City Council tries to blame others for its own shortcomings and then fails to demand accountability

Somewhere between the strange worlds of George Orwell and Joseph Heller, you’ll find the planet inhabited by Kyle City Council. Take Tuesday night, for instance. The council tried to penalize two organizations seeking special event application approvals for following the rules the council has in place for such applications instead of trying to find a way to adhere to unexplained policies that are not in place.

The applications in question were for a two-day music festival for veterans Nov. 7 and 8 and a Hays CISD-sponsored Mariachi festival Nov. 7.

Mayor Todd Webster seemed to think these applications should go to the Parks and Recreation Board either before or instead of the council. And perhaps they should, but that’s not the policy in effect now. Or, as CM Diane Hervol so appropriately stated "To tell these people now, at the 12^th hour, that they have to come back through the system, is just not fair."

"It’s not the 12^th hour," Webster retorted.

"But they’re here tonight," Hervol countered. "We put these items on the agenda for whatever reason. Granted these two events don’t appear on the calendar until November ... but now these two events are coming before us and we’re saying ‘Hey, let’s go ahead and put another step in the process and go this way.’ If it was me, I wouldn’t like my time being wasted. I don’t disagree with the idea of changing the process. I’m just saying these two items are before us now."

But then it got even more bizarre when CM Damon Fogley chimed in.

"I think we need to have a very specific, whether it’s through Parks or the city council, we need to have a program in place where we make sure we have guidelines or whatever that may be for each organization that approaches us and asks us for funds," Fogley said.

So then — I kid you not — Fogley voted against the applications because the city did not have in place, "whether it’s through Parks or the city council," unspecified "guidelines or whatever," as if this failure of the city's was the applicants' fault.

But wait, it gets worse. The council actually agreed for the City of Kyle to be a sponsor and attach the city’s logo to what is being billed as the Hays Veterans Music Fest. Now, according to the application she filed with the city, promoter Sylvia Gallo listed this as a for profit event. In speaking before the council, however, she said it was designed to raise funds for several Central Texas veterans organizations. Personally, I could care less whether it’s a for-profit venture or a fund raiser, but if it is the latter I’m convinced the city council should be have installed some accountability into the proceedings. How is the city to know after the event it is sponsoring is over how the festival promoters distribute the moneys it collects? How much, if any, is actually going to veterans organizations? Should the council have insisted that a certain percentage of the proceeds actually go to veterans organizations? As far as I can tell, none of these issues were addressed; I know for a fact they weren’t addressed at Tuesday night’s council meeting. The only subject the council was concerned about was why these applicants didn’t follow rules that weren’t in effect and, in so doing, left themselves open to the possibility that Kyle might, in some circles, become known as "the town that ripped off American veterans."