Neighborhood Commission - Regular Meeting

Well, welcome to the San Marcos-Margaret Commission meeting. On Wednesday, June 17th, 2026. The time is currently 6.06.

Yvonne, please call roll.

Samantha, going to be this?

Here. Robert Evie here Rick Kennedy here. I think that's not this Michael Adams. Well in South data. Yeah, Michael Vernon here really said. Heidi holiday.

Here Jason about this. Here Tyler bar so. I see Tyler.

He said something.

Okay. Alexis Monsonaris. Absentees are Bobby Gaxay-Hernandez, Michael Adams, Rua Gleason, and Alexis Monsonaris.

Very good. It's time for the citizen comment period. People wishing to participate during the citizen comment portion of the meeting must email ypelacios at sanmarcoustx.gov prior to 12 p.m. on June On the day of the meeting, a link to join by mobile device, laptop or desktop computer will be provided as well as a call in number to join by phone. Do we have anybody for citizen?

We do we have a little.

It's okay. Let me just wait till the end of the meeting at the end.

We do have a question and answer session at the end. So it's okay. Questions.

Well, after the presentations and stuff.

But there's not any. There isn't presentations. Yeah, there isn't any presentations.

That there will be some talks about. She had a presentation or something.

I don't have a presentation.

No.

Yeah.

That's what I saw on the agenda or something.

Yeah. Well, you signed up for a citizen comment. Yeah. And then I'll start the timer.

It's three minutes.

OK.

Okay, man.

Well, my name is Rodrigo Amaya. I want to come up here. You know, I know being on the commissions and boards is a volunteer, and, you know, your time is valuable and stuff, and I'm glad people make it and come up here and try to help out with, you know, addressing issues in the city. I sat with the neighborhood commission a couple years back, and my experience was very, very, you know, it wasn't pleasant at all. Uh, 1 of the issues that I've always had with just about a lot of the folks with the city is the. Qualifications are you qualified to make recommendations? Um, and that's a big concern to me because. Obviously, what I see out there in the city is a clear reflection that there's leadership that's lacking. I come across issues just about every day on the way up here. I had an unmarked San Marcos PD unit just shot in front of me by a park. No lights, no nothing. You know, I'm a former cop myself. You don't do stuff like that. You lose the respect of the public. That is not something... I know you guys are the Neighborhood Commission. I know some of y'all, you know, deal with Chief Danridge and stuff like that. I brought these issues up with him, and nothing's been done. I brought it up with the Assistant City Manager, Mr. Lonzo Anderson.

Nothing's been done.

I've shared it with Mr. Rodney Gonzalez. Nothing's been done. So, you know, I'm not going to stop because there's some issues. There's too much money being spent Recklessly on, you know, things that I mean, the priorities are just it's very, very obvious. You know, I went to the river. If you go up there on Cheatham Street, there's a telephone pole. I got a picture of it for those of you that are interested that somebody tied a rope to it because it's broken on the bottom. I don't know who did that. But the argument, the frustration I have is it's on Cheatham Street, and I see city vehicles up and down the road day in, day out. And my question is, where's the proactive approach to addressing these things? I see them. I don't work for the city. You know, that's not my job. We got all kinds of department after department after department. You know, we got all these things. And, you know, for me, I hear the word measurable progress. It's very rare that I see it. So that right there is the reason I want to come up here because I know when I was with the neighborhood commission, the issue of, People qualified to be on these boards and commission was an issue and they were actually thinking about separating some money, allocating some money to send some people to go get trained. And then somebody from the press came out and said, how can you spend citizens money to go get trained people on a position that's being volunteered? It's voluntary, you know. So that is the frustration that I have because some of the decisions that you guys make are very, very serious and they affect the community here as a whole. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Thank you for your time.

The next item on the agenda is to consider approval of the May 20th, 2026 meeting minutes. I will give approximately three minutes to read through the minutes and I will seek a motion to approve.

Does anybody want me to put them on the screen or are you guys good? I'll make a motion to approve. Thank you, sir. I'll second. Okay.

Come on. Call.

Samantha Benavidez? Yes. Robert Eady?

Yes.

Rick Kennedy?

Yes.

Bobby Gossett Hernandez? Michael Adams, Roland Salcedo.

Yes.

Michael Vernon.

Yes.

Rua Gleason, Heidi Holliday. Yes. Jason Valdez.

Yes.

Tyler Barstow.

Yes.

And Alexis Monsonaris.

OK. Meeting minutes for May 20th are approved.

Can you all hear me? This is Mike Vernon. Yes. I'd like to make a motion. Can Roland either turn off his camera or I don't like watching people eat while we're doing a meeting. I think it's really unusual.

I apologize. I'm done. It was just some crackers. What? I apologize. I'm done. It was just some crackers.

Oh, okay. And Mike, I'm sorry, but all commissioners need to be on camera during the meeting for the open meetings. So that would not be possible. First item up for action and discussion. Reminder, there is no meeting in July for summer recess. We will reconvene in August. Scheduled Part B, the scheduled day for the recommendation resolution regarding recommendation 2025-03RRPRB of the Parks Board regarding the Riverfront Eastside Regional Park preliminary design plans has been moved to July 7th work session at 3 p.m. at City Hall. It was originally scheduled for June, but they have rescheduled it to July 7th. at the 3 p.m. work session. Our resolution will be included in the packet of the City Council to consider. Item C, Director Shannon O'Brien wishes to discuss the tenant villa rights and next steps.

Thanks, everybody. So just real quick, I wanted to talk about one of the council's strategic initiatives. And I think Greg Carr might have been working on a resolution on this before, but there's a desire to take a tenant bill of rights to an ordinance. And so I, I'm not here today to give a presentation on that just yet. I just wanted to put that on everyone's radar. I've already drafted a 1st, copy of a rough draft of it and I've passed it through a couple of the council members so far. And my plan is to bring it to this commission. Hopefully sooner rather than later, my goal is to get this across the finish line. Before the end of the year, so your feedback and your recommendations are going to be very, very important to to the process. And as some of you guys are not familiar with a tenant bill of rights. The purpose, and I'm just going to read you the purpose of the ordinance and I'm going to leave it there and I'm hoping by the next meeting. Which I guess will be in August, then I might have a draft to already give to you guys to take a look at. And so we can have a discussion about, but the purpose of the ordinance is to ensure fair, equitable and secure housing for all tenants. By establishing clear protections, responsibilities and standards that promote dignity, stability and community well being. So that's what this is going to encompass. It's kind of 1 of the big things I think council has concerns with is fair housing. And in addition to that, um. We see it a lot, and we've seen it a few times in code enforcement too, where folks are calling in because they're being evicted, but not through the proper processes. And so we want to make sure that we have something codified in ordinance, even though it's already in state law. We want to have something codified in ordinance. The hope is to, at some point, have something codified where landlords are required to include Eviction the proper eviction process. In the lease during the signing of the lease, so that all tenants are aware of the proper process. So that's where we're at right now. And so hopefully by August, I'll have something to bring to this commission. And Roland, I want to hear your question, but I also want to point out Mark is in the room. Mark is 1 of our code compliance officers. He's worked here with me. For close to 7 years, and he is now the interim code compliance manager. So he'll be, he'll be attending some of these meetings. He's done some great things. I know he knows Tyler. he's worked with tyler before just identifying uh property maintenance issues apartment student housing and things like that so i want to make sure i introduce you guys before we moved on to anything else you'll you'll probably see mark um in the mix as well so anyway roland what you got i'm sorry did i just take your job robert

I have a question, Shannon. The ordinance that was passed for the right to assimilate, does that include assisted living facilities?

The right to organize ordinance? I don't know the answer to that, but I'll get an answer for you and get it to you. I'm not certain. Yes, sir.

Okay, thank you. That's what I want to know. I appreciate it.

Yeah, I've got a copy here and I can just send it to you.

Okay, how did you know it included assisted living facilities? Because I don't know if you know what's going on with book itself. They are having issues there. They got bought out by gemstone and they, when it was broke down South. they were part of the medicaid waiver program the star plus waiver program and have 12 residents that have been living there for the last 10 11 years and now they're having to move out and they were only given the 30-day notice by by the daughter from the from what the daughter of one of the residents said and they have been facing kind of She's been facing backlash to organize a meeting, and I didn't know if they fell under that scope.

Are you taking notes, Mark? Okay, awesome. We'll get something together, and we'll reach out to you, Roland, okay?

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Heidi. Heidi.

Yeah. So I was just wondering, I love that you are drafting this. I'm really in favor of these and I've done some work on them before. I know there were folks organizing in town on this. Are you in coordination with them on what you're including in the ordinance as well?

So if you're talking about Maxfield Baker. Yeah. Yes, yes. I've included him in the conversations. Okay, great. Actually, yeah, I ran my first draft through Maxfield himself. Okay, perfect. So the reason I don't have something for you today is because we had some edits after meeting with some of the council and with Mr. Baker. And so I wanted to get those edits cleared up and get it over to legal because I think in some cases state law preempted Some of the requests, and we just want to make sure that we're doing things legally, that we can actually enforce locally. So, yes, ma'am.

Okay, perfect. Yeah, I had just talked with him about it and some other folks and wanted to make sure that they were being consulted on it to make sure that it's answering all the concerns that were brought up by the community groups as well. Thank you. Yes, ma'am.

Mm-hmm.

Any other questions for Ms. O'Brien about the tenant building rights? Okay. Hearing none, we're going to move on to reports from Ms. Tiffany Harris. I'm sorry.

Hold on. Hold on just one second. Sorry. You got me when I wasn't quite prepared. Hi, everyone. How are you all doing? So, I guess one thing I need to mention to you all, and some of you already know, but this will be my last meeting as I will be retiring on July 30th. My last official day is August 3rd, but anyhow. It's been great working with you all, and thank you so much for the opportunity to work with all of you. It's been fantastic. I am just going to be becoming a full-time. I have two grandbabies, and I'm going to spend some time watching them while they're still young. So I just wanted to announce that. And then, Yvonne, do you have all the details that you'd like to share about the – there is another – The police department is have a sector for public meeting on June the 30th. I believe it starts at 6 or 6.30 p.m. I don't have the location. Hopefully she can she can just provide you with all the details, maybe in an email later. But that's that's all I've got in the community at the moment. And that's it. That's all I've got.

So I think the meeting starts at 6.30. And it's on June the 30th, and it's for sector four. And it's going to be at the event place that I cannot pronounce. Yes. So I think, you know what I'm going to do is I'll send you the flyer tomorrow. I'll send it out to everybody. I know Bobby's been involved in that planning process as well.

Okay. Okay. Thank you, Tiffany, for everything you did for us and everything you did for the city. And we wish you well. God bless. You will be missed. Thank you so much, Roland. Thank you.

Same, Tiffany. I'm excited for you to be full-time grandma, but I'm really going to miss you.

Thank you so much. Working for the city really has been the pinnacle, I think, of my career. It's been a fantastic experience. No complaints at all. It just was the right time. So thank you all.

No complaints. How long have we worked together, Tiffany?

Six years I've been with the city, but I have 17 years with the Council of Government, so that qualifies me. Puts me over the 20 year mark so.

OK, any any? Last words for Tiffany.

Very good, congratulations.

Thank you very much, Jason.

I appreciate it.

We now move on to the question and answer session with the present public. Mr. Amaya, do you have any further questions on anything related to the agenda we discussed? Thank you. With no further questions, this does bring us to adjournment. I motion to adjourn the meeting.

Do I have a second?

Mike Vernon seconds. I saw your hand, Mike. Uh, I turn at 625.

Yes, Samantha.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, Tyler Barstow. Yes, Alexis. I've earned a 626.

Thank you everybody.