*Results are complete, but unofficial.
City Council Place 5 will go into a run-off election after no candidate received over 50% of the votes.
The run-off will be between Lorenzo Gonzalez who received 32.42% (6,391) of the votes and Roland Saucedo who received 26.28% (5,181) of the votes. Even though Gonzalez received the most votes, he did not get an outright majority of over 50%.
The other two candidates who ran were Griffin Spell who received 24.26% (4,783) of the votes and Atom Von Arndt who received 17.04% (3,360) of the votes.
The run-off election will occur on Dec. 14 between Gonzalez and Saucedo.
Gonzalez, a law enforcement officer at Del Valle ISD, decided to run for city council after having trouble contacting other city councilmembers.
“When I ran in the March primary [for Hays County Constable], people asked my opinion on things going on in the city… it was really hard to get in contact with elected officials. I’ve always been the type of person that’s for transparency, and that elected officials work for you, not the other way around,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said his main priorities are to fix affordable housing and be transparent for San Marcos citizens.
“One is getting the wheels turning to begin solving the affordable housing issue, but that’s going to be a long road. Transparency is my biggest motivation for running, so whatever my constituents’ priority is my priority. I want the voice of the everyday citizen in front of the council,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said he will treat the city of San Marcos and Texas State as one group, something he believes other city councilmembers do not do.
“Step one is to stop seeing them as two different groups. They might need different needs because there is an almost younger generation versus an older generation situation, and obviously they’re going to have different needs but to stop seeing them as long-term visitors versus residents would be the first step in that balancing,” Gonzalez said.
Saucedo, a communications clerk at Splash Coworking, decided to run for city council after previous councilmembers did not follow through with promises.
“In recent elections, we’ve campaigned and elected people that have made promises and commitments to represent our community, and they fall short of it. I felt like it was time for me to step up and actually give the people a representative that is truly going to represent their voice and not my own agenda,” Saucedo said.
Saucedo said his main priorities are to apply task-force suggestions and create an open dialogue between developers and residents.
“We can apply [task-force suggestions] to our updated current data, and consolidate those initiatives to start implementing them. We need to open a dialogue between developers and residents, so we can start moving forward with a plan of action to be able to increase housing stock and provide alternative affordable housing,” Saucedo said.
Saucedo believes that the relationship between the city and the university needs to be improved but is currently not as dire as some councilmembers suggest. “The relationship between city residents and university students isn’t unsuccessful, but needs to be improved. I’d like to just recognize everyone as neighbors, even though they’re students. We need an open dialogue about resident and student needs and the university and the city could also have more transparency,” Saucedo said.
Early voting for San Marcos City Council Place 5 opens on Dec. 2 and closes on Dec. 10 with election day on Dec. 14.
