Much to the astonishment of most of her colleagues, City Council member Daphne Tenorio said last night an applicant’s qualifications should not be considered when making committee appointments and instead candidates should simply draw straws to see who gets selected.
Tenorio’s comments came during an unusually tumultuous discussion during which the council rejected a nominee for the Ethics Commission and saw what should have been the routine approval for another person to be named to the Planning & Zoning Commission turn into a maelstrom with Tenorio’s comments.
Even though these dramatic events took place barely 30 minutes after the council’s last meeting of the year began, it was the major topic of conversation among four council members who had yet to leave the council chambers 4½ hours later. All four of them — Dex Ellison, Tracy Scheel, Mayor pro tem Shane Arabie and Mayor Travis Mitchell — said they were still shocked, surprised and perplexed by Tenorio’s suggestion that a person’s qualifications for serving on a city board or committee should be ignored and instead they should engage in some form of a lottery to determine how vacancies are filled.
During the discussion over the nomination of engineer Paul Scheibmeir to the Planning & Zoning Commission, Tenorio expressed concern that, if approved, his appointment would result in five planning commissioners living west of I-35 and only two living east. She failed, however, to explain how drawing lots for these positions would rectify that geographical imbalance or, even more importantly, to give any proof that this geographical distribution has had any effect on decisions made by planning commissioners.
In fact, Tenorio’s motives appeared to have more to do with revenge than the council’s committee selection process, a process that was actually reviewed, changed and adopted by the council earlier this year for the purpose of getting more qualified individuals on these committees. Prior to the vote on Scheibmeir, who, by the way, won council approval by a 6-1 vote (Need I say who voted against?), the council rejected Alex Villalobos’s nomination of Marco Pizana to the Ethics Commission with Tenorio being the only council member joining Villalobos in voting for Pizana. Last month, Pizana lost a city council election race and has publicly declared he plans to run again in 2019. The five council members voting against the nomination said the Ethics Commission is the one body filled with city council appointees that should be free from any political influence even if that means excluding those who might otherwise be qualified if they have announced plans to run for elective office.
Still, Tenorio’s comments left many observers scratching their heads over how someone could support the concept that a person’s qualifications should not be a criterion for serving on a city committee.
But that was not the only dramatic moment of last night’s city council meeting. The second one came during consideration of a zoning change request for property located on Windy Hill Road that the owner wanted to convert into an apartment complex with a small area set aside for a gas station/convenience store. The item was held over from the council’s last meeting on Nov. 21 to give City Attorney Frank Garza ample opportunity to research whether an agreement the owner signed with Hays County before his property was annexed by the city that gave him permission to build the complex superseded any action the council might take.
Even though Garza said his research suggested the city’s hands were tied because of that agreement, the council seemed on the verge of rejecting the zoning request. Tenorio had made a motion to deny the zoning change and it was seconded by Damon Fogley who stated he opposed the zoning change because there was already too much traffic congestion on Windy Hill Road. And judging from the comments made when this item came up for discussion at the council’s Nov. 21 meeting, only Arabie seemed to be a sure vote in favor of the zoning change.
But when Ellison asked Garza what exactly would be the legal ramifications on all parties of any council decision, Garza said that answer could only come during a discussion that took place in an executive session setting. Following a 30-minute executive session, council members filed back into their respective places on the dais and without any discussion demurely voted 6-1 to approve the zoning change recommended earlier last month by the Planning & Zoning Commission.
The council also approved delaying the start of the Lehman Road reconstruction for at least four months in the hope that the project might qualify to receive state and federal funding that would pay 80 percent of the cost of that project, along with four other planned capital improvement projects, the most expensive of which is the relocation of the railroad siding that results in stopped trains blocking traffic on Center Street in the heart of the city’s downtown area. The council was told that if the Lehman project scores high enough to receive these federal and state dollars, the revenues generated when voters approved the sale of bonds to finance the Lehman project could be used to add other-desired amenities to it, specifically a bridge that would completely remove Lehman from a flood plain. That was enough to convince all seven council members to vote in favor of a request to apply for the money.
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