SAN MARCOS CITY COUNCIL
The city of San Marcos has been working on a new Comprehensive Plan since 2020 and approved the new plan, Vision SMTX, in Oct. 2023 on the first of two readings. The council postponed the second reading to get more community feedback and has since incorporated 6,100 community comments and held over 100 meetings and engagement events. According to city documents, the plan is intended to “guide the growth and evolution of the city for the next 20 to 30 years.” At Wednesday’s meeting, the council had a staff presentation and held a public hearing. The council is set to adopt the new plan at the Oct. 15 meeting.
“Just a reminder the reason it is on second reading is it was in second reading when we postponed it for additional input and for the council committee to work,” said San Marcos Mayor Jane Hughson.
Andrea Villalobos, San Marcos Planning assistant director, said in the past year city staff has worked comprehensively with the Comprehensive Plan Committee, which was created in Nov. 2023. City Council approved an outreach campaign in Jan 2024 to gather communi- ty comments on the plan. Between Feb. and March, surveys were conducted to gather community input. On Sept. 18, the council committee provided direction to staff that the final draft be presented at the Wednesday meeting.
The focus of the presentation focused on what occurred with the plan in the last year.
“It also updates the map shown on the right, which is our Preferred Growth Scenario Map, and that really guides growth over time,” Villalobos said. “Because the preferred scenario map is being updated, it is essentially changing from six colors on the map, or what we call place types, to ten colors on the map. We also have to immediately update this table to inform our zoning changes moving forward.”
According to city documents, the zoning classifications now include: Neighborhood Low-Existing, Neighborhood Low-New, Neighborhood Medium, Neighborhood High, Neighborhood Transition, Mixed Use Low, Mixed Use Medium, Employment/Commercial Low, Employment/ Commercial Medium and Conservation/Cluster. “Low intensity areas are generally lower in scale and have a lower proportion of the land area covered by buildings. … Medium intensity areas typically have taller buildings in closer proximity to each other than low intensity areas. … High Intensity areas are intended to reflect the tallest and/or most closely situated development.”
Gabrielle Moore, a San Marcos resident, said she wanted to thank the committee for considering many of her groups recommendations, particularly adding references to missing middle housing — a concept that highlights the need for diverse, affordable housing choices in sustainable, walkable neighborhoods, according to the Missing Middle Housing website — and the incorporation of transit- oriented development. “We would love to see ending minimum parking requirements,” Moore said. “I would love to see the fiscal impacts being more of a focal point in the introduction of the plan. I just feel like that is very important just for the fiscal health of the city and the budget.”
Hughson said the city moved the fiscal impacts from the content in the plan to the appendix because they “represented a snapshot in time” as they were done before the dramatic rise and fall of the housing market. She requested that staff add a mention of the fiscal impacts and their location in the introduction.
Diana Baker said she was glad the data was examined and she felt the planning department did a fantastic job.
“This has been a long, drawn-out process, but the people of this town have, I think, filled out endless surveys and have gone to endless meetings,” Baker said. “I think it really is reflecting the courage of the leaders of this city, and people that had absolutely no financial interest at all going in and just really splitting the hairs and getting it right. So I’m grateful for that.”
All of the draft Comprehensive Plans can be found at this link visionsmtx. com/comprehen-sive plan. More information is to follow after the Oct. 15 meeting.
