Letter To The Editor: Why Community Should Support The SMART Terminal Project
Dear fellow San Marcos residents,
Attention San Marcos Rattler parents, who would like their children to grow up, find good paying jobs and stay in San Marcos?
The San Marcos city council SMART Terminal vote will choose between a San Marcos future where our adult children and grandchildren live nearby and are present for life’s most important events, or a future where you can only Skype with your grandkids living in a far off city.
Giving young Rattlers the opportunity to stay in San Marcos after graduation is what our city council will be voting on when they vote up or down on San Marcos’s SMART Terminal.
I’m writing today to encourage my fellow residents to speak up to our city leaders and tell them we want our children to have great job opportunities right here in San Marcos.
The San Marcos SMART terminal vote is about a $109 million dollar investment in an air, rail and truck terminal that will bring over 500 new, good paying jobs to San Marcos. The vote will determine if those jobs come to San Marcos, or if some other lucky city will get weekends with their children and grandchildren.
Legitimate concerns have been raised about the terminal’s drainage impact. That is a great question, but it is a technical, civil engineering question that’s already been answered by the San Marcos city staff who have recommended approval of the SMART Terminal. Today’s civil engineering standards are much higher and sophisticated than 25 or 50 years ago.
Every day, we trust our lives to engineering much more complex than simply building an industrial and manufacturing terminal. I trust our city’s staff and engineering standards to ensure this terminal is built properly. Let’s let the engineers do their jobs and bring these 500 new jobs to San Marcos.
So, unless you only want to see your grandchildren twice a year on holidays and only hear about life’s big moments by phone, you need to let our city leaders know that we want a YES vote to make the SMART Terminal a reality.
Sincerely,
Will Holder
STEP RIGHT UP AND GET YOUR CITY BALONEY ! ! !
1. BALONEY—- “One obstacle the developer and officials encountered during the annexation process was the discovery that 200 of the 934 acres were in a disputed area belonging to both San Marcos and Martindale’s extraterritorial jurisdictions, or ETJs. Officials from both cities are discussing a swap that would put the disputed 200 acres officially in San Marcos’ domain, and therefore would be eligible for annexation.”
THE BEEF—There is no such thing as”swap” allowed under law controlling any Interlocal agreement at hand. The worth of the parcels in question must be liquidated into dollar amounts before they can be “traded.” Martindale annexed the property in question by ETJ at time of its incorporation, and at that time San Marcos yet had no territorial claim to ETJ. If you want to stop this matter, don’t let them fool you into saying the “matter is in dispute”. Because if it is actually in dispute, neither of the parties can assign worth to a property without showing right held under clearly established jurisdiction. This is a smoke screen used by corrupt governments to distract citizens. Don’t give thugs a chance to act civilized. It’a a ruse. You will lose.
=====================
2. BALONEY—“City Council member Lisa Prewitt said she would like the agreement to include, along with a list of specific prohibited activities, a broader statement with language that prohibits any activity on the property that could negatively impact the San Marcos River.”
[ THE BEEF— Prewitt is saying that because only 80% of all water running off this industrial site will drain into the San Marcos river, this runoff will not “negatively impact” the river. Prewitt does not even venture guess the amount of all water known and unknown which will flow into the river as a result of 934 acres of ground that cannot absorb water and which nows runs into the San Marcos River only one-thousand feet away. Or is Prewitt saying there is some place else the water wiil drain. There is not. Only one place it can go. And go it will. Keep in mind the recent flooding and rainfall.
======================
3. BALONEY–“Other City Council members pointed out that under the city’s land-development code, the project will be subject to checks and balances as new businesses sign on to join the rail park. Each tenant will have to complete a watershed protection plan that will demonstrate exactly how much additional runoff its facility will create and then outline a mitigation plan.”
[ THE BEEF— First “mitigation” means “to lessen”. The City’s “plan” is an unlimited scheme and illegal because it allows runoff fixed by a movable rate and without terms. Example: the runoff allowed to the initial tenant is “calculated” by dividing his square footage into an unfixed amount of runoff, because we have not yet arrived at the total amount of tenants. Next, we burden all further tenants with showing “exactly how much additional runoff its facility will create”. Mind you, this additional amount must be calculated using an unknown original total. This is an unlimited scheme because it allows each successfive tenant to speculate in absence of any known limiters. The City of San Marcos by law cannot enact legislation whose terms are without end, and therefore unknowable. An unlimited scheme lacks objective terms and thus exludes the People from knowing and thus enforcing their own enacted laws. 1st, 5th and 14th amend.
=========================
4. SOLUTION—Why not route this harmless waste into Spring Lake, that way Denise Trauth her City Council employees can savor the real taste of victory, served “down home” style?
You can find a river anywhere. But you can’t find jobs that easy.
Why not just do as suggested and quit complaining about your own imagination. The development is owned by a California corporation. They know how do it right.