Community gathers for Victory Gardens meeting

City of San Marcos employees, first responders and community members gathered at Victory Gardens Park on Thursday evening to celebrate the end of the neighborhood project and participate in a community meeting.

Rey Garcia, City Senior Project Engineer, started the meeting with a project overview and introductions. According to Garcia, there are a few touch-up items to be done before the project is complete.

“We’re glad to get together for this final, what I’m calling the final, the grand finale, of our Victory Gardens project,” Garcia said. “It’s been three years coming and I’m glad that everybody has had the patience to go through all of this.”

San Marcos Chief of Police Stan Standridge also addressed those in attendance regarding safety in the Victory Gardens neighborhood. Standridge spoke of a new comprehensive plan created by the police department called Violent Crime Comprehensive Response (VCCR).

“By looking at all of the previous offices before today, we can identify the patterns, the trends to ultimately make a more successful plan. I’ll give you the example, if I needed to vaccinate you against a virus before I put the vaccine in you, I would need to understand the virus,” Standridge said. “So that’s what we’re trying to do with the violent crime in this city, we’re taking a comprehensive look at it before we go out there and really try to vaccinate this city.”

According to Standridge, in addition to handling all the day-to-day crime issues in the city, the police department will be doing a deep dive of all murders in the last 10 years, all robberies for the last five years and all aggravated assaults in the last two years.

Standridge is hoping to have the preliminary reviews done in the month of January to kick start the project in 2022.

“My encouragement to everybody tonight, city staff, fire department, police department and to the people who live in this neighborhood, we’re in this together, it’s a ‘we’ issue and so we stand ready to partner with you to address some of these issues,” Standridge said.

Another topic of discussion during the meeting was speed. Transportation Engineering Manager, Ning Zou, presented the results of a speed study taken in the Victory Gardens Neighborhood.

At the 85 percentile, the average speed of those traveling on Patton Street was 32.4 mph. On Eisenhower Street, the average was 26.8 mph. Knox Street saw speeds of 24.4 mph and Roosevelt Street was recorded at 29.6 mph.

Zou also presented petition forms that call for changing the speed limit in the neighborhood to 25 mph.

“Once I’ve got enough signatures, there is no hard number to require to get city council approval but the good this is, with enough signatures I can show them, 'hey, this is, you know, supported by the majority of the neighborhood',” Zou said. “So that would be really helpful for me to bring this to city council. It has a strong standpoint to slow down traffic.”

Neighborhood Commission Chair Roland Saucedo invited those that live in Victory Gardens to vote on signage for the neighborhood. One option for the signs includes the iconic image from the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Above, Victory Gardens community members write down their selections for street signs in the neighborhood during a meeting on Thursday. Daily Record photo by Alyssa Gonzales

“As many of y'all know, Victory Gardens was established after World War II and the street signs are named after the World War II generals and there are quite a few of the families that have surviving members that served in World War II,” Saucedo said. “As a way of paying homage and memorial to those that came back and have survived World War II, that is the proposal.”

To close out the discussion, Emergency Management Coordinator, Rob Fitch highlighted the importance of emergency preparedness.

“What we want you to do is build a communication plan for your family, so if you have to leave, you know, you’ll be able to contact everybody,” Fitch said. “Do you have a meeting place? Does your family, if you can’t get back home do you have a place where you’re all going to meet so you can get out and get to safety?”

Neighborhood residents participated in a trivia game with questions related to emergency preparedness with the winner taking home an emergency preparedness kit for a family of four.

After the meeting, Victory Gardens residents enjoyed free pizza and drinks while engaging in community activities and discussions along with city employees.