San Marcos City Council To Consider Low-Income Housing Project Resolution Of No Objection

Staff Reports

The San Marcos City Council will consider providing no objection for a low-incoming housing project tonight at their regularly scheduled meeting.

The council postponed a resolution of no objection to the submission of an application for low-income housing tax credits for the proposed Lantana on Bastrop Multifamily Housing Project on Nov. 11.

The project is currently located in the city’s ETJ. However, according to staff, the applicant has expressed interest in pursuing annexation and a CD-4 zoning designation.

The proposed project site is located at the intersection of Old Bastrop Hwy and Rattler road approximately.

The project will include a total of 216 income and rent-restricted units with 22 of those units restricted to households making 30% or less of AMI, 22 units restricted to households making 40% or less of AMI, 60 units restricted to households making 50% or less AMI, and 112 units restricted to those making 70% or less AMI.

The project will include 11 ADA accessible units and a mix of 1,2, and 3-bedroom units.

Lantana on Bastrop met six of the eight criteria for local tax exemption consideration. 

The two criteria the proposed project did not meet were being located with ½ mile walking distance of grocery, medical service and schools and redeveloping or renovating an existing multi-family complex.

According to Mark Tolley, the applicant on behalf of DG mission, the development has to provide the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs with its application by December 3; if they do not make the deadline, “this project is dead.”

The Council postponed the project with the intention of bringing it back tonight after a meeting of the affordable housing committee.

Council Member Melissa Derrick said the committee originally met with the developer before members had received all of the information on the project, and she wanted to get together and discuss it before a decision was made.

In other news, the council will consider an appointment to the CAPCOG Central Texas Clean Air Coalition.

Mayor Jane Hughson serves as the Vice-Chair on the Coalition as the City’s general member appointee. However, her term expires on December 31, 2019, and the city is required to make an appointment for the new term.

The Central Texas Clean Air Coalition, or the Clean Air Coalition, is a voluntary, unincorporated association that became affiliated with CAPCOG by a resolution adopted on Nov. 13, 2002.

 Its purpose is too:

• Facilitate the development, adoption, and implementation of clean air plans to maintain compliance with the federal eight-hour ozone standard for the Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis, and Williamson counties.

• Establish and monitor a regional effort toward the improvement of air quality.

• Develop policies and strategies that will provide guidance for each of its independent governing bodies about actions that will achieve clean air in Central Texas.

• Work cooperatively to achieve clean air standards that will protect public health and yet allow local governments the flexibility to select measures best suited to each community’s needs and resources.

• Provide CAPCOG Executive Committee with recommendations for administering funding provided by local sources for the purpose of supporting the regional air quality plan or program implementation, assessment and improvement activities in Central Texas.

CAC membership comprises of elected officials from the five-county Austin-Round Rock Metropolitan Statistical Area.

All local governments that signed the Central Texas 8-hour Ozone Flex Plan (8-O3 Flex), a previous regional initiative to reduce ozone pollution, are members of the CAC.

They include Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis and Williamson counties; and the cities of Austin, Bastrop, Elgin, Lockhart, Luling, Round Rock, and San Marcos.