San Marcos’ Comprehensive Plan functions as the City’s road map, guide, and vision for the way San Marcos will develop and gives guidance to its leaders. To develop the Comp Plan, San Marcos hired a consulting firm and appointed several members of the community to advise in its development. After the original Comp Plan development process, citizens and a subcommittee made revisions to the Comp Plan and that document is entitled the “Comprehensive Plan ++”. The Comp Plan ++ should be voted in by city council.
With the voting on the proposed San Marcos Comprehensive Plan coming up next Monday on Nov. 6, I would like to express my profound disappointment with the original Comp Plan process and consequent results of it, why the original Comp Plan should be voted down, and why the revised “Comp Plan ++” should be adopted.
Sadly, no one seems happy with the original Comp Plan. I respect the opinion of others, including the opinion of our local realtors. We do not always have to agree, but should remain open to all ideas. The original Comp Plan consultants were not so enlightened. I served as a Comprehensive Planning Committee (“Committee”) member and I can tell you, we were an enthusiastic group who believed we could make a difference in the vision for San Marcos. Looking back on the process, the consultants did not pay attention to us. In the end, they used a faulty methodology that allowed them to cherry pick what they wanted. When they analyzed the data, sheer numbers were basically meaningless. When they did not get the answers they wanted, they went out and found different ones, overruling and canceling the recommendations of the original Comprehensive Plan Committee, by selecting ideas they were fishing for from a “Steering Committee.” And steer they did!
Yet, they claim the process was fair, and the results were what the “public” wanted. It is shameful that they took advantage of our time. As we spent hours in many meetings to offer “Vision”, they pretended to take into account the Committee’s opinion. Then they proceeded to ignore everything we offered, and never published the raw data from the meetings with citizens. The results of the original Comp Plan seemed to be preconceived by the so-called visionary consultants before the process began. Their idea of the process seemed to be in selling their ideas to the City. The interaction with the Committee and community was not at all transparent. The Committee was never allowed to see, or much less vote on, the final draft of the original Comp Plan. With such a disappointing process, it is no surprise that the results are disappointing, and a re-hash of their “take-it-or-leave it” design.
San Marcos’ Comprehensive Plan will guide our growth for the next decade. We must get this right. The original Comp Plan that was submitted was poorly written, contradictory, and full of grammatical errors. The language in the original document was so vague that the concepts could be widely interpreted to mean many things. Considering the money San Marcos spent on developing the original Comp Plan, the final product was shockingly amateurish. It is no surprise that many pages of corrections were needed just to clarify ideas and concepts.
The more inclusive “Comprehensive Plan ++” should be adopted.
I recommend that our City Council reject the original proposed Comp Plan and choose the edited version “Comprehensive Plan ++”. If that does not happen, then the City Council should select another consultant group and citizen Committee that will develop a Comp Plan with a transparent methodology and open process, without bias.
