City Council - Regular Meeting

I call to order this work session meeting of the San Marcos City Council. Today is Tuesday, September 1st of 2026. Yes, guys, it is September already. The time is 3 o'clock. Mr. Vino, let's see who's here. Yes, Mr. Rodriguez.

Here. Mr. Baselk. Ms. Garza. Mayor Hewson. I'm here. Mr. Scott.

Here.

Mr. Mendoza.

Here.

Mr. Gonzalez. Here. We have a quorum present.

Okay, and for citizen comment time period, we have two. We have Virginia Parker. Is she joining us online? While you call her up, Lisa Young is here, so I'll go ahead and call Lisa Young to the podium.

Good afternoon, council and mayor and city leadership. I'm Lisa Young. I'm the executive director of the Hays County Food Bank and the co-chair of the Homeless Coalition of Hays County. And on behalf of the committee, I want to invite you all to help us recognize World Homelessness Day, which is on October 10th. This year, the committee has a month of activities that lead all the way up to that starting now in September. and through October, and we have provided you with a nice looking flyer that has a QR code for each event so that you can sign up for it. We will be giving this information to the general public, to everyone, but I wanted to come here today as early as possible so that you would have the information as our city leadership that you can sign up for some of these events and get them on your calendar and participate. I am wearing orange, so that's how you know it is, in fact, September. So we kicked off at the Food Bank, Hunger Action Month, and our Stack the Mac, asking everyone to donate macaroni and cheese. All the ones that we get that are in the little cups that are ready to eat, just need a little microwave, those do go to our homeless outreach program, Van Gogh. And then we have a lot of other things coming up too. Kicking this off on September 9th at our Homeless Coalition meeting, this is our regular meeting that we invite you all to come to every month. this year it's at september ninth at three o'clock at first press and we will be doing uh... an all in person meeting going over the sims mapping system so that will be a very hands-on interactive thing that you might want to want to attend and then on the fourteenth here in town will be doing a lunch and learn with the panel of people who have lived experience with homelessness so that's a good opportunity for you to hear your constituents voices about what they've been through and how they navigated it in this community. If you want to take a field trip on October 8th, the poverty simulation will be held in Wimberley this year. We've done it here before for those of you that got to participate. If you didn't, I really hope that you will. It's a really valuable thing for senior staff to know just what it takes to navigate or fail to navigate the situation here in town. And then you have an ongoing volunteer opportunity both to volunteer at the food bank and to cook at Southside. Both of those sign-ups are here. And then on October 10th, which is actually the Nationwide World Homelessness Day, Southside will be having their burger cook-off. I hope that you'll all attend that. I will be a burger judge, so I plan on being ready to eat. But I hope that you all will attend at least one or more of these opportunities, both as our elected officials and our administrative staff, so that you can get a deeper dive into what the face of homelessness is like here in San Marcos. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Virginia Parker, who joins us online. Can y'all hear me? We can see you and hear you.

Yay, I'm sorry. I'm at the capital about to give testimony. So trying to multitask as best I can. I meant to be there today. I wanted to Virginia Parker, San Marcos River Foundation. I wanted to come and talk to you all about a couple concerns that the River Foundation has with regards to the parks plan. You'll notice that. Concept B was chosen, which adds a bunch of baseball fields to the floodway, not just the floodplain, but the floodway. That's where a bunch of velocity and a lot of water is gonna go. We've seen it before, it's gonna happen again. and so y'all won't be able to put uh lights in that area so just does not make sense to have uh baseball fields there if y'all will just look back at concept a concept a is better for both the floodway as well as the neighbors because it only has baseball fields um outside of the floodplain and also farther away from the local neighbors who I know are not looking forward to baseball fields behind their homes. In addition, concept A has grass fields in the floodway. That's a much better thing to have where we know there's going to have a heavy velocity of water during major flooding. And then there was talk of flood storage. I know that some of the homes in the neighborhoods adjacent to that property on the east side flooded. And so having storage for flood waters is really critical. And I believe that concept A had that in there as well. So I guess I'm just asking y'all to go back and look at concept A.

there may be things that make a lot more sense for the community especially the neighbors in that plan and that's all i wanted to say okay and that concludes our citizen comment time period ms trevino would you tell us about item one please yes ma'am receive a staff presentation on the fiscal year 2027 capital improvements program as contained within the proposed fiscal year 2027 budget

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Our Director of Engineering and Capital Improvements, Sean Condor, will provide counsel with the final proposed fiscal year 2027 capital improvement program that will be proposed for adoption with the fiscal year 2027 budget. In addition, he will provide an update on the challenges and strategies for funding the CIP, as well as an update on major projects funded by the CIP. I'll turn it over now to Mr. Condor.

Thank you very much. Normally, this is a pretty quick six or seven slide presentation, but at the last council meeting, several questions came up, and then back in May, we were kind of cut short on time, so what I did was I addressed those questions that were received last time, plus I put those slides in for May, so it'll be a little bit more detailed than you normally get this time of year, but I think it's important for what's going on to cover these items. All right, so we're gonna transition to me working the mouse here. I was told it takes a second to get thinking, so bear with me here while the first click works. There we go. Okay. So as a reminder, the capital improvements program, it is a long-range plan and schedule for capital projects and system assets. It identifies workloads for departments, as well as identifying funding needs and options. It's important to note that projects in year one are evaluated for project readiness. Is the project in a position to move forward? Do we have staff available to get the projects completed? And can the city fund the projects as presented? And so we want to make sure that anything we put in year one meets that criteria. As a reminder, year one is really all that we're approving in the budget. Years two through 10 are really just placeholders for budgeting purposes, and it is not approved in the budget. So what is the CIP project? It's a major capital project. It generally involves a significant expenditure of funds beyond operation and maintenance costs for planning, design, acquisitions, and construction of a needed facility or infrastructure. The key is that it must exceed $100,000, and it must tie to a long-term asset. Typically, these projects are identified in our master plans, operation requests, council direction, or citizen inputs. So I like to pull this slide up because the number one complaint you're always going to get is it takes too long. Why does it take so long? This slide, I think, speaks to that. And when you think about a project, it goes through a scoping phase, a funding phase, design, construction, and completion. And so that's what I call a typical life cycle or project. And so a simple project is basically something that's under $1 million, and we can typically get that completed within three to four years. A complex project is typically in the $1 million to $10 million range, and that typically takes us five to seven years. And then a very complex project, it typically is 10 million plus, and that's easily over eight years. And the things I really want to point out is when we present the CIP, we always put the last year of funding for construction, and we always program the best case scenario. And we have to do that because we've got to have the funding there if the project's ready to go. But as we know, projects have challenges. And as those challenges arise, the construction funding is delayed until it's actually ready. And I'll talk about what some of those challenges are here on the next slide. That's what the key is, is that we always present best case. We know projects are going to get delayed by right of way or environmental, and then we end up having to delay it. That's why you always hear us say, well, last year you said it was this year, and now you're saying this. It's because those factors have come up that didn't exist the year before. So let's talk about our project complexity. Really, it's pretty basic. The larger the scope, the more factors involved, the more complex it is. And we all know a very complex project, it adds money and time. to the project. And so a simple example, a simple scope is a water main project out in the outskirts of town. We already have easement. We can typically knock those out in two or three years. They're real quick and easy. But if you pick on a harder project, say like Sunset Acres, we have a scope that includes water, wastewater, stormwater, streets, sidewalks, underground electric. You have challenges navigating those designs because you've got to make sure the underground electric doesn't conflict with the wastewater, doesn't conflict with the stormwater. And someone has to move their portion of the design forward before the other can do theirs. You can't just do all those components at once. Then you throw in the project factors. Sunset Acres, for example, is grant funding. One of the challenges we're having with that is we're not using grant funding for right of way, but we can't even make an offer for an easement until the environmental is cleared because the grant won't allow us. So they really put sequential steps in place depending on what factors are in a project. You think about a project like the 1978 that has project partners. And so we've got to make sure we align those project partners along with the project as well. And so every project has a unique set of circumstances, which it's easy to say project ABC, but there's all these factors that it's really hard to understand those and why a project's taking as long as they are unless you account for the scope and all those project factors. OK, so let's talk about the CIP funding challenges. The general fund is constrained to $10 million, and it's been that way for a few years now, several years actually. And the reason we restrained it is because some of the funding we're using to fund equipment replacement lists, that's something we started in the last few years. It's really shorter-term loans, projects that basically they don't exceed a 20-year life, but they're bigger than an operation cost. We have had some increases in operation costs over the years as well, so instead of increasing operations and CIP, we just basically held CIP flat in terms of general fund, and we've offset the general operations cost. When you look at the stormwater, we're constrained to about five million, and a lot of that has to do with there's really been no rate increase since 2023, and so we're really counting on growth. If we're not doing a rate increase, you're counting on growth to offset that increase in revenue. When you look at our utility debt models, water, wastewater, electric, the debt doesn't start falling off to 2028 and 2029. So we are counting on those radiant increases to really offset the debt. And really, when you look at the stormwater area and the water wastewater, the water wastewater is not growing as quickly as the stormwater. And so we can count on the growth a little bit more on the stormwater side. One thing to keep in mind when we talk about water, wastewater, is we're shifting our focus. We've been talking about procuring water, getting that water out there. Well, once that water comes, you've got to treat it. So you're going to hear us shift our focus from procuring it to treating it. And then once we get the treating done, look ahead 20 years, we're going to be talking reclaimed. We've got to do something with that reclaimed. We have all this good water. We've got to make sure we utilize it to help offset our needs in the future. Construction costs, the budgets just are not keeping up with inflation. Estimates have doubled since COVID. Engineers are struggling to get accurate estimates. And I've said this multiple years, but I want to back it up for once. I recently bought a car, and our previous vehicle was a 2018. I pulled that exact make and model. and saw what it is today, it's gone up 50% since 2018. It blew my mind. I said, well, you know what, let me pull a couple common bid items. And so I did. I did this just before I came in here. I pulled a project that we bid in 2018, and I compared it to a project we bid in 2024. The most common item we have is an 8-inch PVC water pipe. 2018, it was $38.85. 2024 is $100. So it's gone up 250%. Another common item is asphalt. That project in 2018 was $80.54. The 2024 project I pulled, it was $267, so basically a little more than 300%. So the construction industry has just gone significantly more expensive than probably some other industries. So it's a challenge. We're seeing it all over, and our engineers just cannot get it right. And the contractors can't. We ask them, where do these bids come from? Well, this is the price my sub gave me. So it's a challenge for us. Project scopes are becoming more complex. And honestly, these neighborhood projects, they're just becoming more cost prohibited because of these rising costs. All right. So let's talk about debt. When you talk about the CIP, you're really talking about debt because the majority of what we do is funded that way. So why do we take out debt? We're willing to pay the interest to have that asset now since it will benefit the residents now and in the future. But it's important that that asset outlives the debt. So how do you refer to debt? Think about a house. You know, when you talk about your home, although it might be, let's say it's a $200,000 home, You typically refer to it by the monthly payment because that's what controls. You refer to the value, but what controls is the payment. And so what we do on these utilities and these models we run is we input, we pull the rate models to determine what we can afford. And so when I talk about the CIP, I might say a $50 million CIP, but really we're talking about a $4 million payment. That's the key point to take away is I refer to it as the CIP value, but really the payment's what controls. So I want to kind of dive a little. I've never done this before as far as talking about how the debt payment timing occurs. And so you've all seen this slide. Don't get hung up on the words. Basically, the green is planning for the CIP, and the blue is the funding of the CIP. And so what controls in this CIP is the debt sale. So that white dot to black dot, that's a two-year window. We start planning two years ago, but the payment hits two years later. And that payment is what controls. So you're talking about the 27 budget this afternoon. What you need to keep in mind is the 26 CIP debt payment, that's what actually impacts the 2027 budget. And so when did we determine what that debt payment was? That payment was locked in in the summer of 2026. We typically come, we propose a debt sale in February. We actually make that debt sale in October. That's when you're locking in what that payment is. And that controls. And that's what's going to impact your 27 budget. So the only thing that's not locked in is really the operation costs. That's why you typically hear a lot about the operations. What do we do? It's because you've already locked in that debt sale back in the summer. So when you think about the CIP, take this schedule. So this is the 26 CIP. Shift it over here and down, and we rinse and repeat. It's the same thing. We just change all the years from add one year to what's above, and we run them parallel. Right now, we're in the bottom here where that little red star is. That payment that we made in the previous year is going to hit next year's budget. So that's where we're at. It's rinse and repeat, and so it's really key. That's why when you talk about CIP, you're not talking about something that we do next month. You're talking about two years away. We have to plan the financial impacts two years in advance. And so that's why it's a slow process. It takes two years to make sure, can we afford it? We work with finance and the rate models. We look at things like the impact fees that are coming in. Can we afford these projects that are shown two years out? And it's a guess, but we do our best. And so, again, we're talking about the 2027 CIP right now. That will impact the 2028 budget. That's the key takeaway here. It's always next year's budget that it impacts. All right, so let's talk CIP challenges, right? It's a struggle, operations versus debt. So if you go back to 2017, this just kind of shows a split between operations debt we had 40% debt on the books. And over the years, we have constrained it down to about 25%. And the way I interpret that is, over the years, since 27, we've held the CIP flat and we've increased operations. But we did that to get that debt down to a ratio that is more reasonable. Just like when you take out a home, you kind of look at the ratio of the debts to the operation, the cost of your house. You want that in that kind of 30%, 25% range is where you ideally like to see it. So we're there now. And so I think we'll start having conversations about does it make sense to now start increasing these CIP to keep up with the revenues we're bringing in. All right, so talk a little bit about the value of a rate increase. I know that you've seen these from the finance director in the past. I've seen it for the general fund, but I thought it'd be a fun exercise to show it for all the funds. And so what I've done here is I've showed the value rate increase for utility rates and tax. So on the far right, I show the typical constraints of the CIP. These are kind of normally what our goals are at the beginning of the year when we try to hit So we talked about the general fund, and think back to the comment I made where what controls is the payment, not the value. So the payment, your operations is an annual cost. So for operations like $876,000, that equates to about an $11 million CIP. You with me there? So the value of one cent is either an increase of $876,000 for operations or an increase of $11 million in debt that can go towards the CIP. Take that same philosophy down through each fund. You look at a 1% increase in stormwater, you can increase operations by just under $100,000 or add $1.2 million in CIP or debt for the CIP. Water fund, it's $375 for operation, $4.5 million for debt. Wastewater is $260, and then $3.3 for debt, and then electric is $25 and $3.5. So this just kind of gives you an idea, you know, if you say, hey, we need to start getting serious about certain infrastructure funds. These are the numbers to keep in mind and the things that we can work towards is what it'll cost and what it'll result in. So I've showed this, I think you might have seen this before, but I wanted to show an example of a typical CIP funding constraints versus some larger projects. And so there on the left, the black box, you know, this is normally what we're restrained to on the CIP is about 10 million general fund, 5 million storm. water waste part 15, electric at 10. If you look at all the, like Sunset Acres, for example, that's about a $50 million project. And I'm not gonna go through each dollar amount, but I just wanna show that the numbers in red basically mean we exceed that annual constraint of the CIP. And so because of that, that's why we have to break up projects into smaller projects. That's why we have to pursue other funding resources. So it's not feasible to do all these things in our books and just not get them funded in one year and just be done with them. We have to spread them out, and that's why we do what we do. And I'm going to talk about each of these areas here later on in the presentation. But I just want to point out that we are, pretty much in every fund except electric here at least, we're exceeding our annual allocation for the CIP constraints. So let's talk about CIP funding strategy. We know we can't fund everything as quickly as you want. So it boils down to one of two things, either increase funding or decrease expenses. And that's kind of what we do. You do it on operations. We do the same thing on the CIP. So how do you increase funding? Well, rate increases. I already talked about that. I'm not going to go into that any longer. We talk about bond election. That's another thing we can do. You can put it up to the voters. If they want these projects done, you go out there and let them vote, and we have some funding that's set aside specifically for those specific projects. Right now, we're looking at probably November 2031 based off the current economic uncertainty. One thing we have been doing as a city is focusing on economic development. And that's pretty straightforward. You basically offer incentives to encourage development. Simple example, you take a vacant piece of land, it's $50,000 in property tax, and we're collecting no sales tax because there's nothing there. Well, you go out and you incentivize it with someone. You develop that land, all of a sudden it's valued at $500,000 in property tax and a million in sales tax. So what's the incentive? The city and the developer, they get together, they talk, and they share a percentage of that increased income. property taxes, sales tax, and we just share it with each other. So we all get a little something out of the deal. The most common tactic we do is delay projects. We will typically break that into multiple phases. Examples are Wall Street and Sunday Acres. And we just don't start big dollar projects until we finish what we started. And so another thing we do is we might reduce or limit scope of projects. Maybe there's a project that... It needs some drainage, but it needed water, wastewater first. We couldn't afford it, so we put the drainage. We'll address that at a later date, I guess, for lack of a better term. So there's some things we just can't do because we have to figure out what's driving the project. And the one I'm thinking of is Linda Drive. The driving factor of that project was we had to get that wastewater line repaired. It was collapsing. So that was the controlling factor. And so we focused on getting that done, and it's under construction now, but we know there's some drainage needs out there. We just didn't have the money at the time to do it, so we put it in the CIP for a future date. Pursue cost sharing partners. You see that with the FM1978 water reclamation plant. We got the developers on board to help us front load those debt payments. We've worked with other entities such as Hays County. They helped us out on the local match for the Cape shared use path design. Pursue grant funding. We've really hit that hard in the last few years just because we feel that's maybe a well we haven't gone to as much as we could, and we've been pretty successful in that. I'm gonna talk about that here on the next slide. The important thing here is all these things that we talked about, they do result in longer project schedules, but it gets done. We don't just start these and stop them and shelve them. We get them done, and it just takes a little longer. All right, so grant funding. So this is kind of, I went back to 2022 because that's when I started taking better records of it. And there's quite a few projects up here. And the total, that's about $48 million since 2022. And there's multiple ways to think about that. That's $48 million less than we've had to ask for rate increases, property taxes, you know, the Sunset Acres alone, that's $14 million. That would be almost three years of our CIP funding capacity. Old Ranch Road 12, that's over one year of general funding in the CIP. There are a few projects on here that are still pending, like the Sunset Acres Regional Detention Pond. You know, we're pretty confident. We're going back and forth with TETM and FEMA with that one. But we feel it's got a good shot. The flood infrastructure fund for $3.5 million, that one should be a given. And there's others out there as well. Grant funding, I'll say, has slowed down a little bit with the current administration. But we definitely keep our eye on it, and we pursue projects that make sense for us that we'll score well on. One thing I don't think I do a good enough job about is talking about what we've done. We always talk about what I haven't done and what I'm gonna do. I say I, the city. And so what I did, we started creating a GIS layer back in 2023 to help track these projects. And so I just said, you know what, let's just throw up there what we've done, add up the dollar amount. And so since 2023, we've completed a total of $108 million worth of projects. And just for simplicity, I pulled out the ones that were over a million. And it's really, if you look at the west side of 35, it's about 35 million. The east side's about 73 million that we've completed. And if you want to see this in greater detail, You can scan that QR code, and there's an ability to filter these by phase. You can just turn it on, off, and see. So you get an idea of what's going on, what's in design, and if you want to just see what's been completed.

Can we take a pause real quick? I really appreciated that slide.

Yep.

The level of detail. I know this was the topic of discussion the last time we met. And I can't imagine how much time it took, but it's much appreciated. So thank you. I just wanted to give a shout out to that.

You took info snacks to like a whole other level. So I appreciate it. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. All right, so let's talk about an update to some of the more common projects. This isn't all the projects we're dealing with. These are the ones that tend to be at the forefront of the folks in the neighborhoods and the council and just the ones that people, I think, are most interested in. So let's talk about the Sunset Acres area projects. And so when you look at that location, it's basically 35 and 123. We completed the drainage improvements with TxDOT back in 2025. It's about a $5.8 million contribution the city made to upsize that drainage infrastructure. Then we expedited the wastewater repair on Broadway, and we completed that in 2024. That was about a $1.7 million investment. We're currently in design for the neighborhood improvements, which is that project number three. We're estimating about 35 to 40 million. It should start construction next year. We're gonna have to break that up into two projects just because we're not gonna get contractors bidding at that dollar amount, but we are in conversations. The hold up of that is the NEPA clearance from the grant. We just need to get that clear. We hope that'll happen next month or two, which will then open the door for us to start that next year. The detention pond, we have, as I showed earlier, about a $4 million grant anticipated from TETM. We just gotta work out those details. We're going through the process. FEMA was shut down for a while, is what our contact is telling us, so it's just, it's taking a little longer to get approval on that grant, and we don't wanna do anything on that until we get that grant worked out. Wallace addition's a little busy, and the reason I wanted, I kinda zoomed out a little on this one, because I thought it was important to show that IH35 shared use path project But let me start with project number one. So we have the Cape Shared Youth Reconstruction Path Project. That's right there from Louisiana Flores to 123. That's about a $6 million project that'll start in 2029. This goes back to, we got the grant from TxDOT. They're giving us like two million, I believe. But they're delaying us to start construction in 2029. So that's an example of why some of these grants will kick us out in duration. Project number two is that the Cape Shared Use Path project where we partnered with the county and we're going to start a design for a sidewalk along from Luciana Flores to basically the Mill Race. We did get that award and that's in design. That'll start, well, it's not in design yet. We gotta get the ILA worked out with the TxDOT, but we're gonna get going on that design and once the design's approved, we're gonna go right back to Campo and apply for construction funds. And so I feel really, the way these grants work, if we get funding for design, our odds of getting it for construction go up significantly. So I feel pretty good. It takes longer. It takes a while. It's the moral of the story today. Project number three is the Cape Road bridge repair. That's about 845 budget. We're hoping to start construction this year. I got word today, actually, that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife have some concerns about the impacts of the fountain daughter. And so they're anticipating that we might have to do an incidental take permit which is delayed to start till probably about February. We're not too concerned about what we're gonna have to do to make it happen, but we just, it's a process between us and U.S. Fish and Wildlife and Army Corps engineers getting that permit cleared up, but the design's gonna be done next month, and so we're gonna get the design ready to go. If that permit gets cleared, we're gonna go as soon as the permit's cleared, but it's moving forward. Project number four, the I-35 shared use path. It's about a $3 million project. We're hoping to start construction here next year. It's another one. These federal projects, they take the environmental to the nth level. I don't know how to describe it. They have so many boxes you've got to check, and you've got so many people that review it. So that's another one tailed up by the environmental, but we're getting it done. So sliding over to project number five, this is the Wallace addition off-site. It's basically the drains through the fish hatchery site. Initially, project one was part of that. When the TxDOT grant got awarded, we carved that out. We don't want to slow up the rest of the project just for that little project up there. We're tracking to get that started in 2027. We just got a draft agreement from the fish hatchery last month. to basically give us the easement we need to go through their sites. That was the big holdup on that project, so we feel pretty good about the 2027 date now. And then the last is the Wallace addition neighborhood improvements. That's about a 20 to $25 million project. Probably start construction about 2029. We really need to get these other projects around the neighborhood done before you do the neighborhood just to make sure to account for anything that those other projects aren't able to address. And then I didn't talk about them, but I will point out TxDOT is doing a project on 123 to do some sidewalk improvements. We are coordinating with them, but they are actually leading that project. And then the county is actually leading a project at the Cape Pond site as well. And I know they've kind of went dormant for a little bit, but they've kicked that back off again from understand. All right, let's talk about the historic district area improvements. And so this area, when I came here, was, I think, under a lot of duress from the drainage issues out there. It's a historic neighborhood. There's no drainage out there. So the project that was completed in 2025 was there basically from Bishop to Wonderwall Drive. And then project number two was completed in 2021, and that's from Bishop to, I believe, Old Rancho 12 or Moore Street. And then we did the Travis Street outfall in 2023. That was done in 2019. And then we just finished the Bishop Belvin outfall last year. And then project number five is the one that's currently in design and green there, and that one is expected to start next year. I didn't have all the prices for this, but what I wanted to do was just show you, this is an example of how we phase projects. There's no way we could have done all these at once, but they all talk to each other, they work with each other to make sure that the improvements complement each other. And then last on the list is the 1978 Water Reclamation Facility. So this one, it goes back to, Our current wastewater treatment plant is nearing the capacity. We made a decision. Do you expand the current site, or do you add a new facility where the growth is going? We knew that this site was a better site than the existing site, further away from the river, less forced mains to install, less infrastructure to install. And so we pursued a developer agreement to help offset some of these project costs. This project, it's about $100 to $125 million. It's gonna start construction here in October, next month. I talked about the goal of this project is it's gonna start at two MGD, it's gonna go to four. So two million gallons per day, eventually four million gallons per day. And what we're gonna do is take that flow that's currently going to the wastewater treatment plant, and we're gonna divert it to this new facility. To do that, we have to build these projects two and three, which are interceptors, big trunk wastewater lines, up to the Cottonwood Lift Station. So we're gonna focus on, we're gonna do project one, and we're focusing on two and three, which is that interceptor, which those projects will be about a 50 to 60 million dollar investment over the next five to seven years. Once we get that infrastructure to divert that lift station, then we're gonna turn around and expand that lift station from two MGD to four. So it's really, what you gotta think about here is we're trying to keep the capacity from going to the existing plant, because we know that existing plant is already nearing its capacity. And then once we get these built, then we're going to get serious about reclaimed water, because that reclaimed water is going to play a key part of our future water infrastructure. Okay, so this is kind of, see, I showed this a little bit earlier, but I just zoomed in on just this one-year window here. And so when you think about the CIP, we start in the fall of 2025. And then we hit the neighborhood commission in March, PNZ three times in March, April, and then the draft CIP to council in May. We're here today presenting the final CIP, and it will be adopted as well at the next meeting. And every one of these little colorful dots, it's really an opportunity for public engagement and feedback. And even if... Actually, I get feedback all year long, and we're always listening, what's important, what do we need to take away. So even if no one comes to speak, it's not uncommon for someone to pull me off to the side after my presentation and ask a few questions here or there. So we're always listening, we're always taking notes, and these are those opportunities for folks to do that as well. So right now we're at the little red star. There will not be a presentation at the next meeting because it'll just be included with the pack of the budget to be adopted. So here's where we actually landed for 2027. It's a little bit higher than our typical constraints. We got the general at 10.1, the storm at 5.2, water wastewater at 36.5, and electrics at 9.1. We exceeded our water wastewater constraint. We have some improvements we've got to make at the existing plan off River Road. And that's not capacity related, that's just operations related. We have some failing infrastructure that we just can't keep putting off anymore. So we're addressing that immediately, and it should start construction on that probably early next year. So with that, next steps, you will receive the 27 CFP will be submitted for approval with the budget on September 15th. And if you'd like copies of everything, here is where it's at. There's the QR code if you like that route, and I will pause for questions. I should have brought water.

Thank you, Mr. Condor, and thanks for either informing or reminding us that these are not easy tasks. There's lots and lots of moving parts, and so thank you for bringing that to us. So, Council, Mr. Rodriguez, did you have something?

Yes, ma'am. Again, Mr. Condor, I always really enjoy your presentations because since I've been on council, you have made a topic that is highly complex, very easy to digest, and it is very much appreciated. I just had one quick question on the slide that was depicting the Wallace addition area improvements.

Okay. Hayden, can you scroll back to that for me? There we go.

That one, yes. Thank you, Hayden. So just a quick question. So I see that TxDOT, the South Highway 123 sidewalk improvements that are gonna be on that particular stretch. I guess my question would be, did we apply for grant funding for that? Is that something that they initiated themselves?

they initiated that on their own.

Okay, and the reason I ask is because when you look at all of the growth down 123 further south, I know for a fact there have been fatalities on that road, and sidewalks is a reoccurring ask I hear from people who live in that neighborhood, contiguous sidewalks all the way down. And so this might not be an appropriate question for this particular discussion, so please feel free to say so. But I guess I'm just wondering, How are we approaching TxDOT about potential future sidewalk improvements all throughout that highway?

Well, I know for a fact that I've been in close contact with them about, so we had a platinum study, it was called, some major improvements on 123. And the area engineer at the time was Willie Samora. And we sent him the study. We said, hey, this is our number one request. It's the most... dangerous section of highway, if you will, through San Marcos, and we need to do something. He acknowledged it, and really the solution is going to be we're going to have to close that drainage up, we're going to build sidewalks, and we're going to have to put a median. That's the only way this is going to be safe. So he acknowledged that. He's acknowledged that he passed that on to the area planning office to put that as a top priority. The challenges we're having with TxDOT is they're focusing all their funding on 35 right now. Right. And so I know it is a priority for us. I will add that TxDOT also got a grant for lighting on 123. And so they're supposed to, I think they should be starting any month now, any year now as well. But we do have those conversations. We meet quarterly with TxDOT to bring up these concerns. and we can certainly bring it up as well, is that we don't want to let off that focus on that area as well, because we do see the value.

Well, I'm very happy to hear that staff already recognizes this as an issue. I guess my last question would be, if there's any way that council can support, whether that's a resolution that depicts our support for something like this, and really articulating the necessity of it, citing the safety concerns that we've been seeing, I would be more than happy to introduce that and work with council on this side of things, if that helps strengthen that application. So I'd be open to future discussions should that be a good idea.

And I will say, I will, I can make the, even without, when grants come out, A lot of times these grants, they require the sponsoring entity to sign off on it. And so when these come out that we think will meet that box, we definitely forward that to tax time. We'll ask them, hey, are you applying for this grant? But yeah, you're right. If there's a resolution out there that would maybe encourage them to consider that, that's something we can definitely put on the books to consider.

Yeah, especially with the new legislative session coming up. I mean, I know that the legislative committee has been talking about ways in which we can petition the legislature for things that are necessary for our community. I would be even willing to go as far as speaking on behalf of this should that also provide an additional level of support. So, yeah, thank you. And thank you for everything else and you and your team.

Ms. Costa, did you have anything? Okay. Nope. Excellent presentation. That means you covered all of the things that we would have had questions on. So this is great, thank you.

Mayor, if I could just say one thing. Thank you, Mr. Condor. He was very receptive. We had a really enthusiastic review of his presentation. before it came to you and really brainstormed a lot of the ways to tell the story because it is very difficult. And we hear a lot that there are neighborhoods that are neglected and things like that. And so it's like, let's just get that up there. But the other aspect is because we're so limited on the amount that goes to debt, therefore projects. The CIP at one time has been 20 million, it's been 25 million. we're doing half when projects are way more expensive than what they have been. But what they do extremely well, not only with him but also with our grants team is just really working on those grants and bringing in 40 plus million dollars, 48 million in grant money. That's how we're leveraging and bringing other dollars from state and federal funds into the community that otherwise would be a tax rate increase or something that we'd be asking the community for. So that was one of those things where I told them, it's really probably good to pause right there because we go through these presentations so quickly and there's not always emphasis on like, let's just take that in. $48 million is a big deal. That's for almost five years of our CIP funding that we've been able to do. But the trade-off for that is it takes time because it takes time for those things to be awarded to us. It takes time for us to receive those funds. And so projects may not happen as quickly, but it's the trade-off of not coming and asking the taxpayers to help fund some of this infrastructure that is so desperately needed by our community members.

All right. I'll repeat what I put on the message board. Well done. This is the best get real presentation on the CIP that I've seen in a long time, maybe ever. But what also was significant to me was the slide that you had that talks about the rate, where we set the rate, and how it affects this. And if the rate isn't high enough, projects are gonna be delayed or maybe not done. So that was huge, so thank you.

Thank you, Mayor and Council.

Thank you. Moving on to item two, Ms. Trevino. Receive a staff presentation on the updated concepts and comparisons of existing and proposed features for the Riverfront and Eastside Regional Preliminary Park designs and provide direction to the City Manager.

Good afternoon, City Council. Rodney Gonzalez, Assistant City Manager. At the July 7th council work session, Parks and Recreation Director Jamie Lee Case presented a draft of the proposed features for the riverfront and east side regional preliminary park designs. At the work session, city council provided direction and feedback. Today, Director Case is here to speak to the previous council direction and to seek further city council direction prior to bringing forward the completed preliminary design reports for city council direction. Prior to turning the presentation over to Director Case, I want to acknowledge the significant work and accomplishments that she and her parks executive team members have achieved by getting us to this point. And now I will turn this item over to Director Case.

Thank you, Mr. Gonzales. Good evening, Mayor and Council, Jamie Lee Case, Director of Parks and Recreation. This afternoon, just briefly, we'll go over a review of the purpose and background of the project, the purpose and framework, review the Council direction on July 7th, and then we'll get into the preliminary design review a little bit more in depth. And click.

Come on, there we go.

Okay, just as a reminder, the purpose of this project is to develop two preliminary design reports, which will be the framework to guide the future development of both our riverfront parks and the Eastside Regional Park, formerly the Quail Creek Golf Course and Country Club. That will include programming, facilities, features, general layout, funding requirements, and then potential implementation strategy. Just a quick reminder, the riverfront design plan purpose was identified in our 2019 Parks Recreation and Open Space Master Plan. Plaza Park is excluded due to it being part of the Hopkins Street City Center project for the new City Hall and Hopkins Corridor Redevelopment Study. So that area is not included in this project. The Eastside Regional Park design plan purpose, we were awarded parks open space bond funds from Hays County. In October of 2022, we closed on the purchase of the former Quail Creek Country Club and Golf Course, which is 176 and a half acres on the east side of town. The overall goals of the preliminary design reports are to assess community preferences and identify desired characteristics and factors that will shape the parks, evaluate opportunities and constraints based on analysis of the project sites, complement goals associated with the 2019 San Marcos Parks Recreation and Open Space Master Plan, create a defined action plan for moving forward with the park development, and build consensus and commitment amongst elected, appointed officials, city staff, and the community. Just a quick reminder of the process. We kicked this off in February of 2025. Phase one, we hosted seven open houses and a community survey that ran from February until April. Phase two, we hosted three open houses and another community survey, which was open from May to July. Again, we began back in February of 2022. With phase one, we had open houses at the activity center, Centro Cultural Hispano, Bowie Elementary, First Lutheran Church, the activity center, De Zavala Elementary, and Dunbar, as well as the online survey. Phase two open houses, we hosted again at the activity center, Quail Creek Country Club, which actually unfortunately was rained out. So we pivoted to the activity center as a rain out site. We did meet with the equity cabinet while it was still in operation. And then we held another rain out scheduled event back out at Quail Creek on July, I'm sorry, June 2nd of 2025, as well as that online survey. The Parks and Recreation Board adopted their recommendation in December of 2025 recommending Riverfront Parks Concept D and Eastside Regional Park Concept B. The Neighborhood Commission then reviewed the Parks and Rec Board's recommendation and they adopted their recommendation opposing the Parks Board's recommendation in May of 2026. Council direction on July 7th. Council provided a table reflecting what is changing in the Riverfront Park, so that is included within this presentation. Keep all five ball fields at Raymond Lucio Park. Keep all nine ball fields in the east side regional park concept. Add game tables, chess or checkers for an example, at both locations. Include potential revenue generation estimates within the preliminary design report. That would be specifically for paid parking, but we also plan to add any additional rental revenues or anything like that. Okay, diving into the riverfront parks preliminary concept. This is just the zoomed out version, and we're going to dive into the enlarged portions park by park, just to make it a little easier to digest. First, we'll talk about Bicentennial Park. Currently, it is a natural area, so there's some, I would call desire paths, not specific trails that we have specifically gone in and constructed. This is just where Park patrons are creating trails just due to traversing the park. We are going to be adding something new, which is nature play. This is just using the current natural environment and adding things that children can play on. So thank you. tree stumps and built in into earthen hills and things like that. So it's pretty neat to have in natural areas. Natural trail or the nature trail with interpretive exhibits. As I mentioned, currently we have more just desire paths within there. We would actually have used those desire paths but kind of improve upon them in areas maybe that or low water, there could be a local water crossing or something that we're not aware of right now that needs to be, have a bridge put on. But then adding in environmental and cultural exhibits along the trail as well. We currently have those interpretive exhibits along the shared use path, just educating people about The restoration that's done in the area. If you walk along the shared use path along Bicentennial, you will see signage talking about the restoration that's already occurring in the area as far as invasive removals and native tree plantings. Purgatory Creek, there is an ongoing restoration and preservation of Purgatory Creek, so that remains unchanged. That is through the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan. Engineering is also planning the Purgatory Creek Channel Improvement Project, which will eventually end at Purgatory Creek within the riverfront parks. On street parking, there is on street parking that borders Bicentennial Park. Currently there are 16 parallel spaces. By reorienting those parallel spaces to head in angled spaces, we then get 30 spaces there. There it goes. And this area here is what I was just referencing. So you can see this is the nature play area here, the reoriented parking, and more defined trail system here. I'm looking for council direction. If any modification is desired to bicentennial park, which amenities should be revised, removed, or added, and then looking to have any additional direction, please.

Council, do you all have anything? The only thing that I had, which was across all of these, was the game tables that Ms. Rodriguez had talked about. You've said that those can be fairly easily done. So that's the only thing that I had on this one. So I just wanted to mention that. Ms. Rodriguez, do you have some more cool ideas?

No, so since we had the last presentation, people have really liked the, I forget what we called it, the workout equipment over there. At City Park? City Park. Okay. And wanting to understand if we plan to put that in various other places within our parks. And so I know that that wasn't something that I had brought up last time. In addition, there was an express interest in I'm not a, player, but volleyball. Is the city planning on doing volleyball, whether it's sand or whatever? And I was trying to figure out, do we have, but we don't. I believe Texas State at Sewell Park is the only.

Right. And we've asked, it didn't overall score very well. And then I actually specifically asked that question of the equity cabinet as well to get their thoughts. and the feedback that I received from them was, well, lots of apartment complexes have it, and Sewell has it, and I was like, oh, okay, well, I hadn't thought about that.

Well, the apartment complexes, and this is personal experience, when you go and you're not a resident, some of them actually do not like that, and in fact threaten for you to leave. So I said I would bring it up. I didn't know if there was interest in potentially adding that, and even if this is the particular part where it would need to be,

not in this particular park I think we would need to definitely look on where it would best situate sand volleyball courts are very maintenance intensive so we would have to make sure that it was safe for play and all those things so there are fiscal impacts by adding that just like anything else that we can bring back for consideration just so that you would have a full idea of what it would costs ongoing for us to maintain it. Um, but we can, if the council directs, we can look and see where it would best fit.

Well, I guess before we kind of check to see if there's interest, um, Mary, remind me the question that you put on the message board, it was related, you know, confirming that the tables were in fact there. I think it was you, Director Case, that mentioned that the tables will be similar to the ones we have over there in City Park that are ADA accessible with that little ramp and how it sticks out at the end.

They wouldn't exactly be like that. They would probably be a little smaller, but still ADA accessible. In my response, they're easy to add. They would likely be concrete, but be right off of the shared use path, very similar to how we have our ADA picnic tables established now.

Yeah, I would really appreciate that consideration, because those tables I walk around City Park quite frequently, amazing. And such intentional design, just like how it slopes up and it has that extended, that's really cool. And so if those same considerations could be made, I really appreciate the intent behind that design.

You all good with that? Yes. Did you have anything else? No, ma'am. Okay. Over at the city park where the children's playground was taken out and a bunch of that workout equipment put in? Yes, ma'am. I'm not complaining about what's there, but when I went, the ribbon cutting, it looked like there was a lot of stuff for adults and not so much for children anymore in that same space.

There's various ages, so one area is for 15 and up, another is 12 to 15, and then there is a smaller tot, so 2 to 5.

Yeah, it just looked like what you normally expect to see, you know, the swing sets and the other stuff. that we just didn't have near as much as what we did before for the kids. So that was just an observation that I had. So if we're going to be doing more of the workout stuff somewhere else, and I have no objection to that at all. I think people will like it. I'm just concerned that we're not having less kids places to play well than what we had before.

I hear you, ma'am. But I do think that like the composition of a lot of San Marcos families are, um, like various children of various ages and it also gives like caregivers something to do. So I, I, yeah, I can see both, both sides.

That's why I said I'm not opposed to the other adult stuff, but it just looked like there wasn't very much left for, for the, for the little ones. So maybe I just missed it, but I just wanted to get that on record.

There's lots of kids there.

Yeah. I was actually going to say, um, I walk city park probably at least four or five times a week at, at, you know, towards the afternoon and sometimes in the night. it is people of all ages and it's packed constantly. Like if they're not at the basketball court, you have multiple people of all ages to Alyssa's point playing together. And so I've actually had so many people compliment the city park renovations. And so I just want to give a shout out because it's really a beautiful area.

um to recreate there yeah yeah i like it that was just that one concern uh okay so as far as but that wouldn't be in bicentennial park most likely so anyway so are we all good with bicentennial park as as planned it is okay all right moving on sure um if i may just because i know that we'll probably get back into it uh council member rodriguez but since you brought up the volleyball um i just want to

before we for my notes want to make sure that there's a consensus on as we proceed not maybe not right here but volleyball yeah i didn't want to address it here but if you want us to talk about volleyball in general somewhere um what do y'all think yeah i think it would be helpful just to like get an understanding so that if and when our neighbors approach us because they do know that there is some kind of feelings about you know, whether they can go to school or, you know, whether whatever, whatever, just so that we can answer them. Like this is kind of the, all that goes into something like that. Right. Cause I feel like if neighbors understood that as well and understanding our like constraints, um, that they could make better, uh, choices on like what they would prefer.

Absolutely. Like the high maintenance. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, there's, there's various options when it comes to volleyball courts, uh, where I grew up, we actually had red clay courts. We didn't have sand courts. So that is something that if the council, let's get a little further down and we can revisit it.

Yeah, like I said, if there's a better place where it could live, like the concept of it, that's fine.

I'm going to say we have our youth volleyball as well attended. So they're going to eventually want to go out to other areas to play.

That's a good point. And they're like award winning. Like the volleyball players in the Marcus ASD, they're like, That's the whole thing.

All right. So let's move on to Children's Park. So addressing the roadway, there is the drive there that technically is called Comal Street. And it dead ends there at a T-shaped intersection. And it has parking on either side. The T-shaped intersection would be reconfigured into a cul-de-sac, and we would be adding a parking lot a little further down, which we'll go over here in just a second. The inclusive place gate, there's no changes to. um as i mentioned the parking lot currently located there at the end of that t-shaped intersection east of the playscape there are 21 parking spaces and six ada spaces and the parking lot would be really relocated to the west side of the playscape um adjacent to it with a shared use path There would be 46 permeable parking spaces with nine ADA parking spaces along the shared use path closest to the playscape itself. This mouse is not liking me. Okay. So on street parking there at Children's Park, there's currently 28 parallel spaces there on CMLN. The concept shows, again, that head-in angled spaces, which would give us 33. So this would be modified. The restroom itself. Yes, ma'am.

For that, is that going to take up a lane? No, ma'am. A travel lane? No, ma'am.

Okay.

No, it will not. And I have collaborated with public works, streets, engineering, before it all got even to Park Sport. And why did it just go blank? I don't know. Oh, there it goes. So really tried to do our due diligence to make sure that this was actually a buildable, even though it's very preliminary. Don't want it to be too pie in the sky. The restroom facility would not be moved or changed beyond renovation. Mayor Houston, you did ask on the message board about this. We have had 200,000 in CIP funds set aside for the completion of this particular plan so that we can do renovations at that restroom facility. But I wanted to make sure it wasn't moving before we began any specific design or improvements.

I think that we will play for renovations is what threw me.

oh oh did i yes that's a typo good catch so that's yeah uh my my apologies that's okay we will but we will pay yes pay yeah okay that makes sense um the pavilion currently there is a covered structure located west of the playscape with picnic tables um this plan does show the um Relocation of that structure closer to the actual playscape and the restroom facilities. So this would be a new structure, albeit considered modified because there already is a pavilion present. But one, we do receive a lot of feedback from families that hold birthday parties out there because the pavilion is set a pretty good distance away from the playscape and the restroom. So relocating that pavilion closer just makes it a little easier for those that are using that area. The shared use pathway and the trail, the shared use path does run between the river and the playscape and there is already a natural surface trail as well um, adjacent to, uh, within the children's park area, uh, that connects into that. Um, these modifications to the shared use pathway and the trail system would just make them all ADA compliant. Um, and we, we would be working with the purgatory, uh, channel improvements project as well, which is actually, you'll see on this plan too.

Mayor. Yes, ma'am. I have one question. Go ahead. So Mrs. Case, I guess first question, do we plan, you know, I think I've reached out about the closure of Children's Park during the managed access. Yes. So I am happy to see that there is now going to be a shared use path that will connect adjacent to that parking. Yes, ma'am. I do appreciate that. I just have one additional question. And so I know that the premise of that is for the purpose of ADA and just general accessibility as well. My only question would be, so given the current design, there is no actual connection from that path into Children's Park off the side, the closest you have to go all the way to the top of it to come back around. And so I'm wondering, and I understand it is more impervious cover, but I'm wondering if there can be a connection between that middle part of the, and I wish I could point up here to it. This is, let's see if I can get it to right.

This is a sidewalk. This is a part of the shared use path as well that connects in here.

Good at that.

And then, so the, so that's perfect. So like if people park to the left of that, you know, they have that. So this new path adjacent to the rail, the railway, this one. Yes, ma'am. So right there, if like there was a connection there that would be possible, should somebody take that route? versus going all the way around to the top, you know, if they're in a wheelchair.

Building something here?

Yes, ma'am. I'm just wondering, like, if they're in a wheelchair, it might not be able to get through that grassy area in the same way.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. Yeah, I was just wondering if that could be a consideration.

Absolutely. That's great feedback. Okay. Thank you. Council, you all good with this?

Okay. Thank you.

Can you all capture a picture of that before I have to erase it? Oh, that's a highlighter. You just bragged on me being good at this, and now I'm not going to be good at it.

That thing should be able to like, you should be able to hit a button and capture a screenshot.

OK. Go away. Maybe if I put it back. Sorry. So embarrassing. OK. clear ink. Ha ha. Okay. Now, how do you go away? I need to go back here.

Okay.

Hopefully that gets me what I need. It doesn't. Okay. Oh, good. So that worked out. Okay, so there is the continued enlargement of the Children's Park playscape. We have the large party pavilion shown up there closest to the playscape. And is there anything? I guess we'll go to the next slide there. There we go. any further direction beyond the additional connection. Anything else, council?

Hearing none, moving on.

All righty. Okay, Rio Vista. So on-street parking currently, there are 26 on-street parking spaces along CM Allen, 11 on-street parking spaces along Cheatham Street, Regarding the on-street parking only, there would be, with the re-angled head-in parking, it would go to 22 along CM Allen and 15 parallel parking spaces on Cheatham Street. The reason that you see that reduction of the head-in angled parking on CM Allen is because of the addition of dedicated drop-off pickup zones. So that did reduce our parking by having that zone specifically there on CM Allen. We have one currently, but it's just a couple of parking spots, and we wanted to have a safer zone. For the parking lot specifically, the gravel area that we and staff call Ria Vista Drive has about 54 parking spaces. There are... Park stops there, so counting 54. The large pavilion there, Rio Vista Pavilion, has six spaces there with two ADA-dedicated spaces. The modification along that Rio Vista Drive area would add 120 permeable spaces and then five ADA-designated spaces. With the roadway, Rio Vista Drive currently ends with a cul-de-sac there by the pavilion. This concept shows it being a roundabout, making it easier for emergency vehicles or anyone else to turn around in that lot.

Is that lane next to the tracks? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Yes, ma'am.

As I mentioned, there is one large pavilion. At Rio Vista, the addition of 36 small pavilions would be added. Then with the shared use pathway that currently runs along the river and through the park, there would be additional shared use sidewalks that would be added for folks to traverse the park there. With the managed access fencing currently temporary, it is currently temporary around the perimeter of the park. On the concept, it is shown in a modified way that does not include the tennis and pickleball courts, but it's also shown, and it also shows our modified entry points as well. Continuing on, Rio Vista Swimming Pool currently has an 8,500 square foot swimming pool. This concept does show that to be relocated out to the east side regional park. This is the only feature that has been removed. Added, or I guess modified, would be a splash pad. Currently there is a splash pad there at the Rio Vista Swimming Pool. This plan shows a modified location and increase of size and features. to the splash pad area. The Rio Vista Park restrooms currently, those are attached to the Rio Vista pool house there. These would be relocated to a standalone facility with greater capacity. Continuing on, a new feature that is shown is a concession building. Currently there is a small concession stand and there are vending machines within the Rio Vista swimming pool area. but this would be a new standalone feature. The ranger station, our deputy marshal and park ranger station is located there within Rio Vista and there's no proposed change. The multi-purpose courts as well as a restroom facility. So currently, as I mentioned, the restrooms are attached to the pool. This would be a new restroom and pavilion facility there for the multi-purpose courts. And there is your enlargement of the Rio Vista Park area. And I am available to answer questions.

Council, what about the pool?

I appreciated your question on the message, Board Mayor. You know, I've had people say, express desire, and granted the school district is making some steps towards this, but an additional natatorium I think has been a request for quite a long time. And so while this does not function in the same way as that, it still gives people an opportunity should they want to go swim laps and the like. to do so, and I understand the maintenance component, and it's costly. I know we, I think, repainted the bottom of that, and it was costly, but it just seems like a big loss for the people who do use that.

If we've only got one, I'm thinking, I think people would rather have it in the central part of town than out on Highway 21, so I get one and not the maintenance on two, but I just don't know about putting the only outdoor, I'm gonna call it a fun pool, because at the activity center, that's not where kids come and play right it's more of a serious adult thing yeah so for the fun pool I just I don't I don't know I just can't see I mean I'm not opposed to moving it if we need to do that but at Rio Vista or maybe if it were oh it doesn't necessarily have to be in real Vista but I just I I don't think it should be removed from. Well, it seems like there's some interest in just looking at head noddings. It might be some interest in keeping it. It's the location of it all. I think, I think we're going to work on this end of the table next. So what do you keep it in?

I'm interested in keeping it. Now, if there is a better location within the riverfront park, I understand, but to move it all the way to quail Creek though, for me, it's going to be a non-option because it takes that away from, for the residents nearby.

Right. Yeah, I agree, Mary. Thank you for bringing that up. Like a lot of folks, like they carpool or it's like, I'm going to pick up, you know, my girlfriend's kids and we're all going to hang out and it's easier to access when you're not having to drive.

So yeah, it's the, it's the access. Yeah. Right.

Mr. Scott.

Move it is a no. I'm a no. Mr. Mendoza?

Keep the pool.

Okay. Mr. Gonzalez?

I guess I'll make it unanimous and keep the pool.

Okay. But we are all okay with maybe putting it somewhere else in this same general vicinity. It doesn't have to actually be where it is.

We may.

may want to keep it where it is just because we've made a lot of investment yeah because well there's that well i didn't know what shape it was in and if it was a matter we were going to need to do something big anyway but i i don't know why we can't just leave it but i didn't want to say leave it or else right i guess what was the rationale because i'm assuming that there's like a

Absolutely. So it was originally identified through feedback from our 2019 Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Master Plan. Then we asked again in our surveys, hey, are you good with moving the pool, keeping the pool, renovating the pool? And it was pretty much, it was the primary one, if I recall, is, you know, yeah, I'm okay with relocating it. But then the very close second was, you know, yeah, maybe not. So, I mean, it was definitely, you know, just as you're having this conversation, I think it was very split.

Right. And what, will you remind me, what was the response rate for those surveys?

I think we had over 700 respondents. So, I mean, we had a pretty good number. That makes sense. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm thinking maybe those folks didn't have children.

right or i'm just thinking like the folks that that i'm thinking about to the mayor's point of like for that it's the fun point thanks for like saying that because it triggered birthday parties yeah is that maybe it could be that population just you know does didn't have the time or capacity to fill out their survey but i do feel like generally it's kind of like a if we have to like we're fine with it yeah but if it's like not a um if it's not a whole other deal like if it's feasible to leave it there.

Absolutely, I think that we can work with the design team and see how we can keep it in its current space, but then kind of move the managed access stuff, because I think that is, we have seen kind of a reduction in numbers, not in parties by any means, that is still going strong, but just in overall day swims when we operate our managed access. and we'll have those numbers at the end of the season to compare them to last year. But last year we did see a dip, so definitely want to try and keep that as the council's directed. As far as the splash pad goes, would you want to keep the splash pad there as well, I would imagine, and just kind of maybe kind of give it a little bit of zhuzhen up? Yeah, that makes sense.

Is this the one leadership San Marcos put in? I don't think so. No? No, ma'am. OK. So we're keeping the pool likely in the same place. And splash pad.

Y'all good with keeping the splash pad? Oh, absolutely. Councilman Shane Scott has been an advocate for more of the kiddo stuff. And I'm like, he's like splash pad real quiet. But I feel like if we came for a splash pad, he'd come for us.

Yeah. Y'all good? Over here. OK. All right. Anything else about Rio Vista Park? Yes, ma'am.

Go ahead.

Now's the time.

So I probably should have mentioned it on the last one too, but I guess, so one of the things that came back to us that kind of, well, actually really did change my opinion on sort of the managed access and all those things was the incidence of heat exhaustion. And so, you know, I see that we're going to be hopefully planting more trees. We've been continuing to do that to address that. But I'm also wondering water bottle stations, like water bottle refill stations. Is that a current consideration for this area as well? Oh, yes, ma'am.

Yeah, that's something that we have really shifted. Once the city council adopted the single-use beverage container ban, we added, there is a five-bottle filler station out there. And then adjacent to the... tennis courts and pickleball courts right now too. So yes, absolutely.

Yeah, so I've seen those and I really do appreciate it because they're great. I was just wondering if there was any proposal maybe to expand based on kind of how we're going to be changing patterns of work. Yeah, we can absolutely.

Well, this is very, very high level right now.

But yes, absolutely. Wherever we can add additional water fountains, we want to be able to do that. So I can't exactly point it out at this very moment because I don't know where all the water lines are. But yeah, absolutely. Getting water to folks is very important for us, too. And then I just heard favorite water right down here. Okay, cool.

And then, so this is a probably more unique one, but again, I probably should ask it on the last one. The city of Arizona, just given heat, has been exploring, I think what they call cool, let me see, Cool pavements, I might be wrong on that. But essentially, we talk a lot about impervious cover as it relates to the river and those things. But Arizona is actually trying out the way they paint their concrete to reduce the heat island effect. And so given that we're going to be looking at potentially, I mean, not necessarily a tremendous amount of more parking, but more concrete for sure. I don't know how cost prohibitive something like that is, but I was wondering if perhaps considerations could be made sort of to help reduce the heat that we're already trying to fight. It's only gonna get hotter. And so maybe future considerations for the improvements to the roadways and whatever concrete, Maybe that could be something we look at. Again, I don't know how expensive that is, but I did see a little video about Arizona trying that out.

Sure. I've been seeing stuff on that for a while, including even asphalt. They've just gone lighter. Yeah, so maybe to help reflect.

I can ask around, obviously. I mean, like I said, this is very high level right now, but absolutely, if that's something the council wants us to consider as we get down into it. Awesome.

Well, the question right now is do we want to look at it? We're not committing to. spending millions of dollars on it.

Sure, right now it's permeable, so I think that it would have a lower heat index. Right, right. But absolutely, I think that's something I've seen a lot of folks out in Arizona paint their roofs white for that exact reason, too.

Okay, and then this last one, Mayor, it might receive the same, more of the minutiae, but I just want to throw it out there. So for the managed access, considering we're sort of designing something around keeping that. So I've driven by the river. I know that for the staff that are processing the people coming in and out, we have tents and those things situated for them, which is much appreciated. I guess, are we planning more I guess, firm, in place, permanent, robust shelters for them?

Sure, what we're looking at right now is something that would be mobile, so kind of like an air-conditioned food trailer. That's what we're looking at right now, so that they have access to AC, but also they're able to engage with the folks that are approaching as well. That is what we're looking at because then it can be sealed up, rolled off when we're not operating managed access. So we are looking at that for next year. Okay, cool.

Thank you. Yes.

Also, council member, I know that our half court basketball court is on here, but I want to assure you that the basketball court is included because I know that basketball is a thing.

Yeah, and I really do like the lighting that y'all put on the, again, the city park to shout y'all out. It's beautiful, and people are playing there at night, and it's really cool to see. And I don't know, back to the volleyball, I don't know if this is a potentially better location for something like that.

I think it might be. We would need to look at, I think floodplain, I need to get with a couple of folks. I need to get with engineering and determine what's feasible and where.

Let me go around the table. Are y'all good at looking at adding volleyball court or courts, plural?

Makes sense.

Mr. Mendoza, my question, while you contemplate, my question is, is this something that people are asking for?

I have not personally been asked, so I can't say that they're not discussing it with others.

Okay, so we might want to survey before we commit. I've had people ask.

I guess this whole conversation, the last time we did it, sparked a lot of engagement. People were watching, and so I did have people ask, and to Shane's point or to Mr. Scott's point, I didn't even think about that, that component, that there is interest even with our kids to come out and have a place to do it. And the kids aren't going to go to school. They're just, it's not, it's not a place for them. So this really gives a city an opportunity to have our own.

Here's my, my question. Do we want it inside the managed access or put it over there at the multipurpose courts? That's not inside the managed access.

I'd be open to whatever location would be most practicable and feasible.

Yeah, we're going to need to play a little bit of Jenga with adding the pool back. So I'll work with our design team once we get the pool back in place and then make some recommendations that we'll bring back to council for your consideration.

Thank you. Are you all good with bringing volleyball back? I would think that there might be people who ask, The activity center, how often is volleyball played at the activity center?

I'm going to look at Ms. Ramos.

How often do people use volleyball? Just what's the inquiry at the activity center of people in volleyball?

So we do have adult leagues that play there. seasons of that um and then we have youth that also play there um and there is also open play volleyball um to where they're there on wednesday nights just for open play okay so we do have a pretty good crowd that comes in place so we do have a place currently yes an indoor facility maybe that's why they're not asking to play outside

Yeah, but I think when the park staff was gracious enough to give members on council, I think the city of Kyle also came along the tour of the activity center. I think one of the reoccurring themes that I realized is y'all are sort of, to put it frankly, busting at the seams. We are. And so I also think about how these potential improvements to the parks does alleviate some of what y'all are dealing with. I mean, I don't see us going out for bond anytime soon to put another activity center, even though I would wish for us to. So this, I really think of it too, to alleviate some of what the city staff is already dealing with too over there.

Okay. So we'll note that we've got active volleyball available at the activity center. but you'll let us know what the expense on this might be.

Yeah, we'll get some options, whether it's sand or are you all okay with us looking at various materials? Okay, all right, just want to confirm that so that I'm not bringing back something that you're not expecting.

Whatever it is, and I would say the lower the maintenance, the better. Yes, ma'am.

I would think you'd almost have to go with sand because unless you're wearing knee pads all the time and sliding across the rocks or...

Yeah, I grew up playing on red clay, which was not, I never played in sand. It was not bad. It was easier on your knees, but definitely the sand is more high maintenance. But I've never maintained the red clay court, so I don't know what the maintenance on that is. But I think we do have a neighboring city that also has red clay courts, so I can ask them. And then I can also ask the other cities that have sand volleyball and bring back information for you guys. That'd be good.

Okay. Moving right along.

Well, I guess is there any other? Anything else?

Anything else? We're good.

Okay.

All right, going into Raymond Lucio Park. So currently the on-street parking, there are 53 parallel spaces on the north side there along the baseball complex. There are 13 there on the residential side. What the concept shows is 67 head-in angled on the north side. 13 could modify a little bit. We won't know of total. totally until we get down into further design, but keeping those residential parking spaces for those folks, as well as making sure that we're keeping that bike lane protected there as well. So showing that modification. Parking lot for the baseball fields. There's currently 137 parking spaces with four ADA spaces. The plan shows 238, Shows 220, but it would be 213 permeable parking spaces, and seven of those 220 would be ADA spaces. The parking lot there along the Raymond Lucio Pavilion, there are 30 parking spaces there with one ADA space, and those spaces there for the pavilion are included in the above parking spaces. For the concession and restroom building, there's currently a restroom and concession building in the middle of the complex. An additional concession stand and restroom facility would be added, so that would be new. The baseball fields, council's already provided direction to keep all five, so it would be a renovated facility. The maintenance facility council also referenced last time as well. Currently, we have about a 500-square-foot building. We would be adding a 1,200-foot square building there. Then the Raymond Lucio Pavilion, that remains unchanged. And here is your enlargement of the Raymond Lucio baseball area and park. And if there's any additional modification to amenities, seeking direction from council.

Council?

I got the hammer, man.

I don't have anything. No, ma'am, just again, I don't know for anybody who comes off that bottom corner through the, it looks like it connects the shared use path adjacent to the, but I would say if not, maybe the same consideration should somebody be. Yes. Okay. Yes, absolutely.

And we'll also have the East to West connection that will be under 35. Yeah. So they'll be able to traverse along there as well. So they have a couple of different ways to get over to that section.

All right. Solve everything with Ramon Lucio while I was gone.

I didn't have anything else.

Okay. I'm good. Okay. So no changes.

Okay. All right. Well, we can move on to the Eastside Regional Park then. Here is your zoomed out concept B that we discussed previously. And these are your enlargements. So this first enlargement is going to be kind of the central activity area. It's going to have the demonstration garden, food truck area, outdoor classroom, nature play, a large pavilion, a medium pavilion, as well as a small pavilion. There's also, I think I mentioned food truck area, but I can't remember, did I? Okay, sorry. There's so many things. There's an open space for just kind of an open lawn. Then we have the 8,500 square foot pool. There's the two to five age group for all abilities playground. A five to 12 all abilities playground. You have your game tables in that area there, as well as a splash park, restroom facility, parking, and then you can see the multi-purpose fields there. Those would be grass fields that could be used for flag football, lacrosse, soccer, your field sports there. Kind of further down, you see where it's noted about an 18-hole disc golf course as well. This is kind of in that open area where the floodway goes, and there's a lot of topography that'll add to the development of an 18-hole disc golf course. So, open to council's discussion and direction here.

Any thoughts, concerns on this section, which is the central section of...

And I guess I need to mention, Mayor, that the pool relocation or the pool location here was because of, as you mentioned, the absence of a pool there at Rio Vista. Right. So I would like to know if the City Council wants to have another pool here, or is it more of like an elaborate splash park situation?

What do you all think? Although I'm not opposed to having another pool, I'm just thinking maintenance and just more expense and just the nature of the different parks. And so I think we made the right decision as to if we're only going to have one where it would go. How much, what's the maintenance in a splash park?

I really don't know. I mean, it's probably on the chemical side, it probably is about the same as... Probably a little less. Okay. Probably a little less than our current pool situation. Yeah.

I'm going to go with Mr. Scott's suggestion. If it is cheaper to the mayor's point about maintenance and given that we've kept it at Rio Vista, I'd be personally fine with an expansion of the splash pad. Okay. I guess just a quick question. Do splash pads typically have like a shaded area? structure or is that just not a thing? Cause people might get cold. I'm just trying to wonder.

I, I'm, I've not seen them. We can investigate it obviously. Okay. Um, and see what, what other folks do. It's possible that they may have, you know, kind of those high levels sales versus like an actual structure, like what we have over the play scape, um, for example. So I'm sure we could add various types of shade. And it might not be a thing. I'm just wondering.

Yeah, I don't know either. Or I wouldn't have a problem if we leave a space for a pool. Because if we ever decided we needed a second one, this is probably where it ought to go. So we leave the space. We do something that's changeable. And then we leave the space, but we just not do it for.

I think that that is a wonderful idea. I think that leaving it here with maybe a note, future development or something like that, but leaving it kind of in that same space, because we'll probably utilize similar pump systems for what we're using for the splash park and for the pool.

So we're talking about we'll do the splash park, hold on the pool, and in the meantime, it can be tables or whatever would fit in that area. Yeah, we can do that. Mr. Scott, you good with that?

Yeah, that sounds good. And that's where all the new ball fields are going to be, right?

Yes.

Yes, sir. Having a swimming pool out there, I'm not sure it would do as well with people bringing their kids in to play softball. Maybe the little ones can go play the splash pad or something while they're playing. Sure. I don't know.

That's why I thought this wasn't the place for the only pool. But we're getting to be 100,000 now, and we're going to keep growing. We're going to want a second pool.

Our numbers do show that we will eventually need a second pool. Yeah. Yeah.

Wasn't there a pool out there? Yeah.

It's a small recreation pool. Yeah, it's definitely not something that we could rehab. Okay. Yeah.

I assume that that wasn't an option. Mr. Mendoza, what do you think? What are your thoughts on this? Nothing's changing with the fields. They'll be there. Mr. Gonzalez? Ms. Garza? Okay, I think maybe we're all comfortable with that. Is there anything else on this in the central activity area of our east side park? No? We'll move on to one of the other sides. Okay.

Okay, well, we just went through that. Yep, done. Okay, there we go. Okay, so this is the enlargement of what we've labeled as the north baseball and multi-use courts. So here you have the five field complex with parking. There is the adjacent 5K loop trail that will loop around the entire property. There are restrooms and concessions, as well as a maintenance facility for the park's maintenance staff to house their equipment. There's bioretention facilities all around this area. The parking there is proposed at 300 spaces. There are small pavilions there along the various pickleball, so those are dedicated pickleball courts there. Then there are tennis courts and basketball court. There are two, Oh my gosh, I just brain dumped. What is it? Racquetball. Completely brain dumped the term. There are two, I guess technically four because the wall separates it. So there's outdoor racquetball courts there as well. Then we have restroom facility, additional parking as well. And you can kind of see at the very bottom there, and I failed to mention it before, the two-acre dog park that's out there as well. So you can barely see the very tip of that.

That's going to be really good. Council?

In the center of one of the fields we went to, they had very much the same setup. In the center, they had it built where it was covered all the way around. You could keep families under picnic tables there.

Was there a concession stand under there?

Yeah, there was, actually.

Just to extend the shelter a little bit.

Yeah, I'm just saying.

Roof line.

Just saying they thought about it.

Okay. Mr. Mendoza, we good with Ms. Gonzalez? Ms. Garza? Ms. Rodriguez?

I'm trying to pull up the e-mails. the plethora of emails. I've got that addressed in the next one. Okay, because this is just the north that we're talking about. Yes, correct. This is not the part up against Blanco River Village.

Okay, we're good. We'll move on.

All right, moving on. I'm sorry. Mrs. Case, just one question. Yes, ma'am. And I should ask this on the storage, the upgrades to storage facilities. Is it just for storage, or does city staff also work inside there? Are they ever inside that it would require A.C.?

It would probably have some office space, break area that would be included in there as well. Whenever we do bring this online, we'll have to have dedicated staff out there, so it would have to have a dedicated break area for them, yes.

Perfect. I just wanted to make sure.

When there's a tournament, do the tournament managers need an office-ish space for what they're doing, and do we have that on this plan? Yes.

Yes, we have an umpire room. So that's what's currently at Gary and then at Raymond Lucio. It's on the second story of the concession building.

As long as we got it, I'm good. Yes. I just didn't know how much space any. All right.

Okay. Now. For this side. The south side, or the south baseball, as we've labeled it. So you can see that 5K loop, as well as that little dashed line area. That is actually what Ms. Parker had referenced. That's our regional area. flood storage area. So we already have that planned in here as well. Our regional flood storage area. So it's additional flood mitigation measures that we're able to take as we develop the property.

So we will be doing that as time goes on. And would you... Enlighten us all and to what the little hash thingy that's not sure on our map, but it's on this one.

Yes, ma'am Yeah, so that is actually the floodway So it is Really can't put any structures in the floodway and mr. Pantaleon may be able to speak further on specific restrictions that floodway brings but that that floodway does go through about a quarter of the parking area and two fields and

Any enlightenment other than, because I noticed that they've got the concession stand, that part is out of the floodway, but you know, we may think that's where it is, and sometimes nature has other ideas.

Yes, Mayor, the floodway is the area within the floodplain where the velocities will be the highest, and so you really want to, prevent the placement of any new structures or anything that will obstruct flow in that area. So in a lot of communities you will see park development, but mainly lawns, maybe soccer fields or things that don't have structures built in the floodway, but certainly you do want to prevent any type of structural improvements in that zone.

Yeah, because I'm thinking backstops. Backstops will hold a whole bunch of stuff that's flowing through.

Well, and some of those are breakaway too, so I wouldn't defer to this case as far as what type of backstops, but certainly.

We're pretty far away from getting there right now. This is 30,000 foot level. But if we were to build in there, then yes, they'd all have to be breakaway as well as the fencing.

And if it's breakaway, then what? It goes floating down the river?

It depends. Not necessarily.

Some of them actually have hinges that lay down.

Yeah. Yeah, they just kind of.

Well, now that's clever.

Yeah. OK. Texas State has them? Texas State has them.

Really? Cool. OK. I believe that this is the space that we said, let's keep it in the plan. We want the five field one to see that one done. and at some point in the future, since we're gonna keep Ramon Lucio ball fields and these, that we probably didn't need these for the foreseeable future. And so, you know, planning that. I'm wondering, do we even want to propose having these for the future, if that's right, in the floodway area?

No, ma'am, for me, and I was a proponent for this initially, but I think given the consideration both to the floodway, to the responses by the neighbors, and I could have sworn I put these, all of the emails that we got in a separate folder that I cannot find right now.

Well, many of them preferred not to have any active responses I took that to mean a lot of cars, a lot of cheering, that kind of noise. And of course, this is on that end, although these maps are not laid out the way Google Maps are. So I'm trying to match up what we've got here. My request was, since the parking was going to be closest to them, that we take that parking and spin it so that the parking and the car door slamming and all that and the road noise, so if we could move that, those are roadways, right? The gray that's leading into the parking lot?

Yes, ma'am, yes, that's correct.

And if somehow we could not have those behind these folks' homes.

Mayor, do you, in that, those, Yes. Do you have the concept A that Ms. Parker had mentioned?

I actually did ask. I provided that to Mr. Meagle. So if you would like for us to bring that up, it is not going to be a zoomed in version. It is going to be a large version, but Mr. Meagle is pulling it up for us. I appreciate that. He can zoom in as much as possible. So this was the concept A was the primary concept that came out of the citizen engagement prior to Parks Board's conversation.

That's based right there, which would be, if we went with this, would be more of the natural. But what I like about the one that we liked, is that those multipurpose fields are over here. So they're further away from the homes. So I think if we keep B and just take out that set of fields, that will take out some parking. and some other stuff?

Sure. One thing to consider, since you're speaking about fields being adjacent to homes, on concept B, these multi-purpose fields are right behind bogey lane. So in this version, they're not. They were moved from this location over to behind the other neighboring. And that one is in the ETJ. It's not in the city limits, but if we're talking about having the same considerations.

It's a lot less dense also. Bogey Lane also, people had eight foot of water in their houses in one of the floods.

I really do like the idea of the multipurpose fields. But yeah, I guess I was just trying to, we mentioned this with the riverfront park kind of having to move things around and redo it. I guess without kind of seeing where we would put those, because to Ms. Case's point, the same considerations, despite it not being Blanco River Village, would probably apply here if those neighbors maybe found out. And I'm presuming. They've come and voiced their opinions before. It would be kind of like pushing the issue to a different side. And so I wonder if there's a way in which we can sort of marry it all together and keep those multipurpose fields.

Just push them to the middle.

But yeah, position them in a way that's more... With keeping the baseball? The multipurpose fields.

So kind of as it is shown here, perhaps? Keep the five plex... but not the fourplex.

Yeah, so I think that the way that this is oriented, I think kind of achieves that.

I'm not seeing Blanco River Village. It's going to be, there you go. Thank you, Hayden. Right. If those maybe were turned perpendicular to where they are and the parking was more between the baseball fields and these so that that's the majority of your parking. So when you've got a tournament, you may or may not have multipurpose field activities going on and all the parking could be used for that.

So we can definitely look at that. One of the challenges whenever we were looking at this is the topography in that area, which is kind of where it landed. in this concept and why the disc golf course is where it is, is there's a lot of hills and a lot of trees in that area, so I don't know that we necessarily want to.

Disturb it. That makes sense.

Well, the gas easements, although, well, it's on this side, right, but we're wanting to get it away from, yeah. So we can definitely work with it if it's even just a reduction in the multipurpose fields, you know, reducing it from what's currently there down to two. That's still more than we have right now. So we can work on reorienting.

Yeah, I just think of that area out there as being pretty flat. So we didn't have any topo maps. I wasn't sure why things were necessarily where they were. But... I think we need to not have these that close to people's homes, including that roadway.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's going right behind their houses.

Sure, I mean, like I said, we can also just remove two and just reduce it down to two because that would reduce parking and it would also reduce its approach towards the neighbors.

Yeah, I think that's great. I think it's... I'm glad to see the consideration from the body for this because we want people to love this park. Absolutely. It's going to be such a generational park.

This is a big legacy project.

Exactly, exactly.

So we don't want sentiments to already be muddied. So I'm glad to see the collaboration here. So we've taken out the four baseball fields. We're not going to have a roadway right behind the folks' houses. And we're going to see where we can move that multi-purpose field. You know, maybe just... maybe perpendicular, because if we don't use, I'm assuming that the parking, next to it is on flat land, so if it can be pushed a little further and then whatever, we'll let people figure it out.

Council, are we all good with all these changes? Okay, perfect. We'll have the design team rework this. Just want to mention that we may need some sort of maintenance access road there along that gas line easement, so I just want to confirm that council is okay if we have to have that maintenance road There is, since there is that gas line, they actually, the gas. You have to allow access. Yeah, we have to allow access for them to be able to maintain this line.

If it's ever so often somebody's out there, that's fine. Yeah, it's not. But it's this car that's going back and forth all weekend long. Sure thing. It's not.

Yeah, no, that's going to be good. Okay, perfect. All righty then. All right.

People are really excited about the disc golf, by the way. We received a lot of excited feedback ahead of time whenever we were working on this project. So we were really excited to get some really great professional feedback. as well, so I'm sure that they will have their hands in actual design of the course.

I didn't even know what that was until I moved to San Marcos, and then I understood the hype.

Most people call it frisbee golf, but that's broken down.

Because you always see them play over there by the cemetery.

Yeah, there's a couple of baskets over there.

Oh, it's the old San Marcos Academy place.

I used to do that with my Bible study, and I was like, oh, I get the hype now. I was an undergrad.

All right, so I already have direction there, and let's see.

One more.

Come on, there we go. Okay, this is the riverside amenities section. Since we zoomed in everywhere else, I wanted to provide an enlarged version here. We already spoke about the regional floodplain storage. Just note the limits shown are approximate and may require adjustment. to accommodate drainage in connection with Blanco River floodplain, so it's just there conceptually. We would have continued restoration and protection of the natural areas there along the river. We would have kind of an improved area for personal watercraft launching. It is a very steep grade over there, so we would need to make sure that it is safe for folks to actually get in there, we'd have to make it accessible as well. So whenever you see kind of improved riverbank, that was thoroughly discussed at the parks and rec board meeting. They were very worried about what does that mean? It's not necessarily doing anything to the riverbank beyond just making sure that it's accessible and safe for people. then of course you can see the 5k loop trail there there's a multi-use regional trail that would go along so that right there is part of the great springs project so we're planning our future connections um that is also kind of one of the on the note of our greenways plan within our transportation master plan We'll eventually have an east connection there along the Blanker River. Then there is a canoe kayak drop-off with limited parking. So just because it's so close to the river, don't want to build a huge parking lot there.

So open to any feedback. Just a question. I'm looking at Google Maps, and it looks like there's all kinds of paths through the country club already? Is that like just golf cart trails? Golf cart trails, yes, ma'am.

Yeah. And there's a good possibility that we're going to be able to maintain some of that. Just depends on once we get further into design and construction, what we're actually able to make usable and whatnot.

Sometimes it may work, sometimes it may not. Correct. Anything else here, Council?

Yes, ma'am, just one real quick question. Is there water in the river?

Yes, in this section, it does have water. It's not like Five Mile Dam.

Okay, and the reason I ask is because it's really cool to see that we're going to be giving access despite the steep grade. And this case might be more into the minutiae, given that this is high overview, but If we're going to be putting people there, maybe also considerations for people who want to fish. Oh, yeah. Y'all have those wonderful litter things for, I guess, fish material? Yes, absolutely.

For the fishing line and everything. Yes, that would be part of our standard operating. Beautiful. Yeah, making sure the string can go somewhere and not in somebody's foot.

Right. Are we good with this part?

Okay. Okay. Okay, we're good. And I believe that that was it. So I guess the last thing, does council wish to review updated concepts at a future work session? I believe the answer is going to be yes, considering we do have a number of changes that we need to make. So we will work with city clerk's office and city manager's office to identify the best work session and get this turned around for you all. Perfect.

Oh, you don't. So I was going to say, Ms. Reyes, does this almost close us out? Because I was going to give a big thank you.

Yes. The only question that I had is just when will we be talking about how we pay for this? And so I understand the plan.

You mean the folks are not going to be building tomorrow?

It's going to be in the preliminary design report itself, but as I mentioned during our last meeting, it will likely take a bond issuance, and likely for the Eastside Regional Park, it will take multiple phases. I don't anticipate it's going to be an all-and-done type of scenario.

I just want to make sure for the public watching that they understand that This is a plan. Obviously, council needs to adopt the plan, but it's not funded, and so we've just got to make sure that we work on the funding strategy as of going forward.

Will we be doing the improvements to the existing parks first?

I guess that's council direction. I would assume that that would be our best course of action. I think that's the most bang for the buck. I agree. Some of those, again, it would likely take a parks bond issuance for us to be able to do a number of those improvements because all I have funded right now is $200,000 for the restroom at Children's Park. So it's a starting place.

Okay, we'll have that conversation when we talk about this again. Yes, ma'am.

And just to also be thinking about the staffing plan that it's going to take to do that. Absolutely. Just again, because that probably wouldn't happen with the bond election. That would be something that we'd have to have capacity to be able to do.

It'd be future commitments. Thanks to Ms. Case and your staff, thanks to the consultants, and thanks to the 700, thanks to the people who came to the open houses. Yeah. and provided input in any way, shape, or form that it was done. Absolutely.

So thanks to the public also. I appreciate Council's guidance and feedback, and we'll bring you back some updated concepts, and we'll go from there. All right.

Cool. So Ms. Reyes, does this close this one out?

Yes, Mayor.

All right, then, Ms. Trena, if you will read item three. Yes.

The San Marcos City Council will convene an executive session pursuant to section 551.071 of the Texas Government Code consultation with the attorney to receive legal advice regarding the officer-involved shooting on June 26, 2026 at the 3000 block of State Highway 123.

Looking for a motion to go into executive session. Motion by Ms. Rodriguez. Seconded by Mr. Gonzalez. And we will vote.

Mr. Bissell. Mary Houston. Aye. Ms. Garza.

Aye.

Mr. Scott. Aye. Mr. Mendoza. Aye. Mr. Gonzalez. Aye. Ms. Rodriguez. Aye. Motion passes 6-0-1, absent.

And we will go into executive session at 4-58. Thank you. We have returned from our executive session that we concluded at 6.08. There is no one signed up for question and answer with press and public. Therefore, the next item on our agenda is adjournment, and I will adjourn this meeting at 6.10. And we need to allow a few minutes for our control room folks to close out one meeting and start up the next one.