San Marcos mother spends two years trying to get through to code enforcement

SAN MARCOS, Texas (KXAN) — A San Marcos mother who’s worried about a dangerous pool in her neighborhood says she’s been trying to get the city’s attention on the issue for the past two years.

The fencing around the pool in her neighbor’s yard has holes and openings in it that she’s concerned violate state safety code and could be very dangerous for children in the neighborhood.

“I first brought it up to code enforcement in 2017 when we first moved in, and they took down the address and said they were going to look into it,” Kristy Straubhaar said.

After two years, Straubhaar says she’s made three official complaints and dozens of phone calls to the city of San Marcos.

“I had someone close to our family die when I was a kid from an unfenced pool, and I don’t want that to happen to anyone else,” she said.

The city of San Marcos says state safety code regarding fencing around a pool only applies if the pool has two or more feet of water in it. The pool in question is empty.

However, Straubhaar says she worries kids could get hurt if they were to fall in the empty pool. She also says the pool fills up with some standing water when it rains.

As a protest, she decided to experiment and see if she could catch the city’s attention in a different way.

“I actually stopped mowing my lawn around the time that it was the height of summer, so that we would stay on code compliance’s radar,” Straubhaar said. “They’ve come three times now about the lawn, so I say I’ll mow it when they fix the pools.”

The mother of five hopes eventually, she’ll draw enough attention to the potential hazard for something to be done.

“Neighbors call for a lot of things,” Straubhaar says, “But I’d think life-threatening issues would take priority.”