After years of experience working with Austin City Council, Bert Lumbreras—a graduate of Texas State University—has come back to San Marcos and is getting to know his staff and bosses.

What have you been focusing on in your first few months on the job?
Spending time listening and interacting with staff on the key projects and issues occurring in the areas, whether it’s in public transit, on the code rewrite, some of the processes … just learning a lot in terms of how the organization is focused on those issues.

What have you learned in conversations with various city departments?
We have a very committed staff, very dedicated folks that are very passionate about city government. As city manager it’s wonderful to come into an organization where we have folks that are enjoying what they do; they are passionate about public service and they’re very talented, so that’s been very rewarding. I certainly see that there’s a lot of need for some stability and leadership. When you’ve had a change in city manager—we’ve had four in the last nine years—obviously when you have a lot of transition, it creates a lot of anxiety and frustration with staff, and certainly having that consistent, stable leadership is very, very important. My goal is to come in here and bring that stability, bring that leadership.

How can you apply your experience with CodeNEXT to Code SMTX?
I think it helps considerably because it helped me to jump in, in terms of when council was making some of these key policy decisions to really get a sense of what San Marcos’ [land-development code rewrite] is. I think with any land-development code, you want to look at, what are the specific needs of the community, what are the tolerance levels that communities have and what is your vision [for the community]?

Coming from Austin, do you find yourself comparing the two cities?
Taking into consideration where Austin is and where San Marcos could potentially head way down in the future, the great thing about the experience of being [in Austin] 11 years [is] I know the magnitude of the problems that Austin is facing. When you think about it, a lot of the issues that Austin is facing certainly are issues that San Marcos—to some degree—is experiencing now but at a much earlier stage. The great thing about the perspective that I bring is that I have the ability to hopefully share some of those challenges that Austin has dealt with and how we as a smaller community can prepare and address those more strategically and position ourselves to get ahead of those issues before they get too big.

How do you view the city’s relationship with Texas State University?
I’m an alum of Texas State, and I love the university. One thing that I’ve been really impressed [about] with President [Denise] Trauth is that she has a commitment to the community, no doubt about it. With the city you’re obviously going to have a commitment to Texas State. We need to figure out how to work together to work on issues like affordable housing, quality jobs, [and] more collaborative partnership projects and initiatives that are important to both the university and the city.

What draws you to the job?
There’s a saying that says, ‘If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.’ That’s the way I approach it every day. I’m very excited about it. I enjoy this; I believe in the work that we do.

Why did you decide to come back to San Marcos?
I had been in Austin and really had been looking at what my next chapter in life was. I loved what I was doing and had been doing very well in my job for the last 11 years. I just had this yearning inside of me that I wanted to go and lead my own city. I wanted to go somewhere where I could make a difference.

How can the city mitigate flooding?
[It’s a] huge priority. We really need to start addressing many of our critical projects and our infrastructure. We have a lot of needs, and it’s very expensive. If you don’t pay attention to it, it’s going to be so big that whatever you do is going to be a drop in the bucket. I think the staff needs to keep pushing the envelope and getting as many projects done as possible. I was very excited about the disaster-relief funds [the city received]. That is going to help in the long run. But we also have a challenge to where we’ve got to do more than that. Whether it’s our capital improvement projects, increases in our drainage fees, looking at grants or other funding sources, looking at how we can encourage development to fit in line with our flood mitigation, I think that’s hugely important.

How do you maintain a balance between small-town feel while also preparing to grow as a city?
That’s always going to be a challenge. With growth and development comes all sorts of other pressures, like traffic, more congestion, home values [and] the quality of life overall. When you grow, obviously there’s more pressure on the tax base to do more but then it becomes less for existing needs. Our challenge as a small community is, how do we pay attention to that now? And how do we develop ourselves in such a way that we’re being smart with our limited resources and do that wisely and find ways [to] address critical infrastructure and needs before they get way too big that we cannot address it? What we can do is manage more wisely and efficiently and look for partnerships and look for opportunities. We have to think strategically, we have to think much more creatively and we have to be good stewards of the limited resources we have.

How has the balance between San Marcos City Council and the city manager been?
The balance has been great. [Council members] have been nothing but supportive, very interested in what I have to say, ready to tackle some issues. I’ve gotten nothing but the utmost respect from each and every one of them and they are individuals that have a big heart for the community. I can tell that they want to do the very best, so to me, that’s what really attracted me to San Marcos. If we all have one goal in mind and that is to do the very best for our citizens and our community, then I want to be a part of that.

How do you feel about local control?
Local control is huge. [Senate Bill 4] is a good example of something that we’re all facing that is going to present some tremendous challenges. when you’ve got a citizenry—not speaking about the immigration issue, because at the end of the day, that’s really more at the federal level that that needs to be addressed—but we at the city, we want to do policing that does effective outreach for our citizens regardless of their immigration status. They are living here. In order for them to have a good relationship with us they need to be able to trust us. If there’s mistrust, if they are victimized or they need some help beyond policing, if we don’t have good outreach or a good connection with them, then quite honestly, people are going to be taken advantage of.