Inform

• Provide education and information to small business owners, civic leaders, and private citizens to equip them to take a more vital role in issues directly related to Smart Growth for San Marcos which will in turn ultimately shape the future of San Marcos.
• Promote, through communication tools and other initiatives, the ideals of Smart Growth San Marcos which are:

o to draw high quality business and corporate development to San Marcos that create sustainable businesses which in turn provide employment opportunities.

o to provide more affordable housing so children raised in San Marcos will choose to make San Marcos their permanent home, and attract new employees to settle in San Marcos (rather than surrounding communities).

o to provide a stronger tax base , due to population increase, which in turn lowers personal resident taxes while offering needed money to maintain parks and green spaces.

o to develop stronger schools as a result of the stronger tax base.

Involve

• Equip Smart Growth San Marcos members to participate in current issues and events that affect our community by offering members brief periodic updates gathered by the SGSM Organizational Leadership Team (after the team first reads and analyzes local periodicals and journals and then alerts the membership to upcoming events they might choose to attend). The SGSM Leadership Team will also forward electronic messages and invitations from local organizations and city offices, so as to provide San Marcos Smart Growth members opportunity for participation.

Invest

• Encourage focused, committed pursuit of economic prosperity for San Marcos.
• Ensure that anyone with investment opportunities or ideas that could become our next major revenue generator is afforded the opportunity to present their vision or concept to an open-minded leadership that determines if they are a match for our community.
• Attract a new generation of citizens to San Marcos with fresh ideas and a new perspective to face on-going challenges.
• Help state and local elected, civic, and business leaders design and implement effective smart growth strategies that secure for San Marcos a thriving and healthy future.

“Smart Growth” as described on an online source, “values long-range, regional considerations of sustainability over a short-term focus. Its goals are to achieve a unique sense of community and place; expand the range of transportation, employment, and housing choices; equitably distribute the costs and benefits of development; preserve and enhance natural and cultural resources; and promote public health.” Its desire is to build communities where individuals do not have to go outside their community to live, work, and play.

These very broad definitions of Smart Growth describes a positive good for our city that all can embrace. Interest in historic preservation and environmental concern for open space and green space are certainly a part of the equation, one we again all embrace. San Marcos has been very successful in promoting these aspects of Smart Growth.

Unfortunately, though, in San Marcos special interest groups have used the term “Smart Growth” to promote their own very specialized agendas, ignoring the other aspects of a healthy and thriving economy such as industry, development, jobs and housing.  Developments that provide mix-use, affordable housing, and industry are essential to the health and sustainability of any city.

“Smart Growth is critical to the longterm sustainability of metropolitan regions,” states the Smart Growth America organization. “When employers can’t recruit a reliable workforce because of grueling commutes; when working parents can’t find housing that puts them within reach of both jobs and their children; when key industries are scattered randomly so that they have all the disadvantages and none of the important benefits of aggregation; when quality of life begins to erode- people and businesses leave and economies die.”

For San Marcos to survive, we are at a critical juncture. Either we begin to invite healthy growth and development into our city, encouraging authentic “smart growth” according to its original broad definition or the above quote will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. All the green space and wonderful outdoor amenities in the world do not provide jobs and affordable housing for individuals to move into our community and find a place where they can live, work and play.