City Council - Regular Meeting

I will call to order this work session of the San Marcos City Council. Today is Tuesday, 03/31/2026. The time is 3PM. Miss Trevino,

if you would call the roll, please. Mister Rodriguez. Here. Mister Bissell. Here. Miss Garza. Mayor Houston. Here. Mister Scott. Here. Mister Mendoza.

Here.

Mister Gonzales.

Here. We have a quorum present. Okey doke. Citizen comment time period. The city council will hear citizen comments at regular meetings, work sessions, and workshops. There is a sign up process. Speakers may speak once during the citizen comment time period, may not yield time to others. If you speak now about a public hearing nope. Sorry. That's for 06:00. When it's your turn to speak, state your name for the record. You'll have three minutes. And when you begin speaking, the timer is in green. You will have when you have twenty seconds left, you'll only see yellow, and there'll be a little ping. When your time is up, the timer will say, time's up and a bell will ring.

The mayor and council endeavor to ensure that meetings are conducted in a courteous manner and in an atmosphere free of defamation, intimidation, personal risk insults, profanity, or threats of violence. And I believe we have one speaker. Looks like he is online, which is Max Field Baker.

Hello. Can you hear me?

We can. We can see you and hear you. That's a good thing.

I'm gonna step a little outside the frame so you can see the flyer here. So, yes, my name is Max Field Baker. I'm here to tell you all about an event that's being hosted by the San Marcos Civics Club this coming Saturday, April 4 from 2PM to 6PM. We are coordinating this event alongside the San Marcos Studio Art Tour. There's a bunch of really great stuff going on this weekend, and we hope that folks spend a little bit of time with us to speak up about issues that they're dealing with or about issues they see in San Marcos organizations.

Maybe they just wanna come and share poetry with us. We're gonna have a wide variety of organizations joining us out there. We're gonna have music. And most importantly, we're gonna focus on helping our community craft meaningful citizen comments, for all of our boards and commissions and city council. As an extension of that, we've actually invited all of our city council candidates, and I appreciate, Elizabeth Trevino, our city clerk, has even posted a potential for quorum.

So all of you all are invited to come out. No worries there. We've also invited all of our boards and commissioners through our staff liaisons. We really think that as an extension of empowering community members to have the opportunity to, you know, give better citizen comment, there's also some room to grow between how that citizen comment is received and even encouraging our boards and commission members to show up and utilize citizen comment at city council. There were lots of times when I, myself as a planning and zoning commissioner, took that upon myself to show up and and speak out about issues and really just, again, empower our whole community to utilize this really important function of local government and petitioning our our community.

So, again, the event is called Speak Up. We want you to say it, post it, express it, and ask it and keep it real. And we're gonna have, again, a wide variety of groups out there. We really look forward to this event. We know that there is some rain on the horizon, but we we're fingers crossed that it's still gonna be a good time. And yes, we I'll just go ahead and end it there. Thank you so much.

All right. Thank you. And our next speaker is Virginia Parker.

Good afternoon. Mayor and Council members. Virginia Parker with the Marcus River Foundation. I wanted to come and talk to y'all today a little bit about the solid rocket motor testing that's proposed at the Freeman Ranch, which is over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone. So it's the most sensitive land over the aquifers where the storm water goes straight down into the aquifer with very minimal filtration.

I was speaking to someone pretty high up in the environmental world. He deals with a lot of lawsuits against things that are harmful to the environment and he said this is one of the worst things he's heard of in years which confirmed how I feel about it. And he asked how the city of San Marcos felt. And I said, well, they can't really do anything because y'all don't have any authority over the university obviously. And he said, you know it may not be a bad idea for counsel to write a letter to the Board of Regents if y'all are concerned about the proposed solid rocket motor testing.

You could email the president of Texas State, the science department, whoever you deem appropriate. But I'd say start with the Board of Regents because you know, they control over how Texas State moves forward. We are not asking Texas State not to do this research. So that's really important to understand. We just don't want them to do it over a very critical source of drinking water for over 2,000,000 people including a lot of people in San Marcos.

We all drink that water. So if y'all could support asking Texas State to move the proposed solid rocket motor testing off of the aquifer, we would be so grateful. Thank you.

And that concludes our citizen comment time period. Ms. Trevino, would you read item our one and only item?

Yes. Yes. The San Marcos City Council will convene an executive session pursuant to the following sections of the Texas government code a section five five one point zero seven four, personal matters to deliberate regarding the duties and responsibilities of the municipal court judge The section five five one point zero seven one consultation with attorney to receive legal advice regarding one the state of Texas versus the city of San Marcos at l cause number 24Dash02672 hundred and seventy seventh District Court, Hays County, Texas concerning the ordinance related to the enforcement of certain marijuana laws. Two, the arrest of two individuals near Aquarina Springs Drive and Charles Austin Drive on 03/14/2026. And three, the processing of information request related to police involved.

Incidents c section five five one point zero seven two real property and section five five one point zero seven one consultation with attorney. To delivery and receive legal advice regarding the lease of city owned real property located 201 South LBJ Drive. The section five five one point zero seven one consultation with attorney to receive legal advice regarding the city of San Marcos versus Canyon Regional Water Authority. Cause number 25Dash0782CVE456DistrictCourt Guadalupe County, Texas and possible settlement.

Motion for So moved. Executive session.

Second.

By miss Rodriguez and seconded by mister Pasell. Miss Trevino? Mister

Pasell? Aye. Miss Garza? Mayor Houston? Aye. Mr. Scott? Aye. Mr. Mendoza?

Aye. Mr. Gonzalez? Aye. Mr. Rodriguez? Aye. Okay. Motion passes six two zero with one absent. Okay.

We will go into executive session at 03:08. Council members, I'll meet you in the Conference Room. We have returned from our executive session, which we stopped this portion at 05:52. Our next item is Q and A with the press and public. Mr.

Vigno, is Mr. Baker online?

No, ma'am. He's not? Mm-mm.

Okay. Well, in that particular case, there being no more items on our agenda for the 03:00 meeting, I will declare us adjourned. See you back here in six minutes.