And then there were six

(Updated to include an email council member Tenorio sent to City Manager Sellers questioning the legality of the vote on the annexation resolution.)

Question: What’s the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth? Answer: Something citizens of Kyle will not receive from their city officials.

The hot button item on last night’s City Council agenda was a proposal to schedule a couple of public hearings on the subject of annexing land from the city’s extra-territorial jurisdiction into the city. The majority of citizens who made the trip to City Hall to address the council on the subject during the Citizen Comments section of the agenda spoke against the annexation. Why? I dunno. None of them spoke with absolutely clarity why they were for or against the idea, but that did not keep them from taking sides on the issue and most were on the side of "no."

How did these folks know they were living on land the city was considering annexing? After all, the city was not required, at this stage of the proceedings, to notify residents living in the affected areas. The answer is the city provided, as part of the council’s agenda, a map specifically highlighting the five areas being considered.

The actual item to be voted on was the last one on the agenda and the council considered it following an hour and 42-minute executive session or a little over two hours and 45 minutes after the meeting began. By that time, the chamber was largely deserted. Most of those who spoke during the Citizens Comments period had already left. After Mayor Todd Webster placed the item before the council fior its consideration and was awaiting a motion to approve it, after the council was told they were provided with a map illustrating the areas to be annexed, City Manager Scott Sellers jumped up with an astounding "Oh, by the way" moment:


There is a sixth piece of land the city didn’t tell the public about, located on the east side of I-35, near the intersection of Goforth and Cotton Gin roads, that’s also being considered for annexation.
Forgetting to include this fact with the agenda is a serious screw-up on the part of the city. In fact, it’s so serious that someone with deep pockets and a few friends in high places who opposes the annexation could easily file a lawsuit that would, at the very least, keep the proposed annexation bottled up in the courts for years. Heck, our governor and attorney general have filed lawsuits with far less merit. Sellers produced a "corrected" map with the additional land illustrated on it and gave it to the council moments before it voted on the proposed resolution, but city made absolutely no attempt to make this map readily available to the public or members of the media.

Not only that, but during the executive session, Chief of Staff Jerry Hendrix placed a copy of the map included with the agenda on the chamber’s large screen and told those few people still remaining in no uncertain terms that this map illustrated the lands to be annexed. He never mentioned the fact that there was a sixth piece of land being proposed for annexation that was not included on the map. I’m not accusing Hendrix of deliberately withholding information. I’m thinking he was left out of the loop as well. He didn’t know. Regardless, what he told the citizens gathered in the chamber was not the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. And that’s a problem. A potentially serious problem.

And there’s also the problem that the legend that comes with the map only lists the five areas depicted on the map. Nowhere does it say, for example, "Area 6 (not pictured) ..."

Now the City Council could have corrected this massive screw up by simply tabling the motion for two weeks until an accurate map with all the proposed land to be annexed could be made public as part of the Feb. 2 agenda. But hoping the Kyle City Council will ever do the right thing is like hoping my golden retriever will not chase that rabbit she just spotted in the underbrush. Ain’t gonna happen. Never has. I doubt it ever will.

Two council members — Diane Hervol and Daphne Tenorio — voted against the resolution. But Tenorio told me after the meeting she voted "nay" not to correct the city’s blunder but because "I don’t think the city was transparent enough in talking to citizens affected by this. I really would have liked to vote ‘yes,’ but the specific areas I’m not comfortable with right now." She said she was concerned because a number of people living in some of the areas opposed the annexation. "If somebody wants to be annexed, I’m completely OK with that. My concern is you’re trying to annex people without talking to them. I also don’t think we can afford to take on this additional area. Until we can afford to maintain our current infrastructure I have a problem adding additional burdens on our taxpayers."

(Updated information)
The morning after the council meeting, however, Tenorio sent the following email to Sellers:

"I am really concerned about last night’s resolution to extend the City of Kyle’s boundaries thru annexation. The map that was posted online last Friday was not the map that was approved. I have two concerns. First, while not purposely done, we did not give our citizens or our council the full 72 hours to review. The map that we voted on was not available to them or to me until right before the vote. Secondly, I am concerned that we are giving ammunition to the developers to litigate the annexation because we didn’t properly disclose."

That email was sent close to six hours prior to the original posting of this article. So there’s that.

(Resuming original article)
By the time I had a chance to talk to Hervol, she had already left the chamber.

In the only other significant action last night, the council laid all the necessary groundwork for a May election in which a very small handful of Kyle’s registered voters will turn out to cast ballots in two City Council races and for or against revisions in the city’s charter.