At the end of last week’s discussion on proposed charter changes, there was the feeling that an attempt should be made to synthesize and reconcile all the concerns voiced by the individual council members and attempt to come up with new wording for some of the proposals in time for the council to consider them at this coming Tuesday’s meeting. Well, whoever it was that came up with the language that replaces what was originally conceived for the proposed change in the Compensation portion of the charter (Section 3.09) succeeded in this endeavor beyond all expectations.
The author or authors of this new wording brilliantly synthesized what was needed to make sense of the section with the intent of the last Charter Review Commission to create a citizens review committee to recommend compensation changes. Unfortunately, that charter commission’s intent didn’t equate with its ability to legitimize such a compensation committee and the wording the commission ultimately came up with effectively neutered the compensation committee. And that’s basically the reason why this section of the charter was targeted for a change in language. The notion of this kind of citizen input into the process via an appointed committee, also received significant support last week from many council members.
Equally as brilliant, the new language converts the entire compensation procedure from a council decision to a legitimate process. For all practical purposes, under the original language, the council could propose to give themselves a salary hike, draft an ordinance legalizing such a hike, schedule two public hearings on the notion to accompany the two required readings of the ordinance and then, bang, after passing the ordinance on second reading they get a larger salary via a budget amendment.
That’s not going to happen under with this new wording. If this passes (and it should) "a salary adjustment approved in accordance with this section shall be included in the proposed budget for the subsequent fiscal year, and the effective date of the council salary adjustment shall be the first day of the fiscal year for the budget in which the salary adjustment is included. Council is prohibited from amending a budget to adjust council salary."
So there.
Although Tuesday’s meeting is labeled a ‘Special City Council Meeting," it has always been on the schedule because it is a meeting that’s legally required as part of the annual fiscal year budget adoption process. And Tuesday’s agenda contains all the requisite items required as part of that process. Chances are, however, that council debate about the charter — added to this agenda simply because the charter permits the council to recommend changes like this every two years and these changes must be done now in time to get them on the November ballot — will consume more time and energy and undoubtedly produce more fireworks (if last week’s discussions are any indicator) than debate on the proposed budget.
It will be fascinating, however, to measure the silliness factor. For example, what is the over and under on the number of council members who will vote not to give citizens a chance to render their opinion on these proposed charter changes because citizens were not given a chance to render their opinion on these proposed charter changes. Hey, I’m not making this stuff up. That exact line of thought was argued by as many as four council members last week.
How many times will council members venture wildly and erratically off topic like they did last week? For example, the subject of the compensation change is not how much council members should be paid or even whether they should be paid at all. It’s strictly about what process should be employed to arrive at those decisions.
And the discussion about the city’s manager residence should not involve whether that official should or should not be required to live within the city limits. The council should work from the assumption that such a residency requirement is needed and valid, so the debate should only be about what document should contain that requirement. Should it be in the charter, which provides council members with absolutely no flexibility, or in an employment contract, which gives council members a host of options in their hiring negotiations?
What happens when debate veers wildly off topic is that council members may say something that will come back to haunt them. About 30 years ago, the voters in one Dallas council district elected a vocal wildcat. This person would scream and yell and rudely criticize the mayor and her colleagues at just about every council meeting. On a trip I made to Atlanta at that time on behalf of a client, I discovered the City of Atlanta had made recordings of this wild women screaming during council proceedings and those recordings were part of presentations made to businesses Atlanta was trying to lure to the city to show them why they should never consider Dallas as a place for those relocations.
This last week I called around and tried to speak with officials involved in economic development efforts in Central Texas cities comparable to Kyle, Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any of them to speak to me on the record, but one individual, on the condition I would preserve her anonymity, told me that they are now the proud owners of a recording of a certain Kyle city council person saying any Kyle city manager "should have to drink the same water, drive the same roads" as everyone else in the city and has labeled that statement as "Kyle city council member equates living in the city with a prison sentence." Ouch!
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