OPINION: Killeen council should focus on city problems, not procedures

Once again, members of the Killeen City Council are trying to change the city’s governing framework.

And as Tuesday’s council meeting vividly illustrated, it can be a painful process.

The latest dust-up centered on the procedure for appointing council members to the city’s 29 boards and commissions — a right assigned to the mayor, as spelled out in the city’s Governing Standards and Expectations.

But Mayor Pro Tem Ken Wilkerson, who has served on the council since November 2020, sees that setup as being in conflict with the city charter. As he interprets that document, the mayor should have no administrative authority over the council, but deciding which council members serve on each committee is an exercise of such authority.

Mayor Debbie Nash-King sees things a bit differently.

Amid a testy debate over the issue of appointments Tuesday, she mentioned that during Jose Segarra’s tenure as mayor, which ended in late March, there had never been any issue over the appointments. But now that she was in the post, there was pushback — and she wanted to know why.

Nash-King went so far as to suggest that the different response is gender-based, and she also stated that the differential treatment is a matter of fairness.

In the end, the council’s consideration of the board appointments was pushed off until this week’s meeting.

During a subsequent discussion of the Governing Standards and Expectations, Wilkerson put forward a three-part procedure for selecting council members for boards and commissions — and the proposal effectively eliminated the mayor’s input.

Under Wilkerson’s plan, the mayor receives the first committee assignments, then assignments go down the line based on current tenure — meaning how long a council member has served in his or her role without a break.

Nash-King objected to the plan, saying that she had remained fair in her appointments, acknowledging the council members’ prioritized preferences of boards and committees.

However, Wilkerson’s proposal moved forward by a vote of 4-1, with the council scheduled to vote on the changes this week. Councilwoman Nina Cobb cast the lone dissenting vote. Councilman Ramon Alvarez was absent Tuesday, and Councilman Jose Segarra left shortly before the vote.

Taken alone, Wilkerson’s plan might seem like a minor maneuver designed to give council members more control over their roles.

However, the revised appointment procedures appear to be just the latest effort to change the dynamic between the council, city manager and mayor — with an eye toward giving the council the upper hand.

In 2021, the council considered two proposals to the city’s governing standards that would have reduced the mayor’s input during meetings. One change would have barred the mayor from attempting to influence a vote during discussion of an item; another would have kept the mayor from speaking on a matter after the vote.

The item containing those proposals was defeated by a 5-2 council vote.

Last fall, the council debated potential changes to the city charter, one of which would have given the city council the authority to direct the city manager to appoint or terminate a department head. In early January, the council nixed the potential change by a 4-3 vote, with Wilkerson, Mellisa Brown and Rick Williams in opposition.

Another proposed change was an amendment removing the city manager’s ability to demand written charges and a public hearing if terminated six months after employment. Voters approved that amendment in the May 7 election.

But with the city limited to conducting charter elections every two years, some council members have moved to make changes through revising the Governing Standards and Expectations.

Among the changes endorsed last week is a proposal to increase in the number of allowable sponsored meetings by council members — such as town halls — from one to three per year. Also moved forward was a proposal to increase the list of locations for sponsored meetings.

While these proposed changes would serve to increase public engagement with council members and the mayor, they would also tie up city facilities more often during the year. Not only that, department heads are often required to attend these sponsored meetings, and a threefold increase in the number of meetings could cause a significant drain on staffers’ time.

Certainly, Killeen’s voters elect their representatives to carry out the city’s business as they see fit.

However, it could be argued that council members have placed too much emphasis on procedures and politics — at the expense of dealing with real problems.

At Tuesday’s marathon meeting — which lasted nearly 6½ hours — the council spent more than 2 hours bogged down in often-contentious debate on board appointments and related revisions to the Governing Standards and Expectations.

Unfortunately, it was pretty much par for the course.

Last year, the council devoted countless hours over a period of three months — including a weekend workshop session — to discuss a potential ethics ordinance for the city. Yet, when it came time to approve the ordinance, council members rejected it by a 6-1 vote, negating the time and work invested.

The council also spent significant amounts of time to reviewing the city charter last fall — even as the city was facing the twin challenges of COVID-19 recovery and damaged roads following Winter Storm Uri.

The council held more than a dozen meetings and public hearings on the charter review, initially deciding on 22 proposed amendments that could go forward for a public vote.

However, when the council finally set the ballot in early February, only 14 items remained, including a pay raise for the mayor and council members, several state-mandated changes and a few language revisions. The only other significant amendment was one that requires council members and the mayor to step down immediately if they file for another office — rather than 40 days before the election. Voters signed off on the change in May, as they did the pay raise.

Certainly, changes to the governing process are necessary to avoid ambiguity and conflicts, as well to adjust to issues in the community.

However, reworking city laws and processes just because it’s possible to do so is not always in the best interest of the elected officials or the residents they serve.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the board appointments will be up for a vote once again, as will the changes to the governing standards.

In the interest of meeting the mayor halfway and acknowledging her efforts on their behalf, it would be a positive move for council members to accept the revised list of board appointments, while also making the changes to the appointment process — which they could implement starting next year.

But if this council holds true to form, it’s likely that members will reject the mayor’s appointments, so they can make their own, using the new guidelines.

That’s certainly a waste of time and effort.

Our community is best served when its council and mayor work together — and this can be one of those times. That is especially true, given the number of major challenges our elected representatives could — and should — be addressing right now.

Killeen’s council needs to step back, and then step up.

It’s what the city’s residents expect and deserve.
 

Mayor or manager? Killeen mayor’s power, responsibility ongoing debate

What is the role of the Killeen mayor?

According to the Killeen City Charter, which is kind of like the constitution for the city, the mayor is the de facto head of Killeen’s government, representing the city at all ceremonies and abroad.

At home, the mayor is empowered to lead discussion during City Council meetings and to engage with his or her constituency. The mayor does not, however, have administrative duties — and it is this line in Article III, Section 25, of the charter that drew a line of professional disagreement between Mayor Pro Tem Ken Wilkerson and Mayor Debbie Nash-King during a discussion of the appointment of City Council members to various boards and commissions.

Under Killeen’s city manager-city council form of government, “administrative” duties associated with the running of the city are executed by the city manager; this is meant to level the mayor and City Council, empowering them as directors of city policy and solicitors of public opinion. In contrast, a mayor-council form of government would see the mayor assume all or most administrative duties, leading and taking direction from his or her city council. In that form, there usually is no city manager, and the mayor fulfills those duties, typically as a full-time job.

The relationship of the mayor and city manager to the council has been an ongoing discussion; just earlier this year, residents of Killeen voted on several proposed amendments to the charter, and in 2021, Killeen’s City Council raised two proposals to the city’s governing standards that would have prevented the mayor from attempting to influence a vote during discussion of an item at City Council meetings or from speaking on a matter after the vote. That proposal failed in a vote of 5-2, with then-Mayor Jose Segarra saying the following:

“When you run for mayor, citizens expect certain things from you. They want to know what you’re gonna do in there, even if you don’t have a vote. The only thing that the mayor has, is that power, to try to steer the council. The mayor does not call council members behind the scenes, he does it up here where everyone can see it. You risk that opportunity where people will try to do things behind the scene.”

Wilkerson described that proposal as an attempt to keep decorum; at the time, the council member said that an overly verbose mayor may lead to a lack of decorum.

A matter of procedure

In the latest debate about the mayor’s role, Wilkerson is spearheading a move to change the way council members are appointed to the city’s various board and committees — vital components of the local government where proposed laws are often hatched and thoroughly discussed before they get to the City Council for final approval.

According to City Council’s governing standards document, the current process of appointment starts with council members completing an interest form for first-, second- and third-choice committees. The mayor then takes that information, and using his or her best judgment, assigns council members to more than a dozen different committees.

The mayor pro tem said at Tuesday’s council meeting that the mayor currently exercises administrative power when they should not, according to the city charter. He said the same in an email correspondence with the Herald Wednesday.

“I am attempting to bring the mayor’s role in alignment with the City Charter, and produce a system that allows council members to serve to the extent citizens expect. These appointments are an extension of the responsibility council members are obligated to serve. I am not sure where the idea came from that the mayor exerts control over council members in this manner, but due to our identity as a council-manager form of government and the language in Section 25 of our Charter our current system is inappropriate,” he said.

Wilkerson described his concerns with the process as “procedural.”

Wilkerson’s proposal Tuesday called for the creation of a three-part process for allowing council members to select their own boards. Selection would first go to the mayor, then down the line based on current tenure — meaning how long a council member has served in his or her role without a break.

Nash-King objected to the proposal, arguing that she had remained fair and neutral and pointed out that the issue of fairness only arose this term, about a month after she was elected mayor.

“Now, I’m the mayor and there’s a need to change but there wasn’t a need to change when (Segarra) was,” Nash-King questioned at last week’s council meeting.

Wilkerson’s proposal on how appointments are made was tentatively approved in a vote of 4-1, with council members Michael Boyd, Jessica Gonzalez and Riakos Adams joining Wilkerson in supporting the proposal. Councilwoman Nina Cobb was the sole vote in opposition as Segarra left the meeting at 11 p.m., just before the item was put to a vote.

The proposal is among several potential changes to the city’s “Governing Standards and Expectations,” which lays out procedures and policies that the council must follow. The document is typically updated every year, and the council is set to vote on the proposed changes this coming Tuesday.

Wilkerson has maintained that the debate is not particular to the current mayor.

However, while the pair remained professional in the latter half of the meeting, tensions flared when the City Council discussed whether to table the issue of committee appointments until Tuesday.

Mayor

Nash-King expressed her frustration with the situation, saying, “There has never been any problem with these appointments while Mayor Segarra was in charge. Now there’s a problem. The only difference is he’s a man and I’m a woman.”

On Friday, the Herald asked the mayor if she stood by that statement, among other questions. Her response:

“I’ve always tried to relay in our council meetings that, as Mayor, I want what is best for the residents, council and the city. As I mentioned in our recent council meeting, this matter could have been resolved last year when the council spent months submitting revisions to the City Charter, and now the same charter is being used to justify taking authority from the mayor’s position to appoint council members to boards and committees, which has been the tradition for at least 20 years,” Nash-King said in her statement. “Citizens have contacted me questioning the motives behind the reason for the changes to the Governing Standards and Expectations, which silences the voice of the mayor. I also question why it is a problem now during my tenure, which brings me to the conclusion that the only difference between past and present leadership is gender. No matter what the outcome of the council’s vote on Tuesday’s night, I will continue to work diligently with the council to move the city forward.”

Mayor Pro Tem

Wilkerson is also standing by his efforts to adopt the new way of appointing council members. The current method of the mayor making the appointments — which is believed to have been in place for decades — goes against Section 25 of charter, Wilkerson said in a phone call with the Herald on Friday.

That section outlines the power of the mayor, which says in part: The mayor “shall have no regular administrative duties. The mayor shall only be entitled to vote upon matters considered by the council in the event there is a tie.”

While Wilkerson has questioned the mayor’s role before, he said he decided to take action recently because of Nash-King’s initial proposed council committee assignments earlier this month, which the council did not approve. In that initial proposal, Nash-King appointed herself to six different board and committee seats, and Wilkerson to four of them.

Since then, Nash-King made a new list of proposed appointments, in which she is on three boards and committees, and Wilkerson is on five.

That revised list of appointments was not moved forward at Tuesday’s meeting.

If it does resurface, Wilkerson said he still plans to vote against it and push to get the governing standards changed.

“We can fix this item in short order, and get on with the business” of the city, he said Friday.

Moreover, there is nothing preventing the current appointees — set last year — from meeting, even though newly elected Councilman Ramon Alvarez is not yet on any boards, Wilkerson said, reacting to criticism that his efforts to change the procedure have stalled meetings from happening.

For those who say Wilkerson is trying to take away power from the mayor, and give it to himself or others on the council, “I say go back and read the charter,” Wilkerson said.

“The mayor is part of the council. She has a voice, but just doesn’t vote,” he said when asked if he considers the mayor a part of the council.

Heated discussion

After some heated discussion and frayed tempers at the Tuesday meeting, Boyd spoke up.

“I am concerned that this kind of discussion is on display on the dais ... I believe our citizens may lose confidence as a result,” he said.

However, when the topic was brought up again during discussion of the governing standards document, both Wilkerson and Nash-King had cooled off.

In the emailed response to the Herald, Wilkerson said the following.

“Let me add that this is not emotional or personal. It’s procedural. I hope both KDH and the Mayor can understand the difference,” he said.

In the phone call on Friday, Wilkerson said Nash-King does tend “to take things personal.”

Other changes

Additional proposed changes to the city’s governing standards include the following:

Modify section 1-80: to disallow the mayor pro tem from voting when acting as mayor. Section 1-80 discusses the mayor pro tem’s responsibilities and powers when acting as the mayor.

Strike section 2-70: which says that no city tax dollars will be used to support non profit events. This item, which is meant to prevent council members from having potential ethical problems, was raised in response to questions from council members regarding the city’s policy on purchasing tables or chairs at fundraising events.

Modify section 2-80: to add the Juneteenth parade as a city supported event. Section 2-80 provides a list of events the city supports financially and otherwise; the addition to 2-80 was part of a “clerical error” last year when Juneteenth was added as a recognized holiday, but the parade was not added.

Modify section 1-50: to allow council members one minute to comment on city comments. Boyd said this section would allow the City Council to offer acknowledgement or reassurance rather than moving immediately onto the next agenda item. Section 1-50 governs Citizens Comments.

Modify 2-60: to increase the amount of allowable sponsored meetings per year from one to three. Nash-King pointed out that the city would lose revenue due to a loss booking power, but Boyd argued that the change would be to the benefit of residents.

Modify 2-60: to increase the list of sponsored meeting locations. Section 2-60 allows members of the City Council to utilize government spaces for a certain amount of meetings per year; it also lists which spaces are available for use for the purpose of community engagement by the City Council.

The above proposals will be brought back at Tuesday’s City Council meeting for formal approval.