SM City Council Place 6 Candidate Derrick Chats With SM Corridor News

Conducted by, Jarrett Moehn

 

 

Question 1: Earlier this year, the current council members voted themselves a raise. If you’re elected and this comes up on an agenda, how would you vote and why?

 

Derrick: I would vote no on another increase this soon after the last increase. I feel the increase was needed in order to afford people who normally wouldn’t be able to spare the time to serve on council the ability to serve because provide enough compensation that it could be considered a part-time income.

 

Question 2: San Marcos is currently growing in population and business growth. Do you want San Marcos to continue this path and why?

 

Derrick: Yes, I think San Marcos is in an epic period of growth right now and what needs to be done is the responsible management of that growth. We need to discontinue placement of incompatible developments and neighborhoods and other areas.

 

Sorry, I’m trying to think on how I can expound on that. I really feel like if elected I would like to protect the property rights of homeowners as much as the property rights of people that are landowners or developers who stand to make a very generous profit off of their investment. I also hope to protect existing businesses and their property values and their continued investment in our community. Yeah, I guess that’s it.

 

Question 3: If elected and the development for multifamily, single family and manufacturing came up for a vote, where would you want that development to be located to vote in favor, or vote against, on all 3 types of development?

 

Derrick: Okay, well I would say right now our master plan has just given us a 360 degree view of where we want to be and we’re currently in the process of re-writing our land development codes through the process code SMTX. There are places that have been identified that are suitable for single-family building on the west side. Multi-family, if we’re talking about student housing I would definitely oppose placing student housing in incompatible areas such as stable single family neighborhoods but I would really like to see some more executive and single family, multi-family options available in transition areas between stable neighborhood areas and areas that are slated to see more growth.

 

As far as manufactured homes? Those are not meant to be in single family neighborhoods for the most part inside the ETJ and I’m not aware of too many places inside the ETJ where they are suitable but I’d be willing to look into that.

 

Question 4: Currently San Marcos is giving ‘incentives’ to businesses that want to relocate here. This benefits San Marcos, bringing more tax dollars into their coffers and it gives a chance to the lower income portion of our population to get better jobs, able to make more money, and receive better benefits.

 

One area the city council is overlooking is the small businesses that are popping up all the time, the entrepreneurs, i.e. the 1 to 5 employees or 1 man entrepreneur who takes on tremendous risks. If elected, what could you do for this entrepreneur group?

 

Derrick: I think we really need to support our “single shingles” and our small family run business in town because they are what makes us unique. I don’t see too many incentives being offered to these types of businesses. We have received grants thought the Main Street Program to help them with signage and exterior improvement but I for one would like to see us support our existing single family businesses, or single owner businesses, let me revise that; small businesses.

 

I would like to see them be offered incentives that would be appropriate to what we’re offering the larger companies that produce jobs for people. It wouldn’t be at the same ratio obviously, but we need to offer them something because they are part of our fabric and they are what makes San Marcos unique. Without them we would just be another city full of Targets and Wal-Marts and chain sandwich shops so we need to do what we can to support them, to support our unique environment and make us a very inviting place to live both for the residents that are here currently and in order to sustain economic development.

 

Question 5: Earlier this year the current city council had a tough time agreeing on the Greater San Marcos Partnership contract.

 

The GSMP contract comes up for renewal again around September of 2016, please explain why you would vote for or against renewing their contract and would you want to adjust the amount of funding the city invests with GSMP?

 

Derrick: That’s a good question. We are not the only ones involved in that partnership; however, we are the ones that give the greatest amount of money, $350,000 a year. I believe that the new contract that was ironed out this year has receivables, accountability, and transparency that we had not had before, and I think it’s a vast improvement from where we were before we ironed out the new contact.

 

Since this will be the first year that we actually look at their accountability, the receivables and how well we thought they did with transparency, I think it will be incumbent upon city council members to maybe get a matrix and grade them so to speak on all areas and decide if the current contract is working but if the current contract isn’t working there are many different things that we could do, such as revising the contracts for higher expectations, addressing personnel issues and also addressing the amount of money given but I don’t think it’s a situation where you either subtract funds, add funds or get rid of funding. It’s a working relationship we have between our economic development partnership and we need to place a priority on that and getting it to work for everyone.