Corridor News Sits Down With San Marcos City Council Candidates For Places 3 And 4

“I have heard and one of the reasons why I know this is my husband used to have storage units, I’ve since sold them, but we would get all these calls about the first of August…”

San Marcos City Council Place 4 Candidate: Jane Hughson

Jane Hughson has served the community in San Marcos as a city council member from 1996 to 2002. She ran for city council again in 2014 and won against former Councilman Wayne Becak.

Hughson retired from Texas State University where she was the former assistant director of client services and business services.

She was raised in the San Marcos area and attended San Marcos public schools.

She served on the San Marcos Economic Development Council, Planning and Zoning Commission, Transportation Advisory Board and many others.

QUESTION 1: The fate of Cape’s Dam is a topic on the community’s mind. Many citizens are asking to rebuild the dam while others believe it should be removed. With the safety of boaters, no bids to repair, overcrowded current river parks and the possibility of endangered species being wiped out, what are your thoughts on preserving history but also taking into account the risks of safety for the people who access the river and the possible extinction of wildlife in the area and why do you feel the way you do?

JANE HUGHSON: It is a complex issue, and it’s way more complex than I thought it was whenever we started talking about it. In my opinion, city council did not talk about it long enough, and we did not have all of the information that we should have had. And I think a lot of it wasn’t known. I hate to admit it; I did not know about all the uses of the mill race. I knew the mill race existed; I knew the mill was gone, that it’s not being used for its original purpose. But that land was privately owned for so many years, and the only way to go legally through that was on a canoe or a kayak because, you know, Texas Rivers are ‘if you can navigate it, you have a right to be on it.’ 

I don’t canoe, and I don’t kayak. So, I did not know that Mr. Kvanli had the wonderful wounded warrior program. I did not know about that, but he does, and it’s great. He’s doing some very good things, but I didn’t know about it. I listened to the report that we had from a gentleman scientist, who is respected in his field. And when he said that the dam should come out, and it will not hurt the endangered species; as a matter of fact, it will be beneficial. Okay, sounds good. The added bonus to that, but that’s not why I voted for it, was that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department have got a dam removal section–that’s what they do. And there’s a lot of communities choosing to remove dams all over the nation. It’s a thing right now; that is something people are doing because in most cases the river is better if it just flows naturally. 

That sounded good. Since I learned what the uses of the mill race are, I’ve learned more science from other people. Now I knew about the Mill Race and the Gin, or whatever it was, that was originally there, and I know it’s not there. And I know there are already historical markers up. So, I didn’t think about the dam itself as being historical, as a need to be preserved, because most of the dam is already gone. Our floods have taken out most of the dam; there’s not a whole lot of it left. And the next flood or the flood after that is likely to take out the rest of it. Because it still has a lot of that original building material in it, the timbers and some other things. After I learned more things, after we voted, I and other council members, I know that there have been a lot of questions asked. Now I have not discussed this with the quorum violating the open meetings act, but there has just been so many questions out that I’m sure that they’re asking questions too.

 So, there have been other reports that have been requested; there’s more information coming, and this is something that we’re going to need to revisit this. At this moment, all I can do is say that I am doing more investigation; I understand the science. I understand those that want to keep it. We can’t keep it the way that it is because it’s not going to stay that way after future floods. I’m not sure that I want to go through and build something like Rio Vista dam. I don’t want to spend that kind of money because you can’t get there easily. You know, there’s not a lot of parking because the Woods apartments are there. There’s not easy access to this area on land because I’ve walked it; I’ve been there. So, I don’t want to spend a whole ton of money trying to make another Rio Vista situation. I couldn’t vote for that. There’s some repairs and some things that we need to do just to make it safe, and the city is working on those. I know that’s maybe not the answer people are looking for, but to me it’s not just a yes or no at this point because there’s still more things we need to know. 

JANE HUGHSON: And there’s a requirement because there is a historic nature to it. There’s a section 105, 106, hearing that needs to take place, and we have people who are, the Hays County Historical Commission, who are willing to take that on and do what needs to be done. That hasn’t been done either, and I want the information from that too before I make the final decision. 

QUESTION 2: If you had a chance to change your vote on SB4, would you?

JANE HUGHSON: No, Senate Bill 4 was…I will tell you that I do not like it; I do not like the content; I do not like what I think the intent is. In the beginning, I wasn’t sure it applied to us because we don’t have a jail. The City of San Marcos doesn’t have a jail; if we have people who need to go to jail, we take them to the county jail. 

So, we don’t have a jail, and I wasn’t sure that, the first reading of the law, the information that was given, it would really affect us. Upon further investigation, it looked like maybe it would, and I would never ever say we should not obey the law. However, immigration, that is a federal law. And there are people hired in the federal government to enforce those laws. Our police officers are not authorized to enforce immigration laws. What I did was I started looking at it, and people have asked why did we take so long? Well, first thing, you know, some of us didn’t think it affected us. What I did was I started doing some of my own research. I know there are lot of people down yelling at us, ‘do this; do that.’ I did my own research. 

I listened to everybody. I get information from the staff and then I look and I read up. So, whenever the question was are we going to do an Amicus Curae Brief. I started looking at what’s out there. And I found one from the Major Police Chiefs, I think it’s called the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the word police is not in there if you’re going to google it. 

But what I found from their brief was, ‘The experience of policing cities across the country has taught law enforcement officers that to do our job we must have the trust and respect of the communities we serve. In order to stop crime, police officers need the full cooperation of victims and witnesses. When trust is missing as it is when people believe that contacting police could lead to deportation, community policing breaks down and the entire community can be harmed.’ And the president of this major cities chiefs association said to congress ‘Cooperation is not forth coming from persons who see their police as immigration agents. What does SB 4 mean? It may mean the city less safe for all of us.’ 

And I really believe this because if people don’t report crimes, because they’re afraid someone in their family might get deported once they have the spotlight on them, what happens if those crimes aren’t reported and those perpetrators are not caught. Perpetrators continue to commit crimes and that can affect anyone–you, me anybody. We want all of our residents to feel safe and not targeted. There are other issues with SB 4 including what some feel are violations of our first and fourth amendment rights such as if any officials speak out against this, you can be fined, and you can be jailed. So, that was a problem. And just as a note, thank you for not using the word sanctuary or sanctuary cities that phrase was not used by any council members who voted for the brief. And I suggested and council agreed that our amicus curae brief was to be patterned after the major cities brief. 

So, yes, I voted for it, and I would vote for the [Amicus Curae Brief] again.

QUESTION 3: Due to the fact that they the City of San Marcos released 1/3 of the proposed budget to be reviewed by the residents of San Marcos and only held two public hearings, how did city council expect residents to comment on the city’s budget during the two public hearings?

JANE HUGHSON: The proposed budget should be down at the library. Of course, our current one always is, and the current one is always online. Now you’re not going to see as detailed a budget when it’s proposed as you will once it’s finalized. It talked about the changes, and it talked about the departments other than, you know, our cost of living raises, all of the changes of any significance were presented to us. We had budget workshops in August, July. We postponed one set when we were doing the city manager search. 

At which, council sits the presentation by our director of finance is given to us, and all of that information is in the packet, and it’s online. So, everything we received was available to the public, and it’s actually still out there. You know, the agenda packets stay out there. So we did a lot of hashing out of that. We talked about it in august. I can’t tell you how many times we talked about it. 

The public hearing we did have two, and we did not have speakers. We certainly would entertain speakers. We have not had a lot of speakers; there was a gentleman who used to always, when I was on council from ’96 to ’02. He would always come down and speak about the budget, and he is–he died a number of years, and we’ve just hardly had anybody come speak about the budget, which I’m happy for people to come speak about the budget. You know, I wish they would. And we talked not only about the budget. We talked about in-depth all of the fees that we were going to charge. We had a number of fee increases that were not tax increases but fee increases because you know the fees get spread out amongst more people. So, we had discussions on those more than once. So we had lots and lots of discussions, and there was lots of information.

I will check on why there wasn’t more of the proposed budget posted, but that may be standard that at this stage of the game you talk about the high level, what people are usually most concerned about is the revenues. ‘Did you raise my tax rate, cuz I know my appraisals went up.

So we talked about a lot of revenues and expenses. Do we have any new expenses this year? What capitol equipment might we buy. For the most part, the budget stays the same; we’ve got people working, and we’ve got software. Software is huge when you have enterprise systems like we have. 

For example, there’s expenses that tells you what this budget is and it tells you what the preliminary budget was. And these are slides that we were presented. There’s a big chunk of the expenses. There’s a five percent in health insurance; we did modify that to four percent but that is actually cola (Cost of Living Adjustment) and merit. There’s a software maintenance increase. So, that is what we look at is these big picture things. we’re not looking at how exactly is the parks department getting. 

QUESTION 4: Texas State University has had record enrollments for several years in a row and the 2017 fall enrollment was over 38,000. Every semester, students are required to move out of their apartments for roughly 3 weeks in every year in August.

The majority of students, having full or part-time jobs, are unable to move home. The mandatory move outs, strands a large majority of these 38,000 students’ homeless for 3 weeks out of the year, which leaves some students with no choice but to live in their vehicles.

Does the current city council know about this situation and what is the current council doing to find a solution to this public safety and public health issue in San Marcos?

JANE HUGHSON: I have heard and one of the reasons why I know this is my husband used to have storage units, I’ve since sold them, but we would get all these calls about the first of August, ‘I need a storage unit.’ For how long? ‘About a week.’ And we were usually full. So I did not know it was three weeks; that is the private sector. And I did not know that they all close at that time. I did know that some of them did. I would hope that those students, when they sign their lease, see what the end date of their lease is, so they would know that that’s coming. But no, I did not know that they all do that for a full 3 weeks. And that’s when they do their turn and make ready.

But that’s private. I tell you what I will do is… are you familiar with what we passed just this last week for the late move in. When students sign a lease and the thing is still dirt and it doesn’t exist. Unfortunately, we’ve only applied that to a couple, and there’s some that are in the pipeline even that aren’t built that got their permit before we instituted that. So, there’s going to be some more before that happens. But I found out about that–some friends of mine work up at the university, and they deal with these things like that– and I said we need to do something and brought it before the city council a year ago–maybe. We created a committee; we met. we came up with some ideas. And we started instituting those. What we have not yet added is transportation option or even a daily, I’m gonna say, food allowance. Because when you live in a hotel, you can’t do what you can do in your home, and it’s going to cost you more to eat. And so, even though that’s not a move in situation. I will add that to our lists because that committee is going to meet again. I have to compliment…I forget their name… for doing what they’re doing. They did make arrangements in hotels, and they were giving them some kind of daily allowance. I mean they weren’t getting them daily, but they were getting a daily allowance, and they engaged one of our local bus services to pick up the students from five or six different hotels. It may not be as convenient as the student bus system, but at least, you know it’s running. And they were way before we instituted this.

This happened when there was another apartment complex that the students didn’t know until they showed up with everything in their car; you know, parents ready to drop them off and going where are we going to put our stuff because you’re not getting in for like another month. And they were told was ‘Yeah go find some other place to live, and we’ll allocate you $70 a day, come back with your receipts later when you move in, and we’ll reimburse you.’

That’s what I was hearing about. So, since then they have done better, Ella Lofts, Uptown Square knew they weren’t going to be ready, and they made arrangements. I’m hoping they’re getting a discounted rate at the hotels, so they can let the student know. But still I think for one of them, they did let them know in advance.

Like don’t bring all of your stuff yet; you know, just bring your clothes and what you need to get through the next few weeks. You can bring everything else later. So, I will add that to the list. I knew that some of them had to be out a week; I was hoping maybe they were staggering them so that if you have to move out over here, if you’re changing to this complex over here anyway…I just can’t believe they kick those kids out; I mean I believe you, but I can’t believe they do business kicking those kids out for three weeks. But they do need to do their make ready.  

What the city’s role in that I don’t know because that’s private business and that’s a private contract between that student and the apartment complex. And like I said they know when they sign that lease that there’s gonna be a gap.