OUR VIEW: Council making strides under tough circumstances

Yahoo

25-02-2025

Feb. 25—It's been just a little over three months since the Odessa City Council gained three new members and we thought we'd reach out to ask them to give an honest assessment of how they're doing so far.
They are far from happy, but we think they're doing a fabulous job!
First of all, Mayor Cal Hendrick, Eddie Mitchell and Craig Stoker have returned EVERY SINGLE TEXT AND PHONE CALL from us from the beginning and spent up to an hour at a time discussing the issues with us.
We can't tell you how refreshing it is to write stories based on conversations, not just open records requests and agendas.
They've never tried to deflect, obfuscate or change the subject despite the fact they walked into a mess left behind by former Mayor Javier Joven and his allies, Mark Matta and Denise Swanner.
Nor have they ignored us despite being left reeling after being punched in the face repeatedly in their first weeks in office (figuratively speaking).
These men:
— Lost a city manager within the first week, frustrating any attempts to have a normal transition period with tours and introductions to key staff members.
— Had to go to court to stop the former city manager, John Beckmeyer, from getting paid $700,000.
— Had to find and hire an interim city manager who could run the city as fast as possible.
— Had to deal with the fall out of a cyber attack that disrupted city operations for weeks and prevented them (and everyone else) from accessing their emails.
— Had their hands tied when the holidays hit.
Complicating things is the fact the Texas Municipal League isn't offering in-person training sessions to new council members until October. That means they're having to navigate their way through a whole new world without knowing the rules.
"I think the biggest struggle is adhering to the Open Meetings Act and understanding the abilities we have to communicate with each other as a group and knowing how to use the opportunities we have to the maximum," Stoker said.
When you only meet twice a month and your ability to run ideas past your colleagues or ask them questions is curtailed, it can be frustrating, Stoker said.
It can also get tricky when you want to ask questions of city staff, but you're fearful of crossing a line because, after all, it's the city manager's job to manage staff.
The only people that report to the council are the city manager, city attorney, city secretary and municipal court judge.
"I don't want to waste anybody's time by putting something on the agenda that nobody else wants to talk about and maybe I need to get over that, but I also don't want to pull department heads up there and make them feel like these are going to be gotcha moments," Stoker said.
Hendrick and Mitchell also brought up the importance of "staying in their lanes" and the fact it's not as easy as it sounds.
OK. The mere fact that these men even brought up Open Meeting laws is HUGE to us! The last council certainly had no problem skirting them. For Pete's sake, we've been told Joven had his own office at City Hall and routinely directed city staff.
All three men said they've managed to accomplish a few things, but feel as though they'll be cleaning up the old council's mess for months to come.
With help from Interim City Manager Richard Morton, they've settled several lawsuits, said goodbye to Deputy City Manager Agapito Bernal and a couple of department heads and reshuffled some key personnel in the finance department. They've also "repudiated" some bad contracts (think TGAA and golden parachutes) and reversed a silly bathroom ordinance.
Still, Stoker and Hendrick were particularly down in the mouth over the weekend.
"I have certainly not been able to accomplish anything I thought we would be focusing on in the first 90 days," Stoker said. "While the voters and the people I run into day-to-day congratulate me and thank me and say 'You're doing a good job, excellent work,' from my end, I just don't feel that."
Hendrick shared similar feelings.
"Honestly, it feels like to me, we're stuck in a little bit of quicksand, trying to clean up messes, not of our own making. Yet again, we're trying to claw out," Hendrick said. "I'll tell you, I'm probably averaging more than 35 to 40 hours a week and I think there's other councilmen who are averaging the same thing."
The city is still dealing with the fact it lost its bond ratings because the finance department failed to file audits on time in both '22 and '23, Hendrick said.
He and Stoker both said that until the '23 and '24 audits are completed, the city can't get its credit ratings back and until those are back, the city can't move forward with the new sports complex, address the Bob Derrington Wastewater Reclamation Plant or get new water towers.
Speaking of the sports complex, the current council still isn't at all sure the deal the old council worked out involving leases to third parties and a Georgia company selling bonds for it is even feasible.
"We have a sports center that people care about and people want and I was told during the election, it was 107% funded and that's just not accurate. It was always contingent upon the bonds that this third party was going to produce and they were always contingent upon our bond rating. We were told we'd have it by last fall and I don't know how you anybody could have said that when the 2022 audit wasn't even done last fall," Hendrick said.
Hopefully the '23 audit will be done by June and hopefully the city will have its bond ratings back by January 2026, Hendrick said.
We have no idea how the funding for the sports complex will shake out, but after three months of watching these guys, we feel pretty confident most of the conversations will be held in a public forum. No backroom deals for these guys.
Every day, Hendrick said he is learning about new problems and issues that have gone unaddressed for far too long. For example, Woodson Park doesn't have lights because no one installed lines and conduit, he said.
Stoker also said the city has some major software system issues that need to be addressed.
"I think the cyber incident exposed some of the pretty deep cracks that we have and I want to make sure that we're using the most appropriate programs and the most user-friendly for the departments," Stoker said. "They need to have the best software that is either out there or that we can afford."
What do the other council members think about the past 90 days or so?
Gilbert Vasquez said he'd give the council a strong "B+."
When the old council fired City Manager Michael Marrero, a lot of effective and experienced people left and were replaced by people that "weren't good," Vasquez said.
Steve Thompson and Vasquez both said they see the recent personnel changes are positive ones and hope they won't hear anymore bombshells dropped.
"I hope so because the people that Beckmeyer and Agapito hired were not qualified. Some of the people I liked a lot, but they just didn't have the experience in municipal government that we need. We were real weak in that area and that's being brutally honest. It caused us some issues," Thompson said.
Settling Assistant City Manager Aaron Smith's whistleblower lawsuit against the city and hiring him back was "huge," Thompson said. His family is from Odessa, he wants to be in Odessa and he's imminently qualified, Thompson said.
The new council members have a lot to learn, but Vasquez thinks the council as a whole is a "cohesive, civil group of people working together now with a common goal of taking care of the needs of the community."
Overall, Thompson said he'd give the council an "A."
"I've adopted Cal's mantra. He said, 'Let's quit putting the blame on everybody. Just tell me what the problem is and let's fix it,' and that's what we're trying to do," Thompson said.
Like the new council members, Thompson said getting the city's bond rating back is priority one.
Hypothetically speaking, if the city needed to float certificates of obligation for the Derrington Plant right now, the city wouldn't be able to, Thompson said.
"You've got to keep that good faith and credit in place. You can't allow it to get away from you, but it got away from us under Joven and you can quote me on that," Thompson said. "He didn't understand it. He doesn't understand the value of credit. You can't pay cash for everything."
Greg Connell gave kudos to Hendrick saying, "he demonstrates strong leadership skills in bringing the council together as a unified body." He also said the newbies have been working hard getting to know all of the department heads, org charts and Open Meeting rules.
"I'm optimistic that we will develop actionable plans to discuss in future sessions," Connell said via text. "It's still a big early to clearly define the new council's direction."