-24 fiscal year. Plus the quarterly financial report and investment report.
Everything looks normal. No rude surprises. (Apparently we’ve gotten awards for excellence for the past 35 years, on our yearly fiscal audit. OH YEAH BABY.)
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Item 18: Rezoning about 15 acres
This property is way up north:
Back in 2020, we annexed this yellow and pink bit:
The yellow was zoned Manufactured Home, and the pink was zoned Light Industrial.
There were some concerns then – do we really want to make the folks in the mobile home community live right against an industrial park? But we let it ride.
Now the pink part is coming back for a rezoning – they want to switch it from Light Industrial to Manufactured Home. In other words:
Great! Now nobody has to live near an industrial park.
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Item 20: Budget Policy Statement
We’re working on the Fiscal Year 26 budget.
First: There was a two days Visioning workshop in January, which lead to approving the Strategic Plan.
The nex workshop was at the end of February. Today we’re approving the thing from that: the Budget Policy Statement.
What’s a Budget Policy Statement?
This is like the guard rails for building the budget over the summer. Most of it is pretty dry? Like “Do you want to budget to maintain 150 days worth of recurring operating expenses in the budget, or just 90?” “Are we okay using the General Fund for Stormwater projects over $5 million?” Etc.
There are two interesting bits:
Each year, the city sets the rate for electricity, water, sewer, trash, etc. To do this, they have to predict what their costs will be. Then they pick a rate that will cover all their costs.
From the Budget Policy Statement
What does this mean? If your utilities get turned off, you have to pay extra late fees to get your utilities back on. All of the late fees, taken together, add up to big chunk of revenue.
The question is: Suppose we are predicting that we’ll bring in $100K in late fees. (I’m making that number up.) Should we use that $100K to lower the rates for the rest of the customers?
Argument in favor: It’s more economical to include the late fees in your calculation. It allows you to set lower rates for the whole city.
Argument against: It’s kind of icky to count on late fees, for two reasons. First, you’re charging your most desperate customers – the ones who already can’t keep up – an extra fee, and then using that fee to help out all the other, less-desperate customers.
Second, it creates an incentive to creep up your late fees over time. When budgets are lean, it’s tempting to lean on late fees as an extra source of revenue you can tap, like cities that ticket their poorest residents into oblivion in order to balance their budgets.
The current council has already been going in the opposite direction. They are already trying to lower the late fees, to make it easier for residents to get their electricity turned back on.
To the original question: they decide that we are not going to use the late-fee revenue in computing utility rates. Then, when late fees come in anyway, they’ll put that money towards the Utility Assistance program.
It’s a small touch, but a good one.
2. Here’s the other one worth paying attention to:
This is what the speakers during Citizen Comment were talking about.
Last December and January, HSAB funding was a total mess. There was too little funding, and Council ended up pitting nonprofits against each other. It was clear that we need to significantly ramp up city funding of nonprofits.
Right now, HSAB gets $550K. Council sets a range of additional funding, between $50K-$200K. When we find out what kind of money we’re getting from property taxes this July, then we’ll determine where we land in that range.
This part makes me extra happy:
Yes!! Peg the HSAB budget to inflation. We do it in contracts with for-profit entities all the time. It should be universal.
(The failure to peg minimum wage to inflation was one of the greatest policy near-misses of the 20th century. Having a federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour is such a mockery.)
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Item 21: Cut-and-fill in La Cima
Pedernales Electric wants to build a substation here:
But it’s on a hill. Like we saw last time, it’s hard to build on a hill. So they also want to do a cut-and-fill.
This time, no one is worried about flooding.
Matthew Mendoza is a little worried that the people in La Cima might have to look at a substation, though.
Staff reassures him that there is another building, and then the La Cima apartment complex, all separating the substation from the houses. So their eyes won’t be hurt by the substation.
Shane Scott proposed doubling the flex money and travel money, and he wanted it effective IMMEDIATELY. Like, something lit a fire under his butt.
Last time, they went in circles forever, but ultimately landed here:
Travel budget
There’s plenty of travel money already. The total council travel doesn’t go over budget.
Council members can lend each other travel money if one is going over.
If they STILL go over, there can be an extra $15K in a special travel fund that any of them can apply for.
AND, they each get an extra $2K for travel.
Flex budget
Double the Flex amount from $7.5K to $15K.
In other words: right now, a council member earns $24.9K a year, if they choose to take their flex pay as income. This would increase it to $32.4K.
…
The item was put on the consent agenda, which means, “Staff thinks this will sail through.” After all, they hammered out all the votes last time.
Jane said nope! and pulled it off the council agenda. She gives a speech about how none of this is needed, there’s plenty of money in the travel budget. And how we certainly shouldn’t be doing this mid-year.
Amanda agrees on the mid-year part. More responsible to start it with the next fiscal year. She makes that amendment: Delay this until next year’s budget?
The vote: Postpone changes until next year’s budget?
(This is when I first thought, “What the hell is happening? Was this whole thing a ploy to get some quick money?”)
Jane sees her chance and makes a motion to kill both the travel increase and flex spending increase.
On the flex spending, Amanda pleads, “But why?”
Amanda has been quite open about having to resign her state job to take this position, and the impossibility of surviving on $24.9K per year.
Jane: “We don’t need it. We already raised it in 2023.”
What she means is that before 2023, council members got $23.4K per year, if they took their flex money as pay. They gave themselves a raise of $1500 then.
Amanda: I agree on the travel. But on the living expense, who here – anyone? – can live on this little?”
Jane: “It’s not supposed to be a fulltime job.”
Amanda: “Fully agree. But we both know that it is actually a fulltime job.”
Jane: “For some people it is. Not everybody.”
Amanda: “Oh trust me, I understand that too. And I wish everybody shared full interest.”
Jane: “I do too.”
Amanda: “But again, please tell me, who can survive on this? Would anybody in this room?
<crickets>
Then conversation dies.
…
The key issues is this: Is being a councilmember a fulltime job? We pretend it isn’t, but in order to do it well, it definitely is.
If we pay poverty wages, then council members have three options:
Be independently wealthy or have someone who can support you.
Try not to neglect your council job as you juggle multiple jobs
Live in poverty
This is not how you get the best possible council members. This is how you get mostly wealthy and/or distracted council members.
…
But anyway, then they vote:
The vote: Should Councilmembers survive on $24.9K per year?
So yeah, no raise.
I’m so baffled. Two weeks ago, Shane and Lorenzo both thought it was reasonable to increase flex spending, and now they don’t? What the hell happened?
….
Then they vote to roll back the travel funds increase:
This one doesn’t bother me so much. There is plenty of travel money, if you allow people to donate funds to each other.
Bottom line: After all these meetings, everything is back where it started, aside from a special bonus travel fund.
Clearly I have no idea what happened, but it felt like petty bullshit, to be honest.
Statewide, the legislature is intentionally starving the school districts. This is not hyperbole. Abbott is hellbent force-feeding school vouchers down everyone’s throat. He’s denying funding to the public schools is a way of increasing the pressure on the state legislature to vote for his deal.
Funding hasn’t increased since 2019, but there have been several unfunded mandates that cost a lot. Plus inflation.
SMCISD is in a $9 million budget crisis. They’ve asked for the city for a stormwater waiver, which would save them about $350K.
Which brings us to today.
First there’s a presentation about the stormwater fund:
Immediately after San Marcos created the stormwater fund, Texas State University asked the State Legislature to grant them an exemption. They were the very first university in Texas to ask for one! What go-getters.
After that, all the other universities thought it was a pretty good idea.
Here’s the total list of state-wide exemptions:
So basically, empty lots, lakes, universities, and ….El Paso school district. Who knows.
…
The state law says that stormwater fees must be equitable. They go into a fair amount of detail about how we put ours together.
Basically, if we want to help out SMCISD, here are the four options:
Option 1 would cost a lot and open the door to other nonprofits asking for a waiver, too.
Option 2 would cost some, and open the door.
Option 3 might open us up to legal challenges of being non-equitable.
Option 4 is the one that Staff clearly favors. In fact, city staff and SMCISD staff have already met, and they’re both open to this.
Option 4 is about Mendez Elementary. Mendez is located in Sunset Acres, which has terrible flooding. The city wants to build a detention pond on Mendez property, to help with the flooding.
All the council members are on board with pursuing 4.
The only thing is that Mendez Elementary is being renovated. Until SMCISD knows the new footprint of the building, they can’t donate the land.
(Now, SMCISD has already submitted the Mendez plans to the city for permitting. So the city could literally go look right now at the Mendez plans. It’s not a mystery. We can see exactly how much space there might be for a drainage pond.)
…
There’s a long, weirdly circular conversation where Lorenzo and Amanda keep saying, “We should meet occasionally with the school board, just to stay informed on what we’re each up to.”
Jane keeps responding with, “It’s no use. Alyssa and I keep trying to think of a reason that all three entities – city, county, schools – should meet, and it’s very hard to think of issues that need attention from all three groups.”
Ok? That’s a different thing? That’s not what Amanda and Lorenzo are suggesting?
Anyway, they vote for 4.
…
Item 25: Redwood/Rancho Vista
Last time, we discussed this property, immediately north of Redwood and Rancho Vista:
We were trying to figure out if that industrial portion would make flooding worse in Redwood.
Redwood and Rancho Vista have severe septic and flooding issues, which leads to a parasite living in the soil. It’s a big health issue, and it usually only happens in developing countries. But the community is quite poor and vulnerable, so it’s happening here. Any solution is going to be very expensive.
Last time Council tried to have it both ways: “We’ll let this development through, but we promise to take action on Redwood.”
So tonight is that action: A strongly worded letter to Guadalupe County about how the septic issue and parasites is a public health and safety issue, which has been going on for years and years.
Jane suggests that we let them know about the Texas Water Development Board, which has a specific Economically Distressed Areas Program. Maybe Guadalupe County could get some money from there.
City Manager Stephanie Reyes mentions looping in SMCISD – after all, these families go to our schools and are part of our community.
So staff will draw something up, and it will come back.
My two cents: this is fine as a first step, but not as a last step.
For the past few years, the state has been strangling the school districts out of funds, in order to get legislatures to approve Abbott’s vouchers plan. In other words, back in 2019, we received $6,160 per student. It has not been raised since. With inflation alone, it should be $7,774.18 per student now. (And since Uvalde, there’s been a massive increase in unfunded, mandatory safety measures.)
SMCISD is looking at a $4-5 million budget shortfall.
The reason that funding has been frozen is that Abbott is holding the public schools hostage. He wants a school voucher program. He didn’t get it in 2023, and so public schools were punished.
Furthermore! (My god, I’m going to hyperventilate.) FURTHERMORE!
Here’s Abbott’s voucher proposal: Increase per student funding from $6160 to $6380 at public schools, while private schools get $10,000 per kid from the state, plus whatever additional tuition above that. Everybody got that? Private schools – schools that can turn away kids with disabilities, kids with trauma, kids with behavior problems, and any other kid requiring extra TLC – get a lot more money per student than public schools.
How much money will SMCISD lose if this passes? There’s a handy website here!
And what does it say?
Let’s be super clear: the villains in this whole story are Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and the state legislature.
…
Okay, so even before the vouchers scam passes, SMCISD is looking at a $4-5 million shortfall.
This is already going to make San Marcos kids lives harder. Teachers who love them to bits are going to lose their jobs. It’s very real and it’s very awful.
In this context, SMCISD spends $372K on stormwater drainage fees to the city every year. They’re asking for a waiver from the city.
What’s the city side of the equation?
The stormwater fund is $9 million. Stormwater money gets used on two things: big drainage projects and yearly maintenance. But the big projects are covered by debts, and so we’re obligated to keep making payments.
Giving SMCISD this waiver would cut yearly maintenance by 40%. Drains wouldn’t be inspected for clogs, ditches wouldn’t have debris removed, etc. Flooding would get worse.
Do other cities exempt ISDs from stormwater money?
Some do: Austin, San Antonio, and Round Rock all do. Some don’t: Seguin, New Braunfels, and Kyle all do not.
Remember how I said the state is the villain in this? They strike again! State buildings, federal buildings, schools, nonprofits: everyone pays stormwater fees, and your rate is based on how big your footprint is. More impervious cover means a higher stormwater fee.
But! There’s a specific state law that carves out public universities, and only public universities. So Texas State University has paved the top of San Marcos, and yet does not contribute towards the cost of the flooding, caused when it inevitably all rolls downhill.
(Sometimes I marvel at what this state could be like, if we weren’t constantly suffering from self-inflicted wounds. Stop voting for pricks, everyone.)(I am aware that readers of this site probably didn’t vote for Abbott.)
What does Council say?
First off, there’s no decision tonight. This is just testing the waters – would Council like to have a formal discussion next time?
Lorenzo: Can we look at a 2 year waiver instead of an indefinite waiver? And can we look at a middle option – some kind of discounted rate tier for SMCISD that’s outside of residential and commercial?
Alyssa: SMCISD fills big gaps in our service. They’re the ones that take care of Redwood, for example. Let’s consider this.
Matthew Mendoza: I’m angry on behalf of Sunset Acres. We’re trying to fix the drainage there, and SMCISD is holding it hostage.
Note: here’s my understanding of what Matthew means:
We came up with a semi-fast track solution to get it fixed. The fastest part of the solution hinges on enlarging a detention pond at Mendez Elementary.
The city made two offers SMCISD, in exchange for the easement – about $350K for the land, or a credit for stormwater fees. (Pretty similar to what they’re asking us for, now!)
SMCISD was interested and started to work with us. But then they realized they needed to renovate Mendez. Currently, they’re waiting on permits. Once they can see how big the footprint of the new Mendez will be, then they’ll come back and talk with us about the drainage pond.
So the “quick” solution to fix the flooding has now become yet another holding pattern, going on three years now. The neighborhood was already pessimistic about the city fixing anything, and this kind of thing makes it worse.
Amanda makes a few different points: – I would entertain two years, but definitely not in perpetuity. – The Texas Legislature is going to suck just as much in two years as they do now. I need to see what other cuts the school district is making, in order to balance its books on the other $4 million. – Lots of neighborhoods have lost faith in the city to fix their flooding problems. This money is for those projects. – If our rationale is that SMCISD covers gaps in our services, then this opens the door for every nonprofit to ask for a waiver as well. We need to be really careful with our precedents.
Jane: I don’t think we should even bring it back for discussion. But enough of you have said yes already. Definitely not just 2 years, because we’ll forget to enforce it.
So this will come back.
The most important thing to understand is that the state of Texas is the only villain here.
Flex money (you choose whether to take it as income or use it for expenses)
Right now, here’s what everyone gets:
So this is Shane Scott’s proposal, and he wants to double the travel and flex spending amounts.
Jane’s got amendments! “First,” she says, “We don’t need this. We’re not running out of travel funds. Some of us go over, some of us go under. We just need to lend each other our un-used amounts.”
Here’s what she means:
So $13,500 is the mayor last year, and $7,500 is each of the council members. (Jude is the $15K, because it includes his flex spending. He worked for the county, so he couldn’t accept a city paycheck.)
So you can see: some went over, some went under, but the total was $51,810, which was under budget.
Great! There’s no problem!
Here come the amendments
Jane Amendment 1: Keep the Flex money at $7,500, instead of doubling it to $15K.
The vote:
Keep at $7,500: Jane, Matthew, Saul Double to $15K: Alyssa, Shane, Lorenzo, Amanda
So this fails.
…
Jane Amendment 2: Keep the Travel money at $7,500, instead of doubling it to $15K.
The vote:
Keep at $7,500: Jane, Matthew, Saul, Amanda Double to $15K: Alyssa, Shane, Lorenzo
So this passes.
…
So now we’re looking at doubling the flex spending and leaving travel alone.
At this point, Alyssa balks at this piece-meal approach. She wants to go back and retract her yes vote for the Flex money, and instead double the Travel money.
There’s a lot of confusion around this. Flex money can be used for Travel, so why does it matter? There’s a lot of arguing about what’s easier, and whether the flexibility of Flex Money is too complicated. Ultimately there are not enough votes to reconsider the motion, so it stands.
…
Next: Shane amendment: Okay, just increase Travel money by $2K, then.
Keep at $7,500: Jane, Matthew, Saul Increase to $9,500: Alyssa, Shane, Lorenzo, Amanda
So this passes.
…
Jane amendment 3: If you want to borrow travel money from another councilmember, you have to get council approval at a meeting:
Yes: Amanda, Jane, Matthew No: Saul, Alyssa, Shane, Lorenzo
So this fails. Councilmembers can just lend each other money, and notify the finance committee accordingly.
…
Next: it turns out there’s a special travel fund that everyone’s forgotten about. It used to have $25K in it, for council members who went over budget. We let it drop during Covid, when no one was traveling, so now it has $5K in it.
Jane amendment 4: Increase the special travel fund to $15K, but you have to get council approval at a meeting.
Everyone is fine with this. The vote is 7-0.
…
The final vote on the whole thing:
Yes: Everyone but Matthew Mendoza No: Matthew Mendoza
So Council members will now get:
$17,400 paycheck
$15,000 flex spending
$9,500 travel and exspenses
I am fine with this. You want your council to be able to learn about governance and write good policy. They need time and resources to be good at their jobs.
(No one brought up an amendment about waiting for the next budget cycle. So it goes into effect mid-budget, immediately.)
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Item 23: Delinquent Apartment Complexses
This is actually great governance in action.
Generally speaking, if you don’t pay your utility bill, your water/electric/etc gets disconnected. But what if you live in an apartment complex, and you pay a flat rate to your landlord, and the landlord doesn’t pay the utility bill? Do we really want to disconnect the electricity on a bunch of renters who didn’t cause the problem?
No, we don’t! So let’s not do that.
Instead we’ll put a municipal utility lien on the property. So only the owner gets affected, and not the tenants.
Everyone likes this. 7-0.
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Finally there are some various appointments to various boards, and futzing with small rules to some boards and commissions.
This was a very, very long meeting, and there’s still a 3 hour workshop to go, so maybe let’s stop here.
1. Four separate bonds: everyone can vote for these. (Full details here.)
My opinion: vote yes on all 4.
The first is required by the state , and we have to pass it in order to not raise taxes. The next three are facilities that we need – lots of building repair, swimming pool, and stadium turf. The total tax cost is $0.01. In other words, if you have a $300K house, you’ll pay an extra $30 per year.
2. District 1: Jessica Cain vs Philip Muzzy.
Here’s District 1:
My opinion: vote Jessica Cain.
She’s is the progressive candidate. She seems really great. She’s a pastor, has kids in the district, and has been substitute teaching in the district to really understand it. (The other guy, Phillip Muzzy, is conservative/military background.)
3. District 5:Margie Villapondo vs Kevin Carswell.
Correction!! District 2 is the right district! Fixed the map:
My opinion: Vote Margie Villapondo
Margie Villapondo is the better candidate by far. She’s been on the board for decades, and the opponent is super-MAGA, I hear.
If you need a more detailed map of the school districts, go here.
Listen: school board elections have been decided by 15 votes or even 5 votes in recent years. Both of those elections hurt so much to lose. Please go vote, especially if you live in District 1 or District 2.
The San Marxist 