San Marcos City Council Discusses 2020 Comprehensive Plan Update

On Dec. 17, the San Marcos City Council received a presentation on the 2020 Comprehensive Plan Update during their regular work session.

The discussion included topics such as small area plans, policy amendment to the San Marcos Development Code and “stopping the bleeding in downtown.”

According to the agenda, the comprehensive plan was approved in 2013 and has served as a guiding document for many initiatives and other plans that have been undertaken by the city.

The agenda states, While this document has served us, San Marcos has experienced many changes over the past six years, which have had a significant impact on the vision, goals and objectives of this plan.

The Chairman of the Comprehensive Plan Oversight Committee, Joe Cox, gave the council a presentation noting that the city had fallen behind in updating the Comprehensive plan.

Since 2013, San Marcos has continued to experience “robust growth,” seen significant progress has been made toward achieving goals identified in the Comprehensive plan and updated most department master plans as well as development standards.

Cox said two elements should reviewed annually in rotation so the comprehensive plan is fully updated every three years; the five-year action items should also be updated annually.

The Oversight Committee’s proposed schedule is as follows:

Year 1: Review Economic Development and Environment and Resource Protection |update five-year action items

Year 2: Review Neighborhoods and Housing and Parks, Public Spaces and Facilities. |update five-year action items

Year 3: Review Land Use and Transportation (adheres to section 1.4.15 (B) of the Code) |update five-year action items

Year 4: Review Economic Development and Environment and Resource Protection |update five-year action items

Cox said the Committee recommends the city focuses on the following goals that have not been established in full.

• Creating a sustainability plan
  • Considered to affect affordable housing initiatives (Under the land use element)
• Creating a downtown parking plan
  • Under the Land Use Element
• Identifying and creating character index studies
  • Under the Neighborhood and Housing Element

Shannon Mattingly, Director of Planning and Development Services, provided council with al ist of the progress made since the adoption of the comprehensive plan in 2013.

• Wastewater Master Plan Update (2015, Update in 2020)
• Water Master Plan Update (2016, Update in 2021)
• Transportation Master Plan Update (2018)
• Parks & Open Space Master Plan Update (2019)
• Historic Resources Survey (2019)
• Housing Needs Assessment (2019)
• Housing Action Plan (Pending Adoption)
• Airport Master Plan Update (Nearing Completion)

According to the city, San Marcos’s population has reached 65,000 in 2019. The breakdown of the population age demographic is below.

• Children = 8.5 Percent
• College Age = 3 Percent
• Young Adult = 7.9 percent
• Middle Adult = 5.6 percent
• Boomers = 6.1 percent
• Seniors = 6.3 percent

Staff stated the Comprehensive Plan will provide an overall vision for the future of the City and coordinate outreach efforts across the plan elements including Housing Action Plan, Policy Code Amendments, Small Area Plans, Resiliency Planning (Mitigation, Disaster Recovery) and Architectural Standards (Downtown).

City Manager, Bert Lumbreras said, “It’s always important we have a solid vision of where we want to go, and so we believe that going the route of taking a hard look at the comprehensive plan and setting that vision is going to be important.”

Council expressed interest in doing a full update in a shorter timeline and bringing efforts forward of improving regulations for developments in downtown.

“The way that we are getting developers coming in here with so much of the former T5, Character-District 5 now, that is by right zoning that was city initiated rezoning,” Councilmember Melissa Derrick said, “We have no control over what the look is, what the size is. We’re going to have our downtown destroyed if we don’t do anything immediately.”

The council directed staff to move “the scope” for downtown to be brought forward as soon as possible to get it going and look into prices for having the process potentially “expedited.”

Mattingly said the current scope timeline projects a draft coming to council for review in October 2020.

Staff is expected to begin the process for the comprehensive plan update in early 2020.