At a regular meeting last night, San Marcos City Council members moved forward with revisions to the action plan that will guide how the city uses the $25.08 million disaster recovery grant it was awarded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development earlier this year.

The city submitted its initial action plan to HUD in September, and the department came back to the city asking for more details as to how the city will assist renters whose homes were damaged during 2015’s two major floods.

The city had previously planned to spend $7.5 million to assist homeowners whose properties were damaged in the floods with services that could include home rehabilitation, elevation, buyout or full reconstruction, but the city did not plan to focus on rental properties.

“Rental was not necessarily on our radar,” Assistant City Manager Collette Jamison said. “We were going to concentrate on owner-occupied, although the HUD representative and the technical assistance group suggested we would have to have a very good reason based on the needs assessment not to have a program. This is a new idea for us.”

City Council determined it would go with the recommendation of the city’s disaster recovery grant consultant, AECOM, which suggested splitting the $7.5 million into two amounts: $5 million for owner-occupied housing and $2.5 million for rental properties. The city is also planning to spend $12.5 million on infrastructure projects, $3.75 million on planning projects and about $1.25 million on administration of the grant.

As the city gets further into the process, it may determine there is not a need for $2.5 million-worth of assistance to rental properties. In that case it could reallocate those funds.

“San Marcos as a city has a pretty high rental population,” said Marisa Mason, a representative of AECOM. “[HUD] did not specify how much money would need to go toward rentals, but they did want to see some more detail about it.”

Council members brought up concerns that residents who were living in rental units when the floods occurred have likely moved away, so rehabilitating the rental units would mostly provide a benefit to the property owner, which Mayor pro tem John Thomaides pointed out could be a conglomerate.

“We’re paying the property owner,” Thomaides said. “This really isn’t benefitting the tenant.”

Jamison said rental units that do receive assistance from the city’s grant could be required to maintain their rehabbed facilities as affordable housing—with rental rates set to be affordable for those earning 80 percent or less of area median income—for up to five years.

If the city’s plan is approved Nov. 10, as officials hope, the city will move forward with the hiring of two new positions: a disaster recovery manager and a disaster recovery engineering project manager.

The city will also be working on a feasibility study examining the efficacy of more than 20 infrastructure projects aimed at addressing flooding in areas of the city that are repeatedly damaged during flood events. The city will likely rank the projects based on their "bang for the buck," Jamison said.