Oct 27 2009 - 12:38am | Scott Thomas

John Thomaides

The University Star City Council Interviews from scott thomas on Vimeo.

Monica Garcia

Monica Garcia from scott thomas on Vimeo.

Ryan Thomason

Shaun Maycock

Editors note: due to a technical issue the interview with Shaun Maycock had severe audio issue. We regret we cannot show you the footage, but present the interview transcript below.

Allen Reed: Why are you running for City Council.

Maycock: I really love San Marcos. I’ve lived here for coming up on 11 years now. I’m getting married next year and thinking about raising a family here. I looked around San Marcos and ever since I’ve been here there’s been issues with code enforcement, public safet, sidewalks, downtown revitalization. These issues have been around ever since I’ve been here. Every time a campaign comes around it’s an issue, and after that campaign comes and goes and elections are over with those issues are gone and its on to newer and better things and nothing ever really happens with the issues. I’m a person of, dare I say, change, but I’m a person who makes things happen and I go after my goals and I make things happen. I started my business with zero dollars, literally nothing, and I’ve built it to where it is now with a budget of about $300,000 a year and I would like to take that leadership ability and apply it to City Council as well.

Allen Reed: What issues are you most passionate about?

Maycock: I’m always passionate about so many issues, economic development being the number one issue. It’s been an issue for many years, we’ve finally get a good company coming in here called Grifols that’s going to provide about 190 jobs and an average salary of $30,000 a year and provide benefits to its employees. That’s something that’s sort of unheard of in San Marcos. I support those types of jobs and I support programs for those types of jobs. That was an issue I was big on last year. I’ll be big on it next year. Because those are the types of jobs that we need. The student population can benefit from those types of jobs here in town with getting higher pay, getting to go out there and work with companies on apprenticeship programs.

Allen Reed: What are your platform issues?

My main platform issues are economic development, public safety, protection of our natural resources — that includes our river and recharge zones — and downtown revitalization. And those are my main platform issues.

What are your qualifications for City Council?

Believe it or not, anybody in San Marcos who actually cares enough about their city is qualified enough for city council. It is an expensive undertaking. It takes a lot of your own money. I’ve always been placed in leadership roles in my life, being in the marine corps did that. We’re all alive. We’re all older and fatter for that. I’ve always had the leadership and traits to make things  happen. To go out and look for the issues and itmes that are wrong and correct them, make them right, and keep moving down the road, and always be successful. I’m a really hard worker. I don’t give up or quit on anything. Ever since I can remember I’ve always spoken out for people who cant’ speak out for themselves or otherwise won’t and I think that’s a trait someone needs to have to be on council. They need to be willing to listen, to the residents, to know what’s going on and to seize the opportunities that are going to  Make San Marcos brighter and more prosperous for everybody.

Reed: What can City Council do to protect the river?

Maycock: The endangered species that are in the river really help us protect the river. If you live somewhere where you have a water bill, I don’t know if that affects you, but if you do then your water bill has just skyrocketed. Currently we’re getting our water supply from GPRH because of the draught situation that we’ve been in. The endangered species like the blind salamander really protect our water supply from the San Antonio water systems and other communities that come in and maybe want to buy our water or use our water. We really need to have more river clean ups. I’m present at lots of those. It’s just important that if you use the river to protect the water. Take your trash out. If you see trash that’s laying around pick it up. There’s lots of things we can do to protect our river and our recharge zones. I don’t have time to mention them all. When it comes to new developments, we need to increase the amount of impervious cover on new developments to help protect our aquifer  so we can help refill our aquifer.

Reed: Is San Marcos a veteran friendly city?

I’ll say this. I don’t think any community is really veteran friendly. A lot of people will demogogue a veteran status. I don’t want to demogogue it. I went, I did what I had to do, I would still be in it today if it weren’t for injuring myself, and I enjoyed it and I miss my brothers. Some of them are over in Iraq right now and I keep in touch with them. But no community is ever really veteran friendly, even San Antonion where they have a veteran’s hospital. I would like to see San Marcos get veteran outreach centers even a VA outpatient clinic, and become more friendly to veterans. I think other veterans who have been out of the military for a while can agree that once your out for a while and your thinking about having been in the military for a while and those thoughts go away, every once in a while you still feel kind of used. No one really cares about veterans it seems. If you’re active then you’ll get discounts at IHOP or some other place, but if you’re a veteran you can’t count on much.

They’ve talking about giving a $5,000 incentive for veterans to come in and buy a home. If the budget can support that then I would support that, I think it’s a good thing. When you come back from combat you might have a few thousand dollars saved up because when you’re overseas you really don’t have a lot of places to spend your money. It kind of accumulates in your bank account unless you have somebody back home spending it for you. It’s really hard, a lot of veterans who get out of the military nowadays have never gone through the process of buying a home. A lot of their parents don’t know about ggoing about buying a home. I kind of stand in that group right there, looking at buying my first home. It’s a pretty scary process. Not knowing about going about doing it. Not knowing if you can trust your realitor, or the bankers. So I think some program’s that would help first time home buying veterans go through that process and make it much easier would benefit us.

Reed: What can City Council do to improve the relationship between the city and the university community?

Maycock: Let me say that university students get a bad rap. Just last week I was walking downtown and I saw a fraternity, Sigma Nu, I remember you guys,. Sigma Nu was out about The Square picking up trash. They usually go other places in town to pick up trash. Now I know they have community service requirements that thye have to meet for their fraternity, but they chose to do that. I think the University students get a pretty bad rap that they don’t care about their community. Well they care about their community. Bud they have other important issues that they have to concern themselves about. So they show their concerns in other ways. There might be some students out there who don’t care about San Marcos I’m not going to ignore that fact. But there are issues like noise ordinances that come up. I think one of our City Councilmembers Chris Jones brought a very good point up when, I don’t want to compare us to Austin but other communnities and Austin is the closest one, has a noise ordinance to where it’s not up to the officer if they think the noise is too loud. They have to get so many feet away from the building and they pull out their decibel meter and they read it. If it’s a certain decibel then you can get fined or they’ll tell you to turn it down or whatever the case is. San Marcos, from what I’ve seen so far, really wants to leave that up to the police officers and although we do have some really good police officers here in town, I know students probably don’t think that way, I don’t think it’s a police officer’s job to be the judge. I think it’s his job to enforce the law and not interpret those laws.

Reed: Did you support the extension of Bar hours in San Marcos?

I was in favor for it for a while and I’ll tell you why. I’ve talked to several of my police officer friends, some of them live in Austin most of them live here in San Marcos, and I got a couple of friends in Kyle, and they have been pulling over less people for DWIs, they’ve seen less traffic at twelve o’clock and one o’clock at night. The bars aren’t packed at 11:00 p.m. 11:30 p.m. 11:45 p.m., when they used to close at twelve. Now the can do shot after shot and drink after drink, because its last call. Then they. The bars have actually seen a steadier flow of business throughout the week from the bar owners I’ve talked to. I think that even though they are out there later it has promoted safer streets and more responsible drinking in San Marcos.

Anita Fuller and Lisa Marie Coppoletta did not respond to interview requests on time.

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