LOCAL ELECTION
There will be San Marcos City Council seats as well as mayoral candidates on the November ballot, and Miguel Arredondo, San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District Trustee At-Large, has just added his name to the ticket in a run for San Marcos mayor against incumbent Jane Hughson.
“I'm a fifth generation San Marcos native, born and raised here in the community. I like to share with folks that I am a proud product of our public school system, San Marcos CISD, and a proud Texas State alumnus,” Arredondo said. “I served as Representative [Erin] Zwiener’s District Director [starting in 2021 and was promoted to Chief of Staff in 2023] in the legislature, so that definitely kept me busy. But when I did have free time, I would find myself at Dog Beach on the San Marcos River with my dog, Thor, who was adopted from the San Marcos Regional Animal Shelter. And really, my life revolves around public service. When I'm not serving on the school board, I'm volunteering in the community, whether it's at food distributions with the Hays County Food Bank or supporting organizations like the San Marcos Education Foundation, things like that.”
Arredondo feels he would be a good fit as mayor because, in his nine years on the school board, he has proven that he moves “with a sense of urgency.”
“We approved universal free breakfast and lunches for our students within the first two years of me serving on the school board, which made a huge impact on food insecurity for our families and for our students,” Arredondo said. “That's how I plan to lead, if elected mayor, with a sense of urgency. It's no mystery that I ran for mayor against the incumbent mayor Hughson in 2020 and talked about things like housing affordability and jobs, and both of those things, I would argue, have gotten exponentially worse in the last four years. Our families and our neighbors can't wait for another term and another Comp Plan and another five-year study to address the things that we've known have been issues since even I was a kid in this town.”
Arredondo’s main focus would be to increase the availability of affordable housing in the city.
“We have a very high percentage of families that move semester to semester, year to year, because they follow apartment complex deals. That shouldn't be the life that our neighbors live. Everyone should have access to accessible, affordable housing,” Arredondo said. “Several years ago, we had the SMTX Housing For All Task Force, and they recommended a number of proposals to the City Council. And the City Council hasn't taken action on that. If we have these plans and if we have these proposed solutions, let's use them.”
He also wants to increase the amount of living- wage careers available in town and mitigate flooding.
“I think it's just convenient to go to bigger cities like Austin and San Antonio. Unfortunately, that's where a lot of us go for professional opportunities. I hope to change that. If elected, I'd love to see us have more jobs here in San Marcos, so products of the ISD and products of Texas State University could choose to live in this community and stay here if they wanted,” Arredondo said. “Over the last two years — I live in Sunset Acres on Patricia Drive — and I've almost been flooded out twice. And when I talk to my neighbors, there's this understanding that, during some rain events, our street floods… If the city knows it happens, why has it taken 10, 20, 30 years to address it?”
Arredondo is no stranger to politics.
“I ran for a seat on our school board when I was actually still a student at Texas State University. I was elected in May of 2015 and I served until spring of 2023 when I chose not to run for reelection due to professional opportunity, which was being Representative Zweiner’s Chief of Staff,” Arredondo said. “It was a good opportunity to take a step back and see things differently. Then in the spring of this year, as the filing deadline quickly approached and no one had filed, parents, students, staff and even some former colleagues of mine reached out and asked me to consider putting my name forward, if nobody else stepped up. And so I did. That was obviously the easiest election I ever had to run, because I ran unopposed.”
Arredondo said as the filing deadline for mayor approached those same people that reached out about the school board position asked him if he’d consider running for mayor.
“This did not materialize until about two weeks before the filing deadline,” Arredondo said. “I had been encouraged to do it, but it did not become something that I seriously considered until I saw that no one [that was a new candidate] was running for mayor.”
If Arredondo is elected mayor, that would leave his current at-large trustee position open.
“If I'm lucky enough to be elected mayor of my hometown, that would create a vacancy on the school board. The school board could pursue a couple of options; one of them being to appoint a replacement. We’ve accepted applications. But whoever that appointee would be would either have to run in May of 2025, so the board would have to call a special election in May to fill the remainder of the term. But they could appoint an interim to fill in until the next Uniform Election Day.”
Arredondo said he loves this city, because as it grows, exponentially at times, it’s “still San Marcos.” And San Marcans take care of their own.
“You can still run into your neighbors and high school classmates at a Texas State football game. For better or worse, you can run into them at the grocery store or at the Ramon Lucio little league fields,” Arredondo said. “And that's something that I hope that we continue to have as we continue to grow, is that we are still a town that cares about our neighbors. In times of crisis, we've seen our neighbors mobilize to take care of each other, and I don't want to lose that. I think that's what makes us special; we still take care of each other.”
Arredondo said he plans to live every day like it might be his last day in office because that is what the families and taxpayers of San Marcos deserve.
