CITY OF SAN MARCOS
The San Marcos City Council approved, five to two, a $643,000 total bullet containment trap for installation at the San Marcos Police Department shooting range at the regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday.
San Marcos Police Chief Stan Standridge said what the council is being asked to approve is a containment system for the shooting range. Normally, it hits a sand area that causes dust to go into the air and expensed lead to ricochet toward the officers (though still remaining in the range). The containment system will catch the bullets and remove the dust from the air.
San Marcos City Council Member Amanda Rodriguez said she wanted to pull the item for public transparency purposes. Rodriguez discussed an earlier item in which the council voted to allocate $550,000 of Human Services Grant funding that occurred earlier in the meeting. She believes it is wrong that local nonprofits providing critical services only receive $550,000, but the police department receives a much larger portion of the budget.
“I know any time I express opposition, it’s deemed as unjustifiable outrage. However, I just want people to know that this is my fourth meeting. Since my first meeting, in that time, we have approved over a million dollars towards the police department,” Rodriguez said. “We don’t see money go in any other direction in this way.”
San Marcos City Council Member Alyssa Garza said that this is why she and former council member Maxfield Baker wanted to explore a participatory budget in which citizens had more input on how the city’s finances are spent.
“In the packet, it explains that this is money from a … [Capital Improvement Plan]... Where is the money coming from? How did that get decided?” Garza said. “I understand Ms. Rodriguez’s frustration, but I also think the whole process is difficult for neighbors to get a sense of what money is coming from where and how it’s being decided on. [That’s] maybe something to consider for the future.”
Rodriguez pointed out that the original funding agreement was for $800,000.
“I saw that there’s a little over $156,000 unexpended with this project,” she said. “Is there a timeline for when this unexpended money needs to be encumbered?”
Shaun Condor, San Marcos Engineering and CIP director, said the item for the evening was only for a portion of the project, the net itself.
“That money’s not unexpended; It’s actually being used toward the design of the improvements at the site as well as there are some future foundation repairs that need to occur for the actual bullet trap to be installed. It’s paid with CO bonds, Certificate of Obligation bonds, so those you have three years to spend, I believe, 80% of the value,” Condor said. “Yes you’re absolutely going to use the full amount…. So this [item is to fund] the bullet trap itself.”
San Marcos City Council Member Lorenzo Gonzalez said that he feels the process is backwards. He doesn’t understand why the funding would be approved for the containment system if they are voting on the site improvements needed to install it at a later date.
“Theoretically we could be buying a piece of equipment that we are never going to install if we never pass the site improvement,” Gonzalez said. “I just think the process is backwards. We should approve a site improvement before we go spend $634,000 on a piece of equipment that we’re not guaranteed to install.”
Condor said ideally, the items would come to council concurrently, but approving this first would lock in the price.
“This issue is the vendor had indicated that the prices had a high likelihood of going up. It locks in that price,” he said. “If we were to come back three or six months later, it could be another 25% higher.”
Standridge said the lead and brass would be picked up and recycled by the vendor, and the city would receive a check for the value in weight. Brass is already being recycled by the city, so the only new revenue would be the lead.
Hughson pointed out that it would not be a large check as the lead goes for around 60 to 70 cents a pound, and last time the range was mined, there was 3,500 pounds of lead.
San Marcos City Council Member Matthew Mendoza asked how long the containment system should last.
“I hope the containment system would outlive the current location of the police department,” Standridge said. “I say that because we are already at the point of exceeding the capacity of that current building to meet the needs of a growing city and a growing police department.”
Aaron Ludwig, a representative for the vendor Action Target, added that there are bullet traps that have been used for over 30 years.
“It’s completely modular,” Ludwig said. “If you were to move your police department to a new location, this can be completely broken down and rebuilt as needed.”
Rodriguez added that she doesn’t want to see the police department coming back to ask for more additions to this project as the shooting range has had updates made in the past.
“I don’t want it to be where two, three years later [the police department is saying], ‘Now we need something else.’ That seems to kind of be a theme that I’m noticing,” Rodriguez said. “I just want to know if this is what we’re spending all of this money on, that it is going to be done right the first time, and it’s not going to need some additional things in the future.”
The item was approved five to two with Garza and Rodriguez casting the dissenting votes.
