Tag: VisionSMTX

Cheat Sheet for VisionSMTX Survey

by The San Marxist, posted in Explainer

VisionSMTX Survey can be found here. Survey is open until Friday, February 23rd.

CHEAT SHEET OPTION 1: The 30-second version:
1. Go here.
2. Click the blue circle on the left that says “Vision SMTX Poll”
3. Select “Original Draft Plan” and submit.

CHEAT SHEET OPTIONS 2 and 3: The 5-minute version and 30-minute version

Should you trust me?  Only if you agree with me! Here’s my basic position:

  1. I do not like economic segregation.  Most of the P&Z edits were made to ensure that the only people who live in quiet, residential neighborhoods are people who can afford to rent or own an entire house.  I would like small-scale rentals in quiet neighborhoods. The best ways to do this are with Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) and little 2, 3, or 4-plexes. You can make them look like houses, even! 
  1. I do not like traffic and pollution.  People drive less if there are stores and amenities within easy walking or biking distance. Everyone on the east side of 35 has been asking for more commerce for YEARS and YEARS. 

    A small neighborhood grocery store and restaurant doesn’t fit in the 1980s Suburbs Dream, but can’t we move past that? Wouldn’t it be nice to easily pick up a pack of diapers or some dog food?
  1. I do not like sprawl.  The changes above – small-scale rentals and nearby commerce – are both examples of “gentle densification”.  The Historic district is the best example of what the goal is. 

    Sprawl makes for higher taxes, because the city has to cover a very large footprint with utilities, SMPD, and firefighters. Sprawl is expensive and unsustainable. Gentle densification is a sustainable solution.

CHEAT SHEET OPTION 2: the quick version, the biggest topics

1. Go here.
2. Click the blue circle on the left that says “Vision SMTX Poll”
3. Select “Original Draft Plan”
4. In the first comment box, cut and paste the following recommended language:

Topic: Commerce and amenities close to residences (complete communities)

Recommended language: “Please change items #13, 14, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27, 34, 39, 40, 61, 64, 69, 72, 74, and 79 to reflect my preference for having commerce and amenities within walking distance of where people live.”

Topic: Small-scale rentals in quiet neighborhoods

Recommended language: “Please change items #8, 9, 16, 17, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 38A, 38B, 66, 72, 74, 79, 81, 87, and 88 to reflect my preference for having compatible, small-scale rentals available in quiet, single family neighborhoods.”

5. Then finish and submit.

CHEAT SHEET OPTION 3:  the long version, going item by item. 

The two topics above are by far the biggest topics. However, there are a bunch of topics that come up on 1-2 items:

  • Environment
  • Sprawl/Traffic 
  • Tenants rights
  • Equitable growth
  • Biking and trails
  • Housing shortage
  • Walkability
  • Layout of city

Below, I’ve organized the individual items by topic. I started with the smaller topics, and then put all the items from Commerce and amenities close to residences (complete communities) and Small-scale rentals in quiet neighborhoods at the end.

Feel free to cut and paste any of these, as much as you want!

Environment

Item 6:  Yes on adopting a dark skies ordinance. This change is good.

Item 19: Yes on language protecting water quality and preserving recharge of groundwater, and protecting environmentally sensitive areas.  This change is good.

Item 47:  Yes on language about how parking structures allow for less horizontal surface space dedicated to surface parking. Please include “Explore other ways to reduce the horizontal surface space dedicated to surface parking.”

Sprawl/Traffic

Item 20: Remove “vehicle trip” from first bullet point about 15-minute travel time

Item 45: Revert to original. Put language back in about the drawbacks of existing mixed use low areas.

Item 56: Restore 2nd sentence, about how San Marcos would have housing demands outpacing employment growth under the alternative scenario.

Item 78: Yes on the new language, giving the impact of sprawl on police response times and travel times.

Item 91: Restore definition of Transit Oriented Development

Item 92: Restore definition of Transit Supportive Development

Tenants rights

Item 10: Yes on initiatives to promote programs and provide education on tenant rights and responsibilities. 

Equitable growth

Item 21: Put “equitable” back in the sentence where it was removed. (“Provide access to parks” back to “Provide equitable access to parks…”)

Item 27: Restore sentence about the problems of incomplete communities.

Item 28: Restore the clause “and promote a more equitable distribution of mixed use places”

Item 80: This definition is terrible. It uses the word “equitable” but whoever wrote it is not clear on what “equitable” means. Specifically, this definition implies that the goal for equitable growth is to treat everyone equally.  This should be scrapped, and the original definition of “equitable” from Item 82 should be restored.

Item 82: Restore the definition of “equitable”.

Biking and trails

Item 21: Restore the phrase “and to encourage active transportation” to the first sentence.

Housing shortage

Item 58: Restore the 2nd sentence, about how higher intensity areas will accommodate a lot of housing and employment needs.

Walkability

Item 20: Remove “vehicle trip” from first bullet point about 15-minute travel time

Item 59: Restore first sentence, about ensuring a high level of walkability with places to walk near most residences.

Layout of city

Item 62: Restore map images – they are helpful for at least some of us. 

Item 93: Yes on edits – keep Guadalupe and LBJ as 1-way streets.

The two big topics:

Topic: Commerce and amenities close to residences (complete communities)

  Item 13: Revert to original, stronger language.

Item 14: Change “Consider” back to “Allow”.

Item 20: Remove “vehicle trip” from first bullet point about 15-minute travel time

Item 23: Restore “investments and” to the first sentence. Restore the last sentence about complete places and communities.

Item  24: Restore two sentences.  

Item  26: Restore first and second sentences to the original. (Edits to 4th sentence are fine.)

Item  27: Restore description of incomplete communities.

Item  34: Restore “To achieve the goal of truly Complete Communities, …” 

Item  39: Restore description of Neighbohood Medium Place Type. I don’t see anywhere else with a description this useful.

Item 40: Restore ADUs to Primary Land Use.

Item 59: Restore first sentence, about ensuring a high level of walkability with places to walk near most residences.

Item  61: Restore the deleted clause about complete communities.

Item  64:  Restore “and residential”, “that are walkable”,  “in or”, and “They should be concentrated to small geographies and distributed throughout the city”.

Item  69:  Restore the last deleted clause, “that will contribute to creating more complete communities throughout San Marcos”.

Item  72: Restore the bullet about implementing VisionSMTX goals and policies on a neighborhood scale. Allowing neighborhood plans to shut down city goals can cause NIMBY collective-action problems.

Item  74: Restore the original final sentence on Area Plans.

Item  79: This is a useful definition to include, but there is no definition of 15-minute cities in this table.  Include a conventional definition of 15-minute cities, using walking or biking but not vehicles.

Small-scale rentals in quiet neighborhoods

Item 8: Revert 2nd, 3rd, and 4th paragraphs back to original form.

Item 9: Re-included HN 2.2, and restore original language for HN 2.3 and HN 2.4.

Item 16: Keep “and incentivize” and “to accessory dwelling units”. (The edit adding “micro homes” is fine.) Delete the last sentence – I do not want neighborhoods to be able to prevent affordable small-scale housing options from being located in them.

Item 17: The new sentence will be fine if the following language is included: “but this shall not be interpreted to infringe on whether compatible infill can be subdivided into smaller, more affordable units.”

Item  33: Re-include sentence about small scale multiplex and ADUs.

Item 35: the short descriptions are fine, but should not replace the more meaningful descriptions of place types in items 38,38A, 38B, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 49, 51, and 53. Please restore originals in those items. 

Item 36: Area Plans and Neighborhood Character Studies should not be allowed to prevent affordable small-scale housing options from being located in them.  Large-scale, yes.  Requiring a compatible exterior is also fine.  But not effectively prohibiting them altogether.

Item 37: Graphics for Nbd Low-Existing should include ADUs and small-scale rentals, of the kind of example that exists in the Historic District currently.

Item 38: Include ADUs and small-scale multifamily in Neighborhood Low-Existing. 

Item 38A: The deleted paragraph for the old Nbd-Low should be used for Nbd-Low-Existing. The new writing in 38A should be deleted. Small multiplexes should be included under secondary land uses.

Item 38B: Since this is just for new neighborhoods, please be more assertive with what we would like developers to build. Suggested language to insert: “San Marcos recognizes the damage caused by single-family sprawl.  New residential neighborhoods should not be homogenous single-family products.  Developers should include gentle densification and economic integration by including small scale rental options intermixed with traditional homes. Commerce should also be planned within a 15-minute walk or bike from homes.” 

Item  66: Delete this sentence. Instead include, “The single-family nature of traditional neighborhoods was designed to exclude based on race and/or wealth. Renters should have opportunities to live and raise children in quiet neighborhoods. Small-scale rentals can add opportunities for affordable housing, while preserving the quiet nature of traditional single-family neighborhoods.” 

Item  72: Restore the bullet about implementing VisionSMTX goals and policies on a neighborhood scale. I do not want neighborhoods to be able to prevent affordable small-scale housing options from being located in them.  Allowing neighborhood plans to shut down city goals can cause NIMBY collective-action problems.

Item  74: Restore the original final sentence on Area Plans.

Item  81: Restore the definition of Cottage Cluster.  These are great affordable options for renters, especially with children.

Item  87: Restore definition of Middle Density

Item  88: Restore definition of Missing Middle Housing

Hours 0:52 – 1:43, 1/16/24

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 13: VisionSMTX

Quick recap:

We’re now three years deep in writing the Comprehensive Plan, or VisionSMTX. (Discussed here, here, here, here, and here.)
– Years 1-2: a 30 person citizen group meets and a draft is written.
– Year 3: A subcommittee from P&Z guts a lot of the important details meant to address suburban sprawl and unaffordable housing. P&Z passed the gutted version.

Council was about to pass P&Z’s version, and then decided to pause and solicit community input.

So how will council go about getting community input?

Basically, a massive outreach campaign. City staff is going to carpet bomb the city with fliers and emails.  They’re going to put a little insert in with your utility bills.  They’re going to wash social media in links.  They’re going all out.  

You’ll be able to:

  • Fill out a survey on paper, or
  • Fill it out online, or
  • Leave comments directly on the Summary of Changes table, for other people to read.

The survey opens February 2nd and closes February 23rd.  

The problem is that the actual document is long and boring, and the details are fiddly.  The summary table is 22 pages long! So it’s going to be hard to get people to wade into it.

Here is my plan: I’m going to try to provide a cheat sheet. If you care about the same things I care about, I’ll have some language that anyone can borrow, to make it easier to fill out the survey. 

What did Council think? 

Jane Hughson starts, “A common complaint is that this is all about protecting rich neighborhoods.  But this is about protecting all neighborhoods!  Not just the wealthy ones!”

That is not my complaint.  Sure, yes: the changes apply to all the neighborhoods.  My complaint is that “protecting all neighborhoods” means locking in sprawl and preventing renters from living in quiet neighborhoods. 

There is some bickering over the third survey option, where you’ll be able to write comments directly on the Summary Table.  Should comments have a “reply” feature, so that people can go back and forth in a single thread?

Jane and Mark say no.  It will disintegrate into fighting, and intimidate people who might not comment out of fear of having their comments shredded.  Plus, anyone can leave a new comment and respond to another comment – it just wouldn’t be a “reply” feature on a comment.

Alyssa feels strongly that we should be able to.  Adults aren’t kids and you don’t need to be coddling them.  Classrooms use this kind of thing all the time.  If people can’t handle this level of discourse, they should go to therapy.

Matthew Mendoza says that he’s okay with a little back and forth.  

So it’s tied 2-2.  Jane says, “Saul, you’re the tie-breaker. What do you want to do?”

Saul says, “I’ll go with the majority.”

Jane: [Eyes bug out.]

Saul: Ok, just comments. No back and forth.  

In Saul’s defense, he seems to be feeling really under the weather. Later, when asked for his opinion, he just weakly says, “I took some Advil…”

I’m with Jane, Mark and Saul here: classrooms are heavily moderated by the instructor.  Unmoderated spaces deteriorate fast. I personally would not wade into a situation if it felt like a cesspool to me.

…

Q&A with the Press and Public:

LMC asks about the Gateway signs. How much did we pay the consultants? How much staff time? How much will the signs cost?

Answer: The consultants were $63K.
The signs will cost $200-250K.
It takes staff about 1-2 hours per week.

…

That was the whole meeting! It was short and sweet.

Hours 1:20-2:37, 12/19/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Item 4: ”Citizen Comment” vs. “Community Perspectives”

Shane pulled this item from the Consent Agenda. 

Backstory

Mayor Hughson decided to clean up the city ordinances on committee meetings. She flagged a bunch of things that were inconsistent or unclear. One thing she noticed is that “Citizen Comment” is a terrible phrase, because you don’t actually have to be a citizen in order to comment. It sends a bad message.

We’ve discussed this here and here. Jane suggested “Community Perspectives” and in the past two months, no one ever protested it.

Here we go:

Shane says that he doesn’t like “Community Perspectives” because it implies that each speaker represents the entire community, instead of their own individual opinion.

Look, clearly “Community Perspectives” is a bit dippy. It sounds like a church bulletin board. But Shane’s complaint is also silly. No one is going to think that some rando speaker is supposed to represent everyone in town. It’s not “Community Spokesperson.”  

Jane, wearily: We’ve talked about this on a bunch of occasions.

Shane: I’ll just vote against it.

Jane: The entire list of all the changes?!

Shane: No, just this one. 

Jane: You can’t just vote against one.

Shane: Oh right. 

So Shane makes a motion: Keep it “Citizen Comment” after all. Alyssa seconds it.

Saul: I’m fine the way it is. Citizen Comment.

Matthew: I don’t care either way.

Jane: Honestly, I was concerned about changing it, because it’s been called “Citizen Comment” for years. Everyone is used to that. But I just don’t want anyone to feel excluded.

Alyssa: I appreciate that. But maybe we can just say something on the website.

Mark: I’m on the fence. Everyone knows it as Citizen Comment. 

The vote to amend:

Keep calling it Citizen Comment: All seven councilmembers

Change to Community Perspectives: no one.

On a scale of 1-10 of importance, this is maybe a 2. Nevertheless, they got it wrong! “Citizen Comment” is bad because “citizen” is exclusive. Jane is exactly right here. 

Off the top of my head, they could have gone with:
– Community Comment
– Open Comment
– Civic Comment
– Citizens-and-Not-Citizens Comment (okay, now I’m getting punchy)

I know they’re worried that changing the name would up-end years of familiarity. But that’s tunnel vision from being in the center of the action for too long.  Most of San Marcos is not paying any attention to City Council at all! Those who know the phrase “Citizen Comment” are not emotionally attached to it. You can switch to “Open Comment” and we’ll all be okay.

They didn’t want to go with “Public Comment” because it sounds very similar to “Public Hearing,” which is a specific different thing. 

Oh well!

The vote on all the little changes that Jane proposed:

Yes: Everyone.
No: No one.

….

Item 21:  Gary Softball Sports Complex is getting renovated.

We’re spending $1,238,000.22 on the following:

  • Roadway, drainage, parking, water/wastewater improvements.
  • Parts of the fields are 20+ years old

There were no slides or pictures for me to nab for you.

….

Item 23: Human Services Advisory Board (HSAB) Funding Policy

We’re going to spend some time on this item, because it drove me batty.

Backstory

Earlier in December, we allocated $650K in grant money to local nonprofits. There were 34 applications. Each nonprofit got between $5K and $34K, except for the Hays-Caldwell Women’s Shelter and the Hays County Food Bank, which got $50K and $80K respectively.

I griped last time that Council makes these nonprofits jump through a lot of hoops, while we just hand out other money seamlessly and invisibly. 

Guys. guys. We are about to get SO MUCH MORE micromanaging of this whole mess. We are going to nitpick this thing to death.

The current issue

Recall that the HSAB committee assigned points according to this rubric:

Jane is mad about Council Priorities being neglected. It’s only 15 points! Nevermind that people with nonprofit experience developed priorities 1-4, and that Council Priorities are somewhat redundant.

Here are the things that Jane’s mad about:

  • It’s not punitive enough if performance reports are late.
  • The Council priorities should add up to 25 or more points!
  • We want to know where the board members live. Do they live in San Marcos? Do they live in Kyle? In Austin?
  • They should spell out all acronyms. No unclear abbreviations. (I acknowledge this one. They really should.)

Complaint #1: Those Pesky Performance Reports:

Because last year was so weird, the money wasn’t approved until March. So the whole calendar was up-ended. The nonprofits were supposed to turn in mid-year reports when they re-applied for new funding in August. One nonprofit was late by one day, due to turnover in staffing. One other nonprofit was later, but ended up withdrawing altogether. 

So there is not really a problem here: nearly everyone turned in their mid-year reports on time. Final reports will be due at the end of January.

First off, everyone seemed really confused about the calendar. It is legitimately confusing, because it was never spelled out clearly up front.

Here’s the normal situation:

A funding cycle is three years:

Year A: You apply and get your money. (Applications are due in August, money awarded in December.)
Year B: You spend your money. (It’s a calendar year, Jan-December)
Year C: You turn in your final report. (It’s due by January 31st)

If you are re-applying for funding, you’d apply again in Year B. So your final report from the previous cycle isn’t available yet, because you’re still spending that money.

Jane is acting like it’s a two year cycle, and that it’s just incompetence that keeps nonprofits from having their final report on time. The staff member gently tried to explain, but Jane kept misinterpreting the explanation. (Jane kept acting like the issue was nonprofits that skipped an application cycle, and she’s say things like “If they didn’t apply for a year, then they should just turn in the most recent report.”)

Alyssa: Working for a nonprofit, you are constantly dealing with so many grants, and this is a small amount of money. These are good people, overworked on a shoestring budget, and we’re offering them 50¢. Can’t we have just have grace for our neighbors? Let them work it out on a case-by-case basis with staff?

I’m going to skip about 20 minutes of haggling between councilmembers, but suffice it to say: No. We cannot have grace for our neighbors. Matthew Mendoza is the biggest hard-ass of all, harping on how everything needs to be promptly on time, no exceptions. 

Jane: How about this: the report is due in August. We’ll accept late reports, as long as the final report is in before the committee needs to consider applications. 

The staff member tries to explain again: this year, only half-year reports were due Oct 15th. The Board considers applications in November. So the nonprofits really can’t get final reports in by decision time. They can submit final reports eventually though. 

Jane: We’re going to need to see the final report!

Answer: The final reports are due January 31st. So they could easily submit that for the following cycle, in August?

Jane: Yes. Have them print it out again.Thank you.

Bottom line: if you’re funded in Year A, you’ll submit that report two years later, when you re-apply for funding August of Year C. No one could possibly be late with their final report, because it was due seven months earlier, in January.

Alyssa, “This is really insulting, because it’s not actually a problem. Bigger granting agencies handle extenuating circumstances with grace all the time. We’re the ones treating nonprofits like they can’t handle being professional.”

Alyssa is right. The whole tone of this conversation is that nonprofits are naughty wayward children, and if they carry on, they shan’t have any figgy pudding. 

Such naughty, naughty non-profits.

Complaint #2: Council priorities should add up to more points!

We’re talking about this slide again. Jane suggests that the points allocated should be:

2 years San Marcos Service (5 points 10 points)
Office in San Marcos (5 points 10 points)
Funding creates increase in service (5 points)

Everyone nods compliantly. 

Alyssa:  What’s the rationale behind increasing the first two and leaving the third the same?

Jane: No reason! We could do 10/10/10, make it 30 total!  

This is exactly how haphazard this all is. She’s not actually making a claim about the relative merits of the bullet points. Council just felt neglected, since their priorities were only worth 15 points. (I think they settled on 10/10/10.)

Complaints #s…: Other Things

  • Jane would like to know which cities the board members live in. She doesn’t need to know their address, but she is interested to know if they live in San Marcos, or Kyle, or Austin, or what.
  • Jane wants to require them to spell out acronyms. (One application didn’t.) 

No one objects to these two criterion, although I assume Alyssa rolled her eyes. I mean, it’s good manners to spell out your acronyms, but I wouldn’t make it a rule.

Matthew: Can we ask them what percentage this grant is of their total budget? 
Answer: We already know this, based on the information provided.

Jane: Could they could have a coversheet that divided the applications, with the organization’s name and their San Marcos address with their requested amount?
Answer: no problem.

(I actually find this one quite reasonable. It’s just about improving the readability of the applications. And staff can implement this without inconveniencing the nonprofits.)

Jane: Will Council be able to review and vote on the final draft of the application and rules?
Answer: No problem.

Alyssa has one final comment. “Can we see this level of accountability and reports when we talk about the police department, or the fire department, or public works? We give the police $322 per resident. We give the fire department $218 per resident. And we give public works $141 per resident. Yet we are wasting all of this time over the HSAB board, which works out to… $7 per resident. Can we carry this energy when we talk about budgets in general?”

Jane responds: That’s different. Those are all city departments with department heads that report to us.

Let’s analyze this last bit. Who gets micromanaged, and who doesn’t?

  • It is true that micromanaging city departments is different than micromanaging contracts and grants to external groups. 
  • However, all of those departments have many external contracts that run between $5K and $35K, and those contracts do not get scrutinized by council. We just trust the department.

In fact, immediately before this item, we approved a contract for $1 million, for improvements at Gary Softball Complex. We did not check whether the contractor was a local company. (They are not local.) We did not ask the private company to explain what all the acronyms meant! We did not second-guess how council priorities were weighted in the selection criteria. We just voted yes, because we trusted the city staff that recommended the construction agency.

Furthermore, there are at least two Very Special Nonprofits that the city negotiates with directly.
1. The Greater San Marcos Partnership, or GSMP.

Back in 2021, we signed a three year contract with them for $400,000 each year. They get $1.2 million dollars! Isn’t that something. 

GSMP has to submit a yearly report card. The last – and only! – time they gave an update to City Council was back in May 2022. I can’t find any yearly report cards on on the San Marcos website, so transparency is nonexistent there. From the GSMP website, here’s their yearly report from 2022. It reads more like a promotional brochure than a detailed report, though. Is that the same as a yearly report card? I have no idea!

Things no one on Council cared about:

  • Where the board members live. Do the GSMP board members live in Wimberly? In Austin? Who knows. Because no one cares.
  • The exact date that the report was submitted, or whether yearly reports are happening at all. City Council has not hyperventilated about this yet.
  • Whether all the acronyms were spelled out precisely. In fact, there are a lot of abbreviations!
  • What percent the San Marcos money is of their total budgets.

What a funny thing, right? (I actually wrote about the contract with GSMP here, but I was a newbie blogger and was still trying to get the hang of it.)

2. San Marcos Chamber of Commerce

We give the Chamber of Commerce $28K/year. They get two automatic yearly renewals. We got some details because we gave them more money this past fall, reallocated from Covid money.

There has not been any discussion that I can see about this money since a work session in 2020. I did not watch the work session, but the powerpoint slides are very vague and uninformative. 

Here’s the thing: I don’t think we should micromanage GSMP or Chamber of Commerce, either! We could have a philosophical conversation about how they benefit the community, but I think they basically do what they say they’re doing. (I’m not opposed to the idea supporting small, locally owned businesses. We can quibble about dollar amounts some other time.)

The point is that we treat these groups like professional adults. If they’re late, we pick up the phone and give them a call. If there’s a confusing acronym, we shoot them an email. We don’t act like a grumpy school principal who posts an additional rule on the bulletin board every time someone misbehaves.

Finally: it helps small locally-owned businesses if we lift people out of poverty. Middle class people can eat out downtown more than poor people can! Supporting the most vulnerable members of our community is actually best for everyone.

…

Item 24: Should we postpone VisionSMTX?

Right now, VisionSMTX is supposed to come around on January 16th for a final vote. In the meantime, a subcommittee had been meeting, and they’re recommending that we do more community outreach.

There’s a brief discussion, and Jane checks with everyone informally. It’s really hard to hear who is a “yes” and who is a “no”, but I think this is how it goes:

Check-in on January 16th, but not the final vote: Everyone except Matthew Mendoza
Final vote should be Jan 16th: Matthew Mendoza

I’m not sure what Matthew is hung up on. He clearly has some strong opinions about this process, but didn’t quite say what’s bugging him.

Hours 0:00 – 1:39, 11/6/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Uncategorized

Citizen Comment: 

VisionSMTX++ is supposed to be approved tonight. The public has opinions:

  • Go back to the original. The new version constrains the housing market, forces sprawl, and jacks up prices!
  • Keep the new version! We love sprawl and jacked up housing prices.
  • Renters need protection!
  • We live in a cottage court. Stop pretending these don’t exist in existing neighborhoods.

Downtown Area Plan is also supposed to be approved tonight.

  • Protect the river!
  • Protect against flooding!
  • Too much asphalt!
  • We’re going to become Baltimore!
  • The water table is very shallow under CM Allen. And there are a bunch of endangered species in the river here.
  • If you plan for development, you can specify environmental improvements you want. If you plan for parks, you’ll get stuck with the land owner’s choices when they develop it anyway.

…

But before we get to all that, we have a zoning case.

Items 8-9: This is an 18-acre patch at the corner of 123 and Wonderworld:

It’s right behind this little strip:

It sounds like they want to put a little retirement village there. 

Saul Gonzales definitely had something on his mind, but I couldn’t figure out what.  Here’s how the conversation goes: 

First, Saul asks about the cost and tax revenue of the future plot.

Staff answers:
1. the cost to the city is $0! They’re responsible for any extensions of water, sewer, and electricity. 
2. We can’t know the tax revenue until it’s built!

This is not a good answer. It evades what Saul is getting at.   What Saul wants to know is, “Will this help or hurt the budget, in the future after it’s built?”  Right now the costs are extensions of water, sewer, and electricity, but once it’s built, there will be ongoing services, namely police and firefighters.  

Here’s my guess at the real answer: 
1. Cost: This will not require much from future city budgets. We’re already providing police and fire department coverage to things that are further out than this development – this is infill.
2. Revenue: Since this will be apartments, it should bring in more tax revenue than we spend on it.

So my expectation is that this will be good for the budget. 

Next, Saul asks about flooding. He’s told that it’s not in a flood plain, they’ll do an environmental analysis, and everything looks fine.

The Vote:
Yes: Everyone but Saul
No: Saul

Clearly the answers that Saul got didn’t resolve whatever he’s worried about. So either:

  1. He doesn’t believe the answers, in which case I’m interested to know why.
  2. There’s another reason he’s voting against it, in which case I’m interested to know why.

Just for funsies, let’s apply 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?

Per Saul’s questions, I’m guessing that it will pay for itself, yes.

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?

As always, we need a regularly updated housing report. It sounds like the city has picked back up on the one they dropped in 2019, so maybe this will materialize?

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 in a flood zone. Not environmentally sensitive. It’s supposed to be one-story apartments for seniors, which doesn’t sound like sprawl.

Social: Is it meaningfully mixed income? Is it near existing SMCISD schools and amenities?

No idea on the mixed income part. Potentially it’s near some future retail, but currently not much.

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?

It never is.

But on the whole, it’s more good than bad, in my opinion.

….

After items 8 and 9, we doubled back to Items 1, 2, and 5. These were pulled off the consent agenda for discussion.

Item 1: VisionSMTX++

Your two-second summary:
Original community plan: weakly opposed to sprawl and jacked up housing costs.
P&Z rewrite: we LOVE sprawl and jacked up housing costs!

Read all about it here, here, here, and here.

The Final Approval:

Immediately Alyssa Garza moves to postpone. 

Alyssa: Too many people are expressing frustration with the process.  She’s gotten a flood of feedback in the past two days.  There are too many barriers for people to engage.

Saul agrees: he’s getting input, more time won’t hurt. 

Jude says he doesn’t want to postpone.  He thinks just a few tweaks are needed to get it done.  He’s got some amendments proposed for some of the missing middle stuff: cottage courts, multiplexes, etc.  

I would be very interested to know what these amendments were going to be! But legally, they can only discuss the postponement. Since there’s a motion to postpone, you can’t discuss amendments to the actual plan.

Eventually they settle on January 16th, with a committee to discuss the matter.  The committee will be Shane Scott, Alyssa Garza, and Matthew Mendoza. 

The vote to postpone to January: 6-0.   (Mark Gleason is absent.)  

My $0.02:

  1. Yes, the procedure was total garbage. The P&Z-plus-Jane subcommittee rewrote a document that had reflected the input from the town.
  2. But also, the new content is total garbage. It’s not just a problem of procedure. The subcommittee inserted a ton of NIMBYism that made the comprehensive plan worse.  

Yes, I would like us to fix the procedure and solicit a bunch more input from the community. But I’m nervous about it all being performative. If nothing actually changes in the comprehensive plan, then we’re just playing a game called Let’s All Perform Community Input. If the garbage content stays, then this was an empty exercise.

Item 2: The Downtown Plan

Your two-second summary: (Discussed previously here and here.)
There are four properties along CM Allen.

Right now they’re owned by private citizens who can do whatever they want. But would we really like those to be parks, instead?

Options 1, 2, and 3:

This choice sort of landed like a bomb out of nowhere, and conversation has been intense and emotional.

The Final Approval:

Everyone wants to postpone this, as well.  Clearly the community is all worked up over Options 1, 2, and 3.  This whole thing unfolded in just one month, unlike VisionSMTX++, which has taken three years, so everyone feels panicked and rushed to weigh in. Taking a beat is a good idea.

  • Jude wants to nail down specific environmental benefits to Option 3.
  • Jane wants us to land somewhere between Options 2 and 3.

Staff comes forward with a proposal to break off the CM Allen district from the rest of the downtown plan, and pass the remaining bit.  Everyone is glad about this, and it passes 6-0.

So what’s next?

The CM Allen District will then become its own area plan, possibly combined with the rest of the riverfront properties along CM Allen to make a River District. But there are six area plans queued up ahead of it, so it’s not going to happen for another year or two.

Hours 0:00 – 1:58, 10/17/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

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:

  1. 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:

  1. Who is this leaving behind?
  2. 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.)

Hours 3:19-4:07, 9/19/23

by The San Marxist, posted in Hour summaries

Rally the troops. We’ve got to keep going. This meeting is just so densely packed with important information.

Next up:

Item 19: VISION SMTX.  

We’ve talked about Vision SMTX a lot.  It’s the new comprehensive plan. (What is a comprehensive plan? It’s the vague, conceptual plan for how we want San Marcos to grow over the next 30 years.) 

Quick background:
There was a 30 member citizen committee that met with a consultant over two years and came up with a plan. Then P&Z looked at it and said “fuck no!” Mayor Hughson and three P&Z members rewrote large parts of it, and that’s basically what’s before council now.

It now comes up three times before council:
– This current meeting: informational, with public comment
– First vote on October 17th, where the public can give feedback again
– Final vote on November 6th , (with no public comment)

Comments from the community:

  • we should tax businesses instead of giving them tax breaks
  • “Low Intensity” shouldn’t allow for heavy industrial. (In other words, SMART Terminal should never have been taken up for consideration out in a bunch of cow fields.)

Some philosophical ramblings

The comp plan does not end single-family zoning. San Marcos is not wading into that debate. But it’s simmering in the background.

The problem with single family zoning is that it’s very sparse. That means you’re building a lot of roads and utility pipes and lines, and increasing coverage of fire and police, without covering many people. That’s all very expensive to maintain over time. Single family zoning does not bring in enough money to pay for itself. If you live in a house, you are subsidized by apartments and businesses. In most cities, 70% of the land is zoned single-family.

Why has our city budget swollen to $315 million dollars? Because San Marcos has to run services Whisper Tract up north, Trace down south, La Cima out west, and Riverbend Ranch out east. All sprawl.

On top of that, we pretend there are only two ways to live:
1. sprawling single family neighborhoods, or
2. gigantic apartment complexes.

That’s it! Only two choices! Sorry! But that’s just super not true. The idea is to allow slow, incremental change, where now and then you can put a small four-plex on a single lot. It still feels like a neighborhood, but there’s housing for people who don’t need 3+ bedrooms in a house.

(In fact, it would feel like the goddamn Historic District, which was built before single family zoning was a thing, and now weeps piteously about it’s own demise any time you try to discuss any other neighborhood in the city.)

Then you can spread the tax burden across more units per acre, without driving up costs for the city. This actually reduces taxes!

Listen, council just spent THREE HOURS talking about the budget. The community seems to care a LOT about property taxes.

You want to know why the city struggles to balance it’s budget? Single family zoning.  You want to know why traffic keeps getting worse? Single family zoning.  You know who benefits from single family zoning? Anyone who got their house early or who can afford to pay a lot.  Fuck everyone else. 

If you want taxes to go down, you’ve got to spread the costs of government over more people, without creating more work for the city.  In other words: less sparse. More dense.

  • Allow people to rent rooms in their houses to others. (End occupancy restrictions!)
  • Allow people to build ADUs in their backyards
  • Allow 2, 3 and 4-plexes throughout any neighborhood. 

And my personal beef with single family zoning: stop segregating by wealth. It’s toxic and destructive. We are all part of the same community. 

I agree with Max about taxing businesses. But you also need more people to share the tax burden.

End of philosophical rant. Back to Vision SMTX.

Dr. Rosie Ray is probably the smartest person in town on this stuff. She spoke about Vision SMTX, back at the beginning of the meeting, but I saved it till now. She’s advocating for two small tweaks:

  1. City planners have a concept of a 15 minute city.

Here’s what wikipedia says about it:

The 15-minute city (FMC or 15mC)[1][2][3][4][5][6] is an urban planning concept in which most daily necessities and services, such as work, shopping, education, healthcare, and leisure can be easily reached by a 15-minute walk or bike ride from any point in the city.[7] This approach aims to reduce car dependency, promote healthy and sustainable living, and improve wellbeing and quality of life for city dwellers.[8][9]

But the P&Z/Jane Hughson subcommittee put the phrase “or vehicles” into the definition for San Marcos. In other words “15-minute walk, bike ride, or car ride”. You can understand how that makes the whole “reduce car dependency” thing totally worthless, yes/yes?

So Dr. Ray (diplomatically) suggests we use the actual definition that the rest of the world uses. She’s much friendlier about it than I am.

2. P&Z/Jane Hughson created something called “Neighborhood Low – Existing” in the Preferred Scenario Map. The idea here was to freeze all existing neighborhoods in carbon, like Hans Solo, and prevent any of that gentle densification like ADUs, townhomes, or four-plexes that I talked about earlier. So they said that all existing neighborhoods are single family.

The problem – which Dr. Ray points out – is that a lot of current neighborhoods are not strictly single family. She herself lives in a condo! So they’ve made a lot of existing neighborhoods out-of-conformance with being existing neighborhoods. If you don’t allow multiplexes – that are already there! – from being part of existing neighborhoods, then the people who live in them will have much more trouble making changes to their property. Dr. Ray asks that they restore the multi-plex housing type to existing neighborhoods.

These are the least possible asks. Dr. Ray is wise and I’ll just go with banging the drum in support of her asks. 

…

There’s not much discussion, because the night is so blisteringly long already. Just one important comment, from Mayor Jane Hughson, regarding the P&Z/Jane rewrite:

“Everybody keeps saying that we watered down the plan, when me and P&Z got together and rewrote it.  For the longest time, I didn’t know what they meant. Watered down? What did we water down?

“Then I realized what they meant! They didn’t like the word swap of objectives to considerations! That’s all! So I’m going to go through and change it back!”

NO. No. Jesus, Jane, that is not at all what we’re saying.  How on earth did you get that impression? Dr. Ray literally said:

  • Remove the word “vehicle” in the definition of 15-minute City
  • Allow townhomes and other existing multiplexes in the definition of Neighborhood Low – Existing.

Those are actual meaningful changes. This is not a case of “What a wacky misunderstanding! We meant the same thing all along.”

One final note: No city council member made a peep about either of Dr. Ray’s suggestions. There are still two more opportunities, but I have a bad feeling about this.

…

Item 22:  Kyle is running out of water.  Specifically, they’ve used up all their Edward’s Aquifer alottment.  They want to buy our unused Edward’s Aquifer water from us. This also happened last year!

Recall that during citizen comment, most people said, “Yes, give Kyle the water, because they’re our neighbors. But for the love of god, attach some strings to it! They shouldn’t waste their water and then just dip into ours!” 

Here’s how the city presentation goes:

1. Kyle will take the water either way.  They will either pay someone else, or they will default on their contract, but the water is going to be used, for sure. So the aquifer will be depleted by the same amount, regardless of our decision

2. Kyle uses different water conservation stages than we do. So yes, they just entered Stage 3, but that’s pretty similar to our Stage 4.

3. As part of this deal, they have to match San Marcos water conservation efforts.

4. We stand to make $344K off this deal-io.

So first: are Kyle’s water restrictions similar to ours? It’s surprisingly hard to tell.

Ours has a handy graphic with all our stages: 

We’re Stage 4.

Their website has their current stage, but not all the stages:

But they only entered this stage last week. Before that, they were Stage 2, and I can only find all their stages in this cumbersome, unreadable thing.

So has Kyle been irresponsible with their water usage? It depends. It could be that they’ve been watering golf courses all summer, while Rome burns. It could be Tesla or other new businesses. It could be that they’ve approved a bunch of housing developments without thinking about the water issues.

And yes: approving too many housing developments or signing unsustainable development agreements with Tesla would be totally irresponsible. But it’s the kind of irresponsible that Texas does unconsciously. We don’t think through the ramifications of sprawl or corporate resource abuse very well. Like, at all.

Jude Prather speaks up on behalf of the public speakers: What about the next year? Can we put something in there about conservation in the future, so that they don’t need to borrow more water next year?

Answer: Kyle is just waiting for ARWA water to show up! Then this won’t be an issue!

The Kyle representative clarifies: Actually, ARWA water won’t show up to the west side of town until December 2025! Those are the folks that need this water.

But Jude does the thing that Council always does:
– Asks about an issue that is a real problem
– Gets told “yes, it is a problem”
– Does nothing. Ta-da!

Yes, Kyle will have to use our water next year. Whatever they did this year was not enough, and they’ll do the same exact thing next year. The new water will not be here in time. La la la la la.

The vote: It passes 7-0.

P&Z meeting, 5/9/23

by The San Marxist, posted in P&Z Meetings

We’re going to start with a P&Z blog post, because I think the topic is important. This is nearly two weeks ago, when P&Z discussed the Comprehensive Plan, aka VisionSMTX.

Background

The Comprehensive Plan is the most high level vision of the city, which says things like, “We want more business here, we want to protect the river, we want more housing here,” etc.  It’s big, general, and vague.  Then when you go to draw up specific master plans – Land Development Code, Transportation Master plan, Housing plan, Environment, etc – you have to be consistent with the Comprehensive Plan.  So it drives a lot of choices that get made down the line.

It’s going badly.  

Back in 2020, City Council selected a group of 31 citizens, including several city council members and P&Z commissioners.  This group met with consultants for two years. City staff also held outreach events every month or two, and sent out online surveys, and generally worked hard to solicit a wide range of community input.  All this was drawn up into the VisionSMTX draft. 

This draft went to P&Z in February, and the chair, Jim Garber said, “Oh dear. This is such a train wreck that there’s too much to discuss in one meeting.  Let’s form a subcommittee.” 

So four P&Z members and Mayor Hughson met a dozen times. They had so many revisions that staff just said, “We need to call it an alternate plan, VisionSMTX+.”  This subcommittee ends up being so influential that I need to refer to them as “The P&Z Subcommittee”. 

So now there are two drafts:

  • VisionSMTX, which took two years, $350K+ worth of consultants, and thousands of community hours, and
  • VisionSMTX+, which took five people about a month. (Ie, they added a little plus sign to this one.)

They are substantially different from each other. They’re so different that the staff created a comparison table to help us sort through the differences, and the comparison table is 74 pages long.

….

Listen: I have been struggling to write this up for the past two weeks. It’s really difficult to explain, because the various sides are not all having the same conversation. It’s a total mess.

…

The subcommittee read VisionSMTX and thought, “This document is going to let developers destroy our beautiful neighbohoods. People who live in the historic neighborhood, Dunbar, Barrio Pescado, San Antonio street, and so on, do NOT want their neighborhoods changed!”

What do they fear? Their fears are very slippery.

  • Giant apartment complexes, like the Cottages or the Woods. Developers are assholes!
  • Increased density in the form of smaller housing – ADUs, which are the tiny house-behind-a-house. Duplexes, triplexes, 4-plexes
  • Anything that threatens the “genteel” character of their neighborhoods.

So their fears range from the reasonable (large scale apartment complexes) to the jerky (fear of low income people being able to live near wealthy people).

…

Here are my personal beliefs on increasing the density of housing:

  • Cars and suburban sprawl are super convenient! I can drive to Target, get exactly what I want, and drive home in 30 minutes.  I do not have to plan, or consult a bus schedule, or get sweaty riding my bike.
     
  • Literally, cars should never go away.  There are plenty of people with mobility issues and resource constraints, and we have to take care of them, as a community.  I will fight for your right to drive to work.
  • That said, we are currently gorging ourselves on cars and sprawl.  This is a disaster.

    On the global scale, the oceans are rising and extreme weather events are escalating.  Sprawl and car-centric communities are not sustainable. Younger people are looking at 50 years of climate change. I worry about future generations.

    On the local level, San Marcos literally can’t pay for enough cops and firefighters to cover the distant, sprawling developments.   Plus, we’re prone to flooding, and we have a river which is one of the most special things on the planet.  We’ve got to take this seriously.

    And on the individual level it costs $7K-10Kish per year, to have a car-centric life, but centrally located housing is very expensive. That’s a losing combo for younger or poorer people.
  • I believe that wealth segregation is immoral. Giant apartment complexes are a way of keeping poor people all housed together. In my opinion, duplexes, triplexes, and 4-plexes should be scattered throughout every housing development. They can even be built to look like beautiful houses!

We are predicted to need 50K homes for people moving to San Marcos over the next 20ish years. It’s irresponsible to put all the housing in relentless swaths of single family housing. So what’s the alternative?

The way you take it seriously is that you create a world where it’s more convenient for people to live close to where they need to go.  If it’s sufficiently easy for you to walk to work, you might choose to do so 2-3x per week.  Smart people have worked hard to figure out charming, small-scale ways to create this.  In fact, it should feel like our historic district! It should feel like San Antonio street.

Finally: I personally adore old homes and the historic district. I am not going to advocate for any plan that puts a large scale apartment complex in a charming historic neighborhood.  But any plan that pretends “only wealthy people” is an essential ingredient to a charming neighborhood can fuck right off.

…

This meeting is too big and sprawling, and would be its own multi-part post for me to do it justice. I’ve struggled for two weeks now to write it up. So I’m going to massively shortchange it.

There is one key moment, at 3:30, that I want to zoom in on. William Agnew reads this sentence from the comp plan out loud:

Many of San Marcos’ original neighborhoods, especially those closest to Downtown, benefit from access to shops, restaurants, cultural amenities, employment opportunities, civic offerings, and recreation. The streets are well connected and for the most part, daily needs can be obtained on foot, by bike, or by car. New development can benefit from modeling and drawing inspiration from the treasured Historic character of these neighborhoods.

Then he says:

I live in one of San Marcos’s original neighborhoods. This paragraph’s just not true! I don’t have better access to all these amenities than most other neighborhoods in San Marcos! It just isn’t true. And on top of it, I don’t know how new development can somehow duplicate what it is that you all think I have that I don’t have.

The only place I can really walk from my house that would be considered goods and services is the Little HEB. It’s about 3 blocks from where I live. That’s great if I come back with one sack, but that’s only if I go to the grocery store each and every day. But you can’t walk back with your big shopping trip of the week and 8 or 10 sacks walking down Hutchison. It’s just not true! Other than that, there’s nothing I’m particularly close to anything. I love my neighborhood. It doesn’t bother me to drive to big HEB , Lowe’s, PetSmart, Target. So I don’t think this sentence is true. That’s why I’d like to get it out of there.

This is…delusional. Like, this is astonishingly delusional.

If you can walk 3 blocks to HEB, you are immediately nearby:

  • multiple churches,
  • laundromats,
  • bars and restaurants,
  • hair salons,
  • Shipley’s, Mink’s, Zelicks, North Street, Tantra (if it ever reopens)
  • You’re only another block from the literal town square.
  • The entire university is only a few more blocks away!
  • And right past that is the river itself!

Like, Bill Agnew literally thinks that he lives here:

when he is three blocks from this:

Staff continuously tries to explain that people who live in places like Cottonwood Creek complain that they have to drive long distances to get to stores or any other amenities. The “Complete streets” discussion is about places like Cottonwood creek.

But the P&Z subcommittee is on an entirely different planet. The existential threat to Belvin Street is the only conversation to be had. It sucks up all the oxygen in the room, and it will trample anything that the people in Cottonwood Creek might like to have.

…

What are the problems with VisionSMTX+? What was changed from VisionSMTX, without the plus sign?

1. ADUs. “Accessory Dwelling Units” are the little house-behind-a-house. You may have noticed that the Historical District is absolutely chock full of them. This is the gentlest way to increase density as people move to San Marcos.

The original draft, VisionSMTX, is pretty positive towards ADUs. The subcommittee version, VisionSMTX+, removes a lot of this encouragement.

2. “15 minute streets” This is a measure that professional urban planners use. It means this: without driving, what kinds of things can you reach from your home, by walking, biking, or using public transportation, within 15 minutes? It’s a way of quantifying how Bill Agnew can easily walk downtown, while people in Cottonwood Creek have to drive everywhere.

The subcommittee added “driving” into the definition. In other words, when the people in Cottonwood Creek have to drive 15 minutes to Target, it should get measured exactly the same as Bill Agnew being able to walk downtown. What breathtaking bullshit.

3. Comp plans vs Area Plans. So, the Comp Plan is what we’re discussing. It’s the biggest umbrella. Area plans are where neighborhoods get to say, “We are wealthy and we don’t actually like living next to poor people, so can we just not?”

The subcommittee wants Area Plans to take priority over the comp plan. The original comp plan calls for a balance.

4. Split “Neighborhood – Low” into “Neighborhood Low (existing)” and “Neighborhood Low (new)”. This would allow them to write different rules for Belvin than for new neighborhoods.

What about Cottonwood Creek, which would like to be more like Belvin? Fuck those guys! Existing neighborhoods aren’t allowed to change because the subcommittee has Historic District tunnel vision.

There are a ton of other concerns. I emailed back and forth with some of the public commenters – Rosalie Ray and Gabrielle Moore – and have their entire list of critiques. This is just too dense and meaty for me to do it justice.

…

One last point: Markeymoore was pretty amazing in the P&Z meeting, gently pushing back against problematic ideas, without ever being confrontational.

For example: Bill Agnew is taking issue with the sentence “Many areas in San Marcos today are single use.”

Markeymoore gently asks, “Why is that a negative sentence?”

Bill Agnew answers, “Because I think that the people who wrote that consider it negative. If you understand the plan and the new urbanism concepts behind it, that’s negative. To be single use is negative. That’s my objection to it. Yes, some of these neighborhoods are single use, but they’re good neighborhoods, and they don’t need to be presented as an example of something negative.”

In other words, Agnew does not have a problem with the sentence as written. The problem is the bogeyman in his mind that he is imputing to it. Markeymoore was able to ask from a place of curiosity, and he disarmed Agnew, who gave an honest answer.

To Agnew’s credit, he is very consistent and honest. It’s easy to pick on him because he says the quiet parts out loud.

…

So…what happens next?

They decided to have some workshops over the summer, to deal with some of these things. The comp plan is on pause until August.

Let me tell you, I do not have a great feeling about how this is going.