Smiley city secretary quits, citing harassment, stalking

Smiley City Secretary Rebecca Mejia turned in her resignation during the Tuesday, March 22, special city council meeting after telling council members she had been harassed and even stalked by a member of the Smiley Volunteer Fire Department.

Mejia said her last day as city secretary will be April 13 because she feels she is in an unsafe work environment and that some members of the council as well as members of the VFD were spreading falsehoods about her job performance and her character.

“There has been so much emotional stress on me and now I feel like I am being stalked,” Mejia said. “Someone from our volunteer fire department knows everything that I do … the time I’m here, the time I’m gone, where I’m at. I have proof. I’m bringing this to you, so you can take care of it. I’m done with the lies, and now, with the stalking, I don’t feel safe anymore.

“You can laugh all you want, but this is serious, so as of today, I am putting in my resignation. I will have my letter in two weeks. We can bring it back (before the council), but this is not a safe environment for me. It’s our own city council and volunteers who are causing this.”

Mejia said a gossip mill around town and posts on Facebook chat groups like “What’s Happening in Smiley” have accused her of wrongdoing, of misusing city funds and of being derelict in her duties as city secretary.

“We’ve discussed it in closed session and in open session one too many times,” Mejia said. “There have been a lot of … attacks, lies, slanderous remarks. Too many things have been said and done and I’ve come to y’all before on more than one occasion and there has not been anything done about it.

“It’s your choice to believe who you want to believe. I’ve been here long enough to know and understand how the city runs. I worked hard, long, tireless hours and put my family to the side. My character — it’s everywhere right now with what everybody is saying. There’s just so much that has been said that you can’t take back. There has been so much posted that you can’t take back.

“I’ve done a lot for the city for the citizens, not for you and me, for the citizens of Smiley,” she continued. “That should be first and foremost priority — not what we can do for one or the other, but for the citizens as a whole. That’s what I’ve done all these years.

“You wonder why our (council) meetings aren’t run smoothly? The person who you should asking that question to is yourself because you are the governing body. Instead of calling me, coming to the office and saying, ‘Becca, what can we do? We want a park. We want a youth center,’ it’s requests to see where everything else is going like something is being done wrong. Each time, I give you what you need and there’s nothing found wrong, but all this time and energy gets wasted.”

She noted during her tenure, Smiley became the first city in Gonzales County to receive AMR (automated meter reading) water meters, which were paid for through a $275,000 Texas Community Block Grant from the Texas Department of Agriculture.

“Do you know how many times I heard, ‘Don’t do it. It takes too long,’” Mejia said. “I believe in what we can do together, it can be successful. We were the first city in our county to get water meters and (the council) had wanted to go out for a loan.

“We don’t have the kind of money other cities have. We are not in debt. There is a difference between not having money and being in debt. We don’t have loans out there. Grants are free and we don’t have to pay them back. If we have to pay anything, we only have to pay a percentage. We got $275,000 for the water meters and we only had to pay $13,000 out of public fund money. We paid half one year and half the other, and in two years, we got it paid.”

One of the biggest rumors is that she has not allowed the fire department or the volunteers to get equipment they need.

“There was a $500,000 grant I wanted the city to get for the two trucks the volunteer fire department was asking for. I heard it takes too long. That’s all I’ve heard since I’ve been there,” she said. “It does take long, but it’s free money. It was only $5,000 we would have to pay.”

She said a purchase order was signed and delivered by the fire department to a vendor that was not approved in advance by the city or by the city attorney and it nearly cost the city all of the remaining funds in the fire department fund.

“Yes, there was a time that they mayor and I both did not allow them to use any funds and it was due to the $50,000 to $80,000 the city was going to have to pay one way or another to cancel those trucks that weren’t approved yet,” Mejia said. “We didn’t even have a lender yet and we didn’t even know if they were approved. That was the only time we discussed and said no more purchases because that was all the money left in the fire department account, and if we had used all that money, how could we service the citizens of Smiley?

“Thankfully, our attorney got a hold of them and they canceled it without any fees this one time. Since I’ve been here, we’ve spent over $674,000 in equipment and accessories and that’s not even including maintenance, electric bills, insurance, anything like that.”