Koch gets second term as mayor pro tem

The City Council voted unanimously last night to award District 5's Rick Koch a second consecutive one-year term as mayor pro tem after the only other person nominated — District 3's Robert Rizo — declined the nomination because of family health concerns.

The council also named freshman council member Yvonne Flores-Cale to represent the city on CAPCOG’s General Assembly. Two other appointments received zero interest from council members.

After Rizo nominated Koch as mayor pro-tem, Dex Ellison said he would like to nominate Rizo for the council’s No. 2 position behind the mayor, but Rizo declined. “It would be an honor to serve as mayor pro tem,” Rizo said. “Unfortunately, at this time, our family has some issues we’re dealing with healthwise and it might take some of my time … so at this time I would have to decline.”

No one on the council volunteered to replace former council member Tracy Scheel on the board of the Alliance Regional Water Authority, the organization created to meet the San Marcos-Kyle-Buda region’s water needs. It is expected the Public Works Department will put forward the name of a staff member to serve that role at the next council meeting Jan. 5. Likewise, no one on the council wanted to be a part of Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO), which serves Hays, Bastrop, Burnet, Caldwell, Travis and Williamson counties. Kyle’s participation in CAMPO currently is largely ceremonial, but that is expected to change following the certification of the 2020 Census, which should boost Kyle’s official population over the 50,000 mark and thus make the city a voting member of the organization. 

CAPCOG, or the Capital Area Council of Government, is, according to its website, “an advocate, planner and coordinator for important regional issues in the ten-county Capital Area. It works directly with its member local governments to recognize opportunities for cooperation and eliminate unnecessary duplication in emergency communications, elderly assistance, law enforcement training, criminal justice planning, solid waste reduction, homeland security planning, infrastructure development, transportation planning and economic development.”

It is also an opportunity to rub shoulders with neighboring government movers-and-shakers, although, at present, most of those shoulders are rubbed virtually. Flores-Cale’s appointment to CAPCOG came six days after the organization’s most recent General Assembly meeting, during which it appointed the members to the organization’s Executive Committee, the 29-member group that really drives CAPCOG. Executive Committee members serve one-year terms from January through December. Missing the Dec. 9 meeting means Kyle won’t be represented on CAPCOG’s Executive Committee until 2022 at the earliest. Ironically, it was Flores-Cale who drove the motion at the council’s Dec. 1 session to wait until after the mayoral runoff to fill the vacancies that were finally acted upon last night.