City council OKs revised Economic Development Policy

The San Marcos City Council unanimously voted to approve the revised Economic Development Policy during its Tuesday meeting.

Council received a presentation on the policy from Kelsee Jordan Lee, Economic and Business Development Manager for the City of San Marcos.

According to the presentation, the updated policy, amongst other things, expands opportunities to offer support to small, legacy, and existing San Marcos businesses and incorporates community values into the scoring matrix.

The formal update process began in June 2021 in a council work session and following the direction given by council, staff worked with various community business representatives such at the Economic Development San Marcos (EDSM) Board and the Chamber of Commerce Board.

Following a recommendation resolution from EDSM, council directed changes at its work session on March 1, 2022.

Lee briefly went over changes made since the March 1 work session such as the scoring matrix being reallocated to add additional weight to items regarding community values.

“City staff is going to be taking the lead in scoring the projects when applications are received for those taxed-based incentives like Chapter 380 agreements with support from the Greater San Marcos Partnership staff,” Lee said.

Mayor Jane Hughson made a motion to change a part of the mission statement to say “smart growth” to “intentional growth.” This motion was unanimously passed by council.

The second motion was to strike “will be received by” and insert “must be submitted to” in the Exhibit A portion of the policy. This motion was also unanimously passed by the councilmembers.

Hughson’s final motion called for the replacement of the word “Mainstreet,” which was used in multiple instances when referring to “Businesses in the Mainstreet District.”

Councilmember Maxfield Baker shared his concern regarding the tax rate and hourly rate for Hays County citizens.

Regarding the tax rate, Hughson responded saying “I believe that our conversation at the meeting was that we agreed about the first thing you were talking about, the tax. But that we didn’t want to cut ourselves off, that if there might be a rare case where we wanted to do something different that we would leave that option open, but we would certainly take staff’s recommendation.”

City Manager Stephanie Reyes confirmed this and added that through this policy, council can consider different projects and will retain the decision-making authority to be sure that they can incentivize things that align with the values, priorities and planning. While Baker did not agree, he voiced he would still support the policy.

Lee later reported that the all-industry average wage for Hays County is $22.30.

For the complete meeting and agenda, visit http://san-marcos-tx. granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=9.

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