Item 14: the Strategic Plan
GUYS. Guys. This one is exciting.
Background
The budget process for 2026 has already started. Back in January, Council had a two day Visioning workshop. First they listen to about five hours of presentations. Then they spend about five hours updating the Strategic Plan from last year.
Usually it’s extremely dull, and filled with mundane wordsmithing. But this year, it was exciting! Really!
Let’s dive in.
The Strategic Goals
Here are the five goals:
Each one gets about 3-4 pages of outcomes. So we’ll take them one at a time.
Goal #1: Quality of Life & Sense of Place
Here are the most exciting changes in this category:
Part iii: The Tenant’s Bill of Rights! This is courtesy of the San Marcos Civics Club, who has been meeting monthly for the past year to focus on different issues. This is great work by them. They are promoting the National Tenant’s Bill of Rights as a model for what Council should adopt.
(I think this was Lorenzo’s contribution, but everyone was on board with it.)
…
Also from that photo, note Part i, “Update housing Data and Adopt the Strategic Housing Action Plan”.
Back in 2018-2019, we carried out a huge Housing Needs Assessment, and created a Strategic Housing Action Plan. And Council just deep-sixed it. Absolutely nothing came of it. For over five years!
In 2023, City Staff held a workshop on it and said, “Hey, you should really be thinking about housing! It’s super unaffordable here!”
Council:
*Except Alyssa.
It got put on last year’s Strategic Action Plan last year, and then ignored for all of 2024.
Until election season came around! Then all the candidates realized that everyone is super broke in San Marcos and can’t afford housing. Every single candidate for every council seat said housing was our biggest issue.
It seems like it really is going to happen this year, hopefully.
….
Also from this same section:
Alyssa has been promoting this for years, and Max promoted it back when he was on Council. So this is great to officially get it in the strategic plan.
From this link:
So it’s about giving the community more input on what we prioritize in the budget.
Goal #2: Economic Vitality:
Prioritizing the needs and well-being of workers in our economic development?!? This is catnip to my marxist heart.
(I think this came from Amanda.)
Goal #3: Public Safety, Core Services, and Fiscal Excellence.
GUYS. Guys. Literally squirming in my seat over here, I’m so excited. Look at this:
That one in the middle is huge. This will be an office that is aimed at crime prevention from a non-incarceration perspective. Dallas has a version of this called the Office of Integrated Public Safety Solutions, and Austin has a version called the Office of Violence Prevention.
Importantly, this will be housed outside of SMPD. What are the actual, evidence-based strategies that reduce crime? Here’s a big list. Things like access to jobs that pay a living wage, access to mental health and addiction treatment services, programs for kids and teens, connecting people with opportunities, etc.
(You know what doesn’t reduce crime? Locking people up. And it’s super expensive!)
This definitely came from Amanda.
(To be fair, Alyssa has brought this up before, but the council then was not interested in giving her ideas any oxygen.)
….
Also, on that same slide:
Also amazing! This is exactly what we discussed last time, when Council voted to postpone the vote on SMPD license plate readers until we could clearly state how we plan on protecting the privacy of the public.
(Also from Amanda.)
…
And further down:
Part B, iv: Making all the websites easy to use. This is very hard to do well. But at least we’re trying to get better.
Part C, iv. This is mostly about HSAB funding. We outsource most of our social services to local nonprofits, and we should probably double the amount that we’re giving out in grants.
(I can’t remember who contributed these. Everyone supports them.)
Hey Council: The budget for HSAB should grow automatically with inflation! You should consider an ordinance to make this happen! Please and thank you.
Goal #4: Mobility and Connectivity
Okay, several thoughts on this:
Section A, ii: What’s this Western Loop business?
Shane Scott wants to bring it back. This is an old topic.
There is a lot of traffic going out west towards Wimberley on RR 12. Right now it all feeds straight through town, on Wonderworld, to get to I-35. Should there be a northern loop that goes around San Marcos?
This was a big point of contention when the Transportation Master Plan was adopted in 2018. My memory is that the San Marcos River Foundation came out hard against it, because it will inevitably lead to development over the aquifer. If you put a road somewhere, it drives development along that road. If you drive development over the recharge zone, you’re going to get a filthy brown river eventually, instead of a sparkly clean river.
I thought it got voted down. But you can see it here, on the thoroughfare plan:
I believe it’s that yellow loop around town.
Jane Hughson also seems to think it got nixed back then.
Shane Scott wants to resurrect the issue, and he pictures it being an overhead highway, kind of like the Wonderworld overpass.
I have a lot of questions!
- Do the environmentalists still approve of the deal cut on the wonderworld overpass? Or do they have reservations about reproducing another deal like that?
- How much would it cost to make a zooming overhead line like that, on a much longer stretch?
- Who stands to profit from this? What are the various interests?
Anyway, the Transportation Master Plan is coming back around, so we’ll see this again.
…
Section A, iii: Alyssa Garza is interested in on-demand services until we get a better bus system. What’s this?
So, Kyle has a 3.14 program. Any uber ride in the city costs $3.14, and the city pays for the rest. Is this something we should do, at least until we get a better bus system?
I’m a little uneasy about a program like this! I found this, which seems sensible:
So it’s more expensive, and we don’t want to sabotage progress on developing a functional bus system. At the same time, maybe we can use it for high-needs community members as a temporary stop-gap.
( Also, Uber is super-shitty on worker rights, and lobbies aggressively against laws providing benefits and minimum wage to workers in the gig economy, so I kinda hate them.)
…
Goal #5: Environmental Protection
Two additions:
No issues with either of those!
…
There isn’t a bullet point about fencing off the rivers. But they did talk about it in the presentations:
Basically we’ve hired someone to do a feasibility study on fencing the parks. There’s no way it will be fenced off by this summer, though.
…
Which brings us to last Tuesday!
Amanda offers up one amendment: Remember the Transportation Equity Cabinet presentation last time? Let’s include their recommendations into Transportation and Traffic Operations.
Her amendment: “Implement Recommendations from the San Marcos Transportation Equity Cabinet.”
Jane: Weren’t we going to workshop the recommendations?
City Manager Stephanie Reyes diplomatically says that Council supported putting the suggestions in both the Transit and Transportation Master Plans.
Jane: Without further inspection?
Stephanie: Council seemed pretty amenable, yeah.
Amanda: In fact, one of the questions I posed when it was under discussion was what the next steps were to be taken, if all of us agreed. We all said we agreed.
The vote on Amanda’s amendment:
Everyone likes it!
Finally, the vote on the entire strategic plan:
Everyone likes it. INCLUDING ME!!
(Read the whole draft here, if you’re so inclined.)
…
There are a few other items:
- Council appointed a Comp Plan Oversight Committee
- There’s a bond process for various construction projects around town
- There are more committee and board appointments
but this meeting is super long, and we still have the workshops to go. So I’m skipping these.
The San Marxist 