This will be utterly devastating for our community, just as it will be for NB. I’m ashamed, when there were plenty of adequate laws and not enough enforcers, that we added more laws – laws that will tell tourists they are not welcome here at a time when tens of thousands will be moving for NB to somewhere else.

No, you’re right. The SM economy of today does not depend on river traffic. Nor do college daytrippers with their own tube or rent one make up a huge portion of the hundreds of thousands of floaters that NB gets each year. The point is NB just shot themselves in the face by passing this same ban. They have schliterbaun to keep a fraction of their tourist traffic going, but they’ve basically closed the river. All those people  now are going to be looking for somewhere else to go. That’s millions upon millions in annual economic impact that SM with this ban just said “don’t come here, you’re not welcome.” Why? Why right now at this moment rather than waiting a year to see if we can attract a portion of that river traffic? It’s increasingly clear that there are certain people in this town who refuse to let anything change by any means necessary, and they are killing us.

 We’ll see the impact on New Braunfels as the sales tax reports roll in. I can report that the river has been much cleaner than in years past. I think I’ve picked up a couple of empty cans and a random snack wrapper or 2, but there isn’t the floating raft of cans like there used to be.

Saw an article about the outfitters suing to overturn the ban in NB, and it says 400mil/yr is the economic impact. Let’s say a quarter of that could be captured by San Marcos. $100 million coming into this town from the outside and we just said no thanks we don’t want your kind here.

Seriously, what is with these people that want San Marcos to be some quaint backwater village. When the drinking age dropped to 18, we voted to go wet and open a ton of bars explicitly to make money off student drinking. We’ve pushed alcohol sales ever since. When the age went back up to 21 in the 80s, we kept the bars open. We lengthened bar hours to keep traffic in town rather than lose it to Austin.

At the same time, we have existing multifamily essentially full, studies showing a large portion of students are not able to live in San Marcos because there is not enough housing,  at the same time, the university is at 34k on the way to 45-50k. Yet, people are doing everything possible to block additional multifamily development. We should be adding 10k units just to meet demand. We should be trying to find ways to make that work, even if it means leveling whole neighborhoods to make way for progress.

What we have though are these militant people. We get pseudo-environmentalism in one ear and the protect my small town speech in the other. This town is going where it’s going no matter what anyone wants. People can keep doing everything they can to chop it’s legs out in an attempt to remake the 50s or whatever the hell they’re trying to do, but progress marches on even if it has to be over the top of people. It is unstoppable. People need to accept that and either get with it, profit from it, or get out.

Man fuck everything about this. Vote passed 4-2 even though we had more than 1,100 signatures in opposition? Good thing to know our voice fucking counts. Fucking bullshit.

”
Let’s say a quarter of that could be captured by San Marcos. $100 million”

I think that study included everything such as Schlitterbahn and any receipts from restaurants. I know the rivers are popular, but 400 is just stretching things. The entire New Braunfels economy for 2011 was only 1.7 billion. You’re (that study) telling me that the rivers alone attracted 25% of every dollar spent here? Come on.

The tubers that come to the Comal are probably going to migrate to the lower guadalupe outside of the city limits. The high paying jobs such as shuttle driving, tube hander outer, etc. will migrate with those, based on demand.

The people that were going to eat in restaurants and stay in hotels probably still are. Those that were camping.. there is onliy 1 camp ground in the city that I know of.

The alcohol in the guadalupe area is distributed by the same 2 distributors as new braunfels. 

I’m sorry but I just don’t see the sky falling with either ban(*).

(*) Those bans being: Disposable containers on the rivers inside the New Braunfels city limits and open alcohol and consumption in San Marcos parks.

*Ahem – they could potentially fine you for having an open container even if it is empty when you bring it ashore. Solution? Sink all your cans in the river.
Great call, council. ಠ_ಠ

So, your argument is…. The alcohol distributors will be fine even if dozens of retailers go out of business. Many of the outfitters may go out, but other outfitters will replace them in a new location. You don’t care about shuttle drivers, waiters, etc because they’re not high paying jobs. And people will still go into NB to stay in hotels & eat because they’re only going to relocate slightly down the same rivers rather than to a different town. That’s a messed up world view.

A lot of those floaters will not move slightly down the river outside the city limits but rather to other towns. SM (prior to this ban) in an excellent position to grab a piece of that business.

Could go either way, but point is there are issues of law, not just major financial impact.

The river belongs to the state. The city can’t regulate it in either case. They can regulate their parks. You may want to recheck the bullets above because you’re wrong. SM has banned any display of alcohol open or closed. The only mention of open container is that you can’t have one when entering/exiting the river. It prohibits Styrofoam (who uses Styrofoam cups anyway, which is by the way a brand name rather than an actual material). Secure lids for containers in the river.

So, I question that they have the authority to regulate anything IN the river. I think they’re overreaching on a lot of the rest of this. Maybe there are issues of law that should restrain them, but primarily it’s a slightly negative economic impact to where we are now & a huge missed opportunity to capitalize on NB’s idiocy.