Some of the new faces at the public comment podium at the Jan. 5 special called meeting of the Laredo City Council read from small pieces of paper; others knew the script by heart. All conveyed variations of the same message about transparency and taxes and sometimes, water. One said he was there to support the new Mayor.
The appearance of the six or seven acarreados who are not regulars in Council chambers was in reality a show of support (or was it a reality show?) for the newly minted Mayor of Laredo, Dr. Victor Treviño, the author of the sole agenda item of the meeting he called.
The irony-rich agenda item to re-open the application period for City Manager, was indeed a matter of transparency or the lack thereof. It read like a measure intended to accommodate local applicants of the inexperienced ilk of former City Manager Robert Eads.
Leading up to the Jan. 5 meeting, Treviño had reportedly gone to City management about re-opening the application deadline and was told he could not do so without the matter going before the City Council. Ignoring that advice he knocked on other doors at City Hall where he got the same answer. He called the special meeting on his own and without polling Council members for their availability to attend.
The Mayor’s attempt to extend the deadline and derail the search process was countered by impassioned public comments and those of well-informed Council members. The two hour-and-twenty-minute discussion included comments that resonated like warning shots across the bow of the Mayor’s public service ship just setting sail on its maiden voyage.
More than a dozen citizens who spoke in the public comments part of the meeting or whose comments were read aloud by City PIO Noraida Negron expressed their opposition to extending the application deadline, which closed on Dec. 11, per the City’s Oct. 3, 2022 contractual agreement with Strategic Government Resources (SGR) to conduct a national search for qualified, experienced candidates, vet them, and present the City with a roster of finalists for the position.
Despite the Mayor’s solo attempt to disrupt the course of a national search for a City Manager and to exclude the participation of the colleagues to whom he referred as “the council people,” this new Council brought the public the hope that the intelligent tone and substance of their discussions have replaced the one up-ing, grandstanding, and bellicose behavior of members of the last Council and many before it.
The voices of new City Council members Melissa Cigarroa, Dr. Tyler King, and Gilbert Gonzalez – in tandem with Council members Vanessa Perez, Alyssa Cigarroa, and Ruben Gutierrez – ably dismantled the Mayor’s agenda item and his blatantly transparent attempt to invite local applicants with no experience managing a city.
To many, Treviño’s attempt to extend the application period carried the unpleasant waft of an accommodation for local applicants who had not applied before the Dec. 11 deadline.
Like the acarreados, the Mayor read from his own script, apprising the Council that “the public is in the dark” and that “eight city managers over the last eight years is not a good track record.” He said, “the public should know who is being considered for City Manager, the compensation, and the length of the commitment they are making.” Still reading, he declared with mustered umbrage, “It is disingenuous to the public to close the deadline (for applying) prior to the election being concluded. It stands to reason people will apply based on who their boss will be.”
The lengthy segment that follows below took place during the discussion of the Mayor’s motion. They include the comments of Council member Melissa Cigarroa, former City Council member George Altgelt, and Council members Ruben Gutierrez, Gilbert Gonzalez, Vanessa Perez, Dr. Tyler King, and Alyssa Cigarroa.
Melissa Cigarroa, District 3
In response to Mayor Treviño’s persistent rush to reveal the names of applicants, Council member Melissa Cigarroa addressed the privacy of the applicants and the confidentiality measures in place in the process of the recruiting consultants interviewing and vetting candidates. Reading from Chapter Four of the Texas City Management Association handbook she introduced guidelines for recruiting a city manager.
She read, “It is in the interest of the city to maintain confidentiality throughout the process of looking for a city manager. Assurance of confidentiality within the law will result in more applications, particularly from those individuals who are presently working. While applicants realize that the City will want to contact their present employer at some point to assess the job they have done, they typically prefer to wait until it is clear that they are going to be considered a finalist.
“Because of the importance of confidentiality to both parties it is important for city council to determine at the outset with advice from the city attorney the extent to which the recruitment process will remain confidential. If disclosure of the names of applicants is likely to occur at any point, potential applicants should be advised so they may take this into account in making their decision whether or not to pursue the position.
“Assurances regarding confidentiality should be honored and contacts with present employers should be coordinated with the applicants with adequate time in order to inform their employer. There is no faster way to lose good applicants and in the process to damage their present security and their long term career than to violate the trust of assurance that was given regarding confidentiality. Generating a sufficient pool of qualified and diversified applicants is the goal of the recruitment process. To accomplish this, relations with potential applicants must communicate the city’s professionalism and responsiveness and provide accurate and descriptive information about the city, the position, the community, and the status of the process. The city must stress that confidentiality will be maintained per the law.’
No longer reading from the manual, she continued, “I read this particular information because of the implication in the news that perhaps withholding the names of the city manager applicants at this stage in the process has been done in bad faith or trying to hide something. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact that no names have been released yet, not to the public and not even to Council is an indication that the City Manager’s search is following best practices and is being conducted professionally.
“This was also a campaign pledge of mine while I was out on the campaign trail meeting with District 3 residents, that I would insist on professionalism in conducting city business, she said, continuing, “And one other point from this professional state organization of city managers. There’s a code of ethics to which city managers must adhere. In my opinion Tenet 7 of this ethics code stood out. It reads, ‘Refrain from all political activities that undermine confidence in professional administrators. Refrain from participation in the election of the members of the employing legislative body.’
“And that is applicable to all city managers and all city administrators. That code of ethics holds particular importance for our city at this time. While block walking and meeting the residents in District 3, many expressed their concerns about the state of affairs at City Hall and the reputation of the politicos interfering in the management of the city for personal and/or political gain. This reputation must change. We on Council are responsible for shepherding the growth of our city for the benefit of all who live, work, and play here. We do that in partnership with the City Manager who is qualified in City planning and is committed to remain above the fray of politics and to carry out our direction with professionalism and objectivity.
“If the City Manager cannot meet this standard, he or she will once again jeopardize the reputation of the city in the eyes of the public. The previous City Council set in motion a process that meets this standard of professionalism with the hiring of the SGR firm to assist with the City Manager search.
“The application window has closed. That passed in mid-December, and several candidates are currently being vetted. for presentation to Council at the end of January. I’ve been told we have out of town and local candidates so I feel the timeline that occurred for applications submittals was fair. Council will host interviews, and I understand these will be televised so that the public see the finalists also.”
Cigarroa said that if at the end of January they could not agree on a qualified applicant, City Council would begin a new search “Not before,” she stressed.
“City Council must respect the process. The old City Council voted to allow this search and process to occur in parallel to our recent elections because our City Manager is vital to the function of the City and should not be held hostage to the calendar of politics.
“This new City Council of which I am grateful to be a member should respect this process and prove that qualifications and not politics will determine the selection of the new City Manager,” she concluded to much applause from the audience.
George Altgelt
The former City Council representative for District 7 addressed the Mayor candidly and at length during the discussion of the motion.
“I’ve voiced to you and your son my disappointment in having this issue being brought forward. I think it’s very clear that the word transparency is being used as a cloak of virtue. It is in fact a Trojan horse. If we understand your quotes from KGNS properly, you said, ‘During the workshops the prior City Council opted to not appoint a City Manager until the new Council was seated.’ OK, that was a good thing. How fortuitous that you new Council members would be able to select the next City Manager.”
Altgelt told the Mayor, “I have a very difficult time understanding your reasoning with your comment that it was disingenuous to the public because the deadline was determined to be Dec. 11 prior to the new Council being seated. So what does the application deadline have to do with the new Council being seated?”
He questioned the Mayor about a more recent statement. “You just stated it minutes ago, ‘People will apply,’ I just wrote this down while you were talking, ‘on who their bosses are.’ Well that immediately implies that someone local who is paying very close attention to the nine of you is going to apply.”
Altgelt recapped the Mayor’s efforts to re-open the applications for City Manager. “At first you were trying to re-open the application process just independently. And then you were instructed by City management, ‘Hey, that’s not how it works. You work with eight other people. You need their input.’ And then you called a special meeting. Decorum tells us first you poll your colleagues to see if they are available for that meeting.”
He continued, “Process wasn’t followed. Decorum wasn’t followed. The trying to manipulate the application date to extend it without anyone knowing it doesn’t pass the transparency test, and frankly it is very disappointing because a mayor who holds the very unique position and possession of the public trust – a good mayor – is supposed to unite and not divide, and respectfully, here you are stumbling out the gate with division inherent in this very meeting.”
Altgelt addressed application deadlines. “You have 12 or 13 qualified applicants who took the time to update their resumes and to get their applications out on time. Some of them may have purchased plane tickets to be here on Jan. 30th or a hotel stay on the 31st. The City may have funded those costs as well. Money has been spent for a very public meeting at which the names of the applicants will not be cloaked in darkness, but will be shared in a very transparent way.”
He chided the Mayor for another comment to KGNS about re-opening the application deadline. “That was very unfair to those who got their applications in on time. You said, ‘If they really want the job, they’ll hang in there.’”
According to the former City Council member, it was interim City Manager Keith Selman who advised the City to hire SGR for the search for experienced, qualified, and vetted candidates. “That’s who was hired. That’s who’s been paid. That’s who has done a lot of due diligence on some very experienced candidates,” he said.
Of the field of locals reportedly wanting to be considered candidates for City Manager Altgelt cited the need for a technician rather than a politician. “You don’t need a former Webb County Commissioner turned news anchor. You don’t need a former City Council member who is now a big wig at UISD and very political. You don’t need a former Webb County department head.”
Of himself, he added, “And as capable as I might think I am, you don’t need a former City Council member who is a lawyer to be your next City Manager. You don’t need any of the likes of us. You need someone who has done this before, not a local who will require on the job training.”
Altgelt recalled the City’s last national search for a City Manager. “We’ve been down that road before. A national search was undertaken. A good roster of candidates was produced, but then Council member Marte Martinez willed the deadline extended. Good national applicants dropped out when they saw the fix was in, and we ended up with Robert Eads. We may not have gotten what the City taxpayers deserved, but we as a Council got what we deserved for hiring an inept, incapable person. Multiple boil water notices, chaos on the third floor, chaos in the City Attorney’s office, chaos in HR. It was pandemonium.”
Altgelt’s final admonishment to the Mayor: “When a local shows up wanting to be your next City Manager with all their baggage and all their allegiances, you lose the public trust.”
Ruben Gutierrez, District 5
“You the people have asked for transparency over and over again. That’s the reason a third party was brought into this process,” Gutierrez addressed the audience.
He was clear about not knowing who the applicants were for City Manager and about staying the course for process and deadlines. “I don’t know who has applied, if they are from out of state, from Texas, from Laredo. The process needs to take its course. It needs to be done. Because of this, it isn’t tainted. We up here don’t have the slightest idea who has applied.
“The extension to apply?” he asked and answered. “Yes, that opens it up for more people to apply. Laredoans or whomever could apply, but the fact is it has been open for Laredoans to apply since Nov. 4, 2022, as it was for all other applicants. There has been plenty of time to apply.”
Gutierrez stressed the importance of deadlines. “They are there for a reason. Just to open it up again and extend it even further is just wrong. It is incorrect. It’s unfair to those who took the time out of their busy schedules to meet the deadline. It honestly opens the door for us to get involved political-wise. You’ve asked over and over again for us not to get involved, and that’s a great thing because that’s what we have tried to change. Slowly but surely, it’s changing. We are here to work for you. What you want is what you are getting,” he said.
“Please understand the application period was open to all Laredoans. Re-opening the deadline could cause us to lose great candidates who applied on time. We still need to meet those applicants on the finalist list and interview them,” he concluded.
Gilbert Gonzalez, District 1
“I believe the key word today here is transparency. And whether you are for or against, whether we are for or against, we have something in common – that we are here and that we care for our next City Manager and our City. We don’t know the applicants, but they applied regardless of the outcome of these last December elections. Instead of moving backwards or working backwards why can’t we maybe possibly add in the motion where if we don’t choose anybody, we can always re-open and can start working forward?”
Vanessa Perez, District 7
“The Mayor’s call for transparency did not make sense when SGR’s adherence to best practices in the process selecting candidates guarantees transparency. I don’t think the Mayor considered the consequences of his solo motion to extend the application deadline,” Perez began.
“I would like to mitigate any kind of damage that may have been caused by the calling of this meeting for the applicants that have applied. I would like for them to know this was a specially called meeting. I was not polled to see if I could attend. I was not asked. I don’t want the applicants to feel discouraged, that their applications were reviewed and were not good enough or we did not like their credentials,” she continued.
“I would like to make it clear that I have not seen any of the applications that have come in to the consultants. I see a lot of new faces in the audience here today, and I want to commend everybody that has taken the time to be involved in government. I see this as a good sign. I do see faces that have not been here for the last two or three months worth of workshops and meetings that we’ve held to begin this process,” Perez said.
“We decided not to wait to begin the process in January so that when the new Council came in there would be a vetted pool of candidates that we could look at and hire from there. And that is exactly what this process has been. There has been nothing in the dark. There has been no changing of plans,” she explained.
Perez said that hiring SGR as a recruiter ensured transparency in the hiring process .
According to Perez, she had been told some applicants watched Laredo City Council meetings. “If they are watching, again, I want to mitigate any damage this meeting may have caused and for them to understand this meeting has nothing to do with their applications. I hope none of them rescind their applications. The worst case scenario out of this is if applicants drop out of the process because they feel we already have somebody local we want to hire.”
Of the evening’s special called meeting, she warned, “I would caution anybody being told that they were coming here tonight to advocate for a transparency item, when in fact I don’t see this as a transparency issue. This is something else. I don’t know what it is,” Perez said, adding, “But I also caution calling special meetings without making sure we can have a full Council present, because this is such an important decision that it almost got held tonight without the input of every Council member. Not having a representative at this meeting would be like not having a whole sector of the City present. I don’t think that is transparency if you are doing stuff like that,” she concluded.
Dr. Tyler King, District 6
Dr. King began his discourse with a question. “A lot of times you hear people ask, ‘Does it pass the smell test?’ And actually when you first hear this, it does pass the smell test. You hear transparency. I’ve heard it so many times from all of you tonight…We all want transparency. A lot of us just got elected on transparency. Five of us are new here and had nothing to do with this process. A lot of us feel we should honor what the last Council set up for us…I highly encourage you when you smell this, put your nose a little closer to the pot. When you really look at it, it doesn’t pass the smell test. We have a great transparent process that has been set up…Let’s trust the experts. Let’s do that here. Let’s go to them and let them give us a good quality set of applicants to move forward. If that doesn’t work, we start over. Let’s go forward with the work the previous Council set up. I’d like to thank them for the excellent opportunity to select a great City Manager.”
Mayor Victor D. Treviño
The Mayor responded thus: “I understand why people might be suspicious of some wrong doing, or that there’s somebody already lined up.”
He continued, “I have nobody lined up, and that is not the gist of this. The gist of this is because the people need to know who they are going to hire. They want to see their faces. They want to see who they are, and if you don’t consider opening the deadline, that’s fine.”
Treviño added, “But I do think people still need to see who the people are that are being considered, see their faces, see how they speak and why they want to come here. And that is the main purpose of this, and there’s no other hidden thing, no other connotation to anything else. I really don’t think that if the candidates are being told that all the people want to know is to see who they are, I don’t think anyone that’s qualified will back out. So that is the gist of the motion, the gist of the meeting here, and I don’t think there should be anything here that has not been disclosed or anything that hasn’t been ‘underminded.’ This is what I think should be put out there. That is my comment,” he said, concluding with, “I appreciate all the comments that all the council people said, and they are important. To the precautions or fears they might have, they are also understood. I ran a campaign of integrity and transparency, and I am the voice of the public. So when I hear the voice of the public saying that they want to know who these candidates are, I’ll put it out there.”
The language of the Mayor’s explanation of his Jan. 5, 2023 motion does not align with the language of his agenda item:
VI. GENERAL COUNCIL DISCUSSIONS AND PRESENTATIONS
A. Request by Mayor Dr. Victor D. Trevino
1. Discussion with possible action to re-open and extend the City Manager application deadline and hiring process and procedure, and any matters related thereto.
Albert Torres, District 4
Crickets. The usually verbose Council member who has in the past steered many a Council meeting to his intentions, spoke only to add language to Alyssa Cigarroa’s first motion and to second her second motion.
Daisy Campos Rodriguez, District 2
District 2 Council member Daisy Campos Rodriguez told the Council and Mayor, “Certain people do have information on who has applied. When I first came in I asked if any locals had applied. I was told no. Later in the week I found out locals applied. I wasn’t ok with being lied to my first day of meetings with certain city managers.”
She continued, “I understand the public wants transparency. We all want transparency, as I do as well. My district wants transparency, and I am ok with not opening the applications, but I am not ok with what is not transparent because there is a leak, and that means this is already tainted because there is a leak….Certain people know who has applied. How is that fair? …It’s not mutually transparent because there is a leak…Just make sure the people of Laredo get the transparency they deserve, and we as a Council should provide that for them.”
Alyssa Cigarroa, District 8
Council member Alyssa Cigarroa spoke to the purported “leak.”
“It is going around who the local candidates are because they themselves are talking and lobbying for the position,” she began, and then shifted her focus to Mayor Treviño, understanding perhaps as others did that evening, that he might be uninformed of SGR’s national search of qualified City Manager candidates, its vetting processes, its local workshops, and the agreed-upon timelines for application deadlines (Dec. 11, 2022) and delivery of a list of candidates who made the cut (Jan. 17, 2023).
“I do not want to mislead the public over and over. We have been very transparent with the process we have in place,” she began. “Mayor, I ask you to please understand and speak to the consultants to understand where we are at this point in time, and with this new responsibility with being the Mayor, it is important that you do due diligence,” she said respectfully to the newly elected official whom the constituency should well assume would be up to speed on a matter as important as the unbiased national search for a City Manager.
“From your interviews in the media and the comments you have made tonight, had you spoken to them and understood the integrity of the process, you would have learned that there will be time for the public to meet the candidates before we vote on who will be our City Manager,” Cigarroa continued before addressing the public.
“It is beautiful to see so many people here tonight engaging in this process. The City Manager is one of the most important positions, and we cannot meddle in the process. This is what we are standing for tonight – good government and the implementation of best practices throughout municipal government.”
She concluded with an apology to those who had been misled to attend a meeting about transparency in the process of selecting a City Manager when transparency was the very goal of SGR’s national search for qualified candidates.
As the Mayor’s motion was unanimously rejected by the eight public servants to his left and right, he showed little reaction to the vote that quashed his thinly disguised effort to re-open the application period.
Doug Thomas of SGR was available online at the meetingfor questions from the Mayor or Council members.
SIDEBAR
The new Mayor’s first meeting – transparency trashed and an audacious attempt to de-rail the national search for an experienced City Manager
The Jan. 5 special meeting was a strange one for the record books. The presence of acarreados as audience plants and their chorus of transparency evoked the raulismo epoch of Mayor Salinas and his penchant for turning Council chambers into a circus.
The audience and the public podium were amply seeded with the Mayor’s posse, including his son David – who all too often speaks for his father – huddled with CFO of Treviño for Mayor, international trade mogul Eduardo Garza, and a row of suits that represented the Tecos baseball team.
Also present and gesticulating with his watch to some time keeper off in the distance while former Council member Altgelt addressed the Mayor during the discussion of the motion, was former LISD Supt. of Purchasing and florist Tony Gutierrez, best known in the mid-1990s for buying oak trees and other large landscaping material for the original VMT magnet school from the floral shop he owned on Saunders. Gutierrez starred in the Mayor’s campaign ads set in a medical consulting room.
He and Luxandra Guerra – a cañonera who apparently reads Forbes – flanked the Mayor’s wife. Guerra made a public plea at the podium to Council member Alyssa Cigarroa to support the Mayor’s motion.
The acarreados? Done with their errand, they sat in a gaggle, oblivious to the meeting – giggling, tittering, chatting, and using their cell phones.
Council member Perez’s dread that national candidates watching the special called meeting would withdraw? Two did.
The Mayor’s first motion at his first meeting; his process to get it on an agenda for a special called meeting; his public back pedaling to say his plainly stated motion to re-open the application deadline had another “gist;” that the gist was really about granting the public transparency regarding the applicants – these were not indicators that he understands how he is to work with the Council as a team member or that he will foster unity.
The majority of the Council acted in the best interest of the City, and they did it well, extending to the Mayor the decorum and respect he failed to show them. Some privately groused at the Mayor calling himself “the voice of the public.” Are they not also?
They worked around him and the motion reinterpreted as a fib/lie and his own lack of transparency.
He was the elephant in the room, at home in the circus he had brought to City Hall.
– MEG
(The motion made by Council member Alyssa Cigarroa and seconded by Council member Vanessa Perez, which passed Jan. 5 with 8 for and none against:
Motion to deny the request and extend the search if good candidates are not found, to hold an Executive Session Workshop, to present the semifinalist and to not have SGR release any information until the workshop.
And a final motion made by Council member Alyssa Cigarroa and seconded by Council member Albert Torres, which passed with 8 for and none against:
Motion to not have a workshop and to have SGR directly send the city attorney the information to have an extra layer of confidentiality, security through the City Attorney.)
VERY WELL REPRESENTED MEG… te aventaste~