The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our charter and a few of our citizens

By now, anyone reading this already knows that city buckled under political pressure today and City Manager Scott Sellers graciously and somewhat magnanimously declined the offer to dwell in a residence that the city was intending to supply for him and future city managers, leaving unaddressed two fundamental questions: 1. How did city leaders find themselves in this quagmire? and 2. Was today’s decision a smart one?.

I’m going to tackle the second question first because it’s the easiest to answer. If the question was whether today’s decision was an expedient one, the answer would be "yes." I might even agree to an affirmative answer if the question became "Was this decision a wise one." Was it the politically correct one? Perhaps. Was it a smart one? Absolutely not.

Remove Scott Sellers as the subject of the discussion. Remove a city manager’s house as the subject of the discussion. Then the debate becomes should the city invest taxpayers money into buying land. Here is one truth about land: "They aren’t making any more of it." Investment advisor Seth Williams recently wrote about this very subject in Real Estate Tipster: "Most people don’t think of vacant land this way, but the reality is land is an extremely valuable resource with limited quantities available. Especially when you purchase land in the path of growth, you will find yourself with a finite asset that a lot of other people want to get their hands on. Stocks, bonds, mutual funds and 401Ks all make sense in certain scenarios, and so does land. If you go into this with the intent of holding the right property for the long-term, it can make a lot more sense (and be a lot more profitable) than any other investment vehicle out there."

In the collective rush to mollify a bunch of loud-mouths who went over the top in their personal attacks, not only on Sellers, but also on his family, the City Council rushed to judgment today and passed up the opportunity to make a fiscally sound investment that would pay long-term dividends to Kyle taxpayers.

And, as has been mentioned previously, it diminishes the appeal of Kyle to future city managers. Everybody focused on the availability of a home a potential city manager might have waiting for him in Kyle, but totally neglected that part of the conversation about the financial wreckage left behind by those forced to move. A city hires a new chief executive and the city usually expects that person to occupy and work in that position within two weeks, three at the max. But what happens to the home that city manager leaves behind in his previous city of employment? There are only two alternatives: 1. It can be dumped in a fire sale in which the owner takes a horrific financial beating or 2. the owner can suffer the financial burden of having to pay the expenses of two different residences until a decent price can be negotiated for the one left behind. Imagine how Kyle becomes "a destination city" for future city managers if they know that’s an immense problem they won’t have to deal with.

But that’s not going to happen because the city kowtowed to the shrieking of a very small, but an extremely loud and vengeful minority chorus, stoked by a small group of malcontents who will go to any lengths to stop progressive thought and growth in the city because such thought and such growth reduces their sphere of political influence. (They might even reveal themselves through negative reactions to this article on Facebook.) What motivated this mob was not rational thinking (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when I searched for stock brokers with offices in Kyle I came up empty-handed) but old-fashioned green-eyed jealousy. ("It’s just not fair that the city manager and his family can live in that nice a house and I can’t.")

By the same token, I’m not convinced a majority of Kyle residents favored the arrangement either. What I do believe is that majority simply did not care one way or the other. What they are concerned about much more than the issue of a city manager’s residence is who will be the starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys following Sunday night’s game with the Bucs. After that comes "What’s for dinner tonight?"

But I guess that’s water under the bridge, If Kyle hoped to foster a reputation as a leader, an innovative thinker, those hopes were crushed this morning. Now all that’s left to determine is how the council will restructure Sellers’s contract extension. Personally, I hope the council, at the very minimum, offers him a salary increase equal to the cut he was willing to take as lease payments on the residence. The charade that was played out in council chambers this morning was Sellers falling on his own sword to save the city massive embarrassment. As a result, the city owes Sellers. Big time. And I, for one, hope council members realize this and act accordingly.

That still leaves question No. 1 and could provide a simple "exit strategy" for all concerned. At the risk of revealing closely held family secrets, I have learned through a series of conversations I have had with leaders in Kyle as well as those who worked for Sellers in Kilgore, the East Texas city where Sellers was city manager before coming here, that Sellers and his family lived in a home on a parcel of land that would be considered small by the owners of most ranches, must substantial by owners of any single family residences here in Kyle. I have also been told, but this I must admit I haven’t been able to confirm through more than one person, that Sellers found a comparable residence located in Kyle’s ETJ (another told me the plot was actually in or closer to Martindale). Regardless, Sellers was prohibited from securing a residence in either Kyle’s ETJ or somewhere close to Martindale) or anywhere else, for that matter, except inside the city limits of Kyle. Why? Because Kyle’s City Charter contains a requirement that the city manager must reside within the city limits. Human Resources Director Sandra Duran, I have been told, lives on a similar plot of land near Martindale and that’s OK, as well it should be. Only the city manager has this restriction placed upon him or her. Those types of homes don’t exist in Kyle. At least, not yet.

And that was a problem, a serious enough problem for Sellers’s family so that it ultimately put him in the position where he had to, however reluctantly, say goodbye to Kyle and accept one of the many opportunities that are flooding his way that don’t place restrictions on his freedom to chose where he wants to live. And where I come from, a person’s first responsibility is to his family. The council, in a desperate attempt to do whatever it could possibly do to keep Sellers in the job in Kyle, came up with the original, clever and innovative housing arrangement as a compromise offer.

But the reason I say this could provide an exit strategy is that provisions such as these imposed by other municipalities, when faced with legal challenges, have been struck down by the courts. Freedom of choice, as defined by the courts, "describes an individual’s opportunity and autonomy to perform action from at least two available options, unconstrained by external parties." The courts have ruled, quite obviously, such residency restrictions deny those constrained by them their freedom of choice.

A number of states have already recognized that fact and legislatures in four of them have enacted laws prohibiting municipalities from enforcing any kind of residency requirements.

Not only that, the charter’s provision is discriminatory. Most municipal laws of this type make residency requirements applicable to all municipal employees. In Kyle, however, those restrictions only apply to the city manager and that, by definition, is discriminatory.

I would hope city leaders huddle with their legal advisors and find a way for the city to simply ignore this provision on the grounds that, if challenged, the city would most likely prevail in any type of legal action. But even more than that, someone would have to be incredibly vindictive to even challenge such a move.

That’s not to say there’s not a despicable soul out there that could act vindictively just because he or she didn’t get their way. But I would also hope the city would look forward to squashing such souls. Vindictiveness has no place in our political discourse.