Some at City Admit Epic Failure on Appointed Police Chief Ballot Item

City council isn’t so sure they’ve made the right choice on the November ballot. Despite having confirmed language that will again ask voters if they want to appoint or elect their police chief, all but one say they’ve reconsidered parts of an agreement that was unanimously passed, while some ponder whether the ballot, as drafted, can even appropriately answer the question.

At issue is the San Angelo City Council's decision on Aug. 18 to place a referendum on the November ballot to change the way the city selects a police chief from it being an elected position to an appointed one. But the way the ballot item legally reads, if the citizens approve moving to an appointed police chief position, voters will also be selecting the current incumbent, Tim Vasquez, to be the first "appointed" police chief. 

The discussions on the subject were hashed out in a series of public meetings held over several months by the Charter Review Committee, culminating in a line-by-line consideration in council chambers on Aug. 4. A decision was made in that meeting to direct legal staff to draft language for the ballot, but also to name the sitting chief as the first appointee.

That language has now been adopted; however, during interviews conducted with Charlotte Farmer, Rodney Fleming, Elizabeth Grindstaff, Dwain Morrison, Lucy Gonzalez and Johnny Silvas on Aug. 25-27, only Farmer and Gonzalez seemed to know what they had collectively agreed to.

The remainder contended that they were not in favor of the entire amendment, questioned its legality, and asserted a need for further discussion. Further, none were clear on verbiage of the ballot, or on whether or not it would include wording that advises voters that a vote for an appointed chief is a vote for the incumbent. Moreover, most said that in retrospect, they would have voted differently if they had more thoroughly considered the implications of the decision reached. 

“I would prefer to not have the language the way it is on that item on the charter,” Fleming said on Aug. 25. His preference, Fleming said, would be to make appointments subject to a majority council vote.

Additionally, Fleming said he was not ready to finalize the ballot and felt that further talks would be necessary before the city definitively names the first appointee to chief of police.

“I don’t think it’s (the decision) been made entirely, no,” Fleming referenced Vasquez’s appointment. “So I think there will be more discussion. Once it goes on the ballot, it’s done. If it goes to the ballot the way it is right now, [he’s] (Vasquez) going to be appointed.”

Fleming left the Aug. 4 meeting after voting to put the item on the ballot, but before the suggestion was made to designate the sitting chief as the first appointee. In an interview on Aug. 25, Fleming said he thought there would be further discussion in upcoming meetings, but can’t recall having seen it on the agenda.

On Aug. 18, at the meeting directly following the one held on Aug. 4, city council unanimously approved the proposed the amendments to the city charter, to include those made to Section 60 regarding the chief of police. With the exception of Silvas, who had to leave early, all members of the council were present when the vote was taken. There was zero discussion on the language of the amendment; no one asked what the ballot would look like or say.

Mayor Dwain Morrison, who was the lone dissenter in the Aug. 4 meeting, voted in favor of the proposed charter amendments on Aug. 18. But on Aug. 25, he expressed uncertainty as to what would be printed on the ballot and voiced caution as to how it would be presented to voters.

“I would hate to see Tim lose his job because of the virtue of going from an appointed system versus elected, but I don’t know what our legal rights are to appoint someone and promise someone a job. I need clarification, and possibly the ballot language will say that,” Morrison said. “I would think that we have got to clarify that before we even put it on the ballot; that the ballot language must be very, very clear so that people know what they’re voting for. And I don’t know what they’re going to do yet.”

City Attorney Theresa James said her office has already drafted the amendments and the ballot, which has now been finalized. Mayor Morrison said that his understanding of their Aug. 18 vote was that they were directing the city’s legal staff to draft the language and bring it back to council for another vote.

“I feel like I was remiss that I did not get a full explanation from legal,” he said.

Neither the mayor, nor the members of the city council, has seen the finalized ballot, nor are they privy to the language and the layout. (You can view it here). Trinidad Aguirre said he believes the council still has time to change it, but the city attorney says otherwise.

“The resolution was approved last time with all the propositions,” James said. “This was the Aug. 18 council meeting. Everything that was in that resolution…was put on the ballot, including the changing the police chief from elected to appointed. Nothing can be added or subtracted at this point.”

The ballot is part of a 14-page document that includes the resolution, with the set of questions that will be provided to the voters tucked in near the beginning, covering three pages. Additional information on what the votes inherently mean is outlined in subsections; those subsections are not a part of the ballot.

The matter regarding the chief of police is labeled Proposition No. 8, and simply asks whether the charter should be amended to change the office of police chief from elected to appointed, subject to the approval of city council and without the two-year residency requirement. The portion naming the currently sitting chief as the first appointee is found on page 12.

“All the remainder of the information…this is information that we are going to post in the paper so the people understand what the language is now, what the language will be to give them a little bit more information,” James said. “Typically, that’s available at the polls, but it’s not on the ballot itself. But it will be—it will be around. It will be published information.”

Lucy Gonzalez had not seen the ballot as of Aug. 27. Like the mayor, she said she anticipated that the council would be able to view the document before it was finalized and stated that she does not feel the current layout is transparent enough to the voters.

“I think the voters need to know, one way or the other, ‘hey, if you go with elect, you’ll have the right to elect. If you go with appointed, then this is who the city manager and the council has approved to be appointed,’” Gonzalez said. “That was my interpretation. That was my understanding, that it was going to be something that the voters were going to see right there. I didn’t know that the voters weren’t going to be aware what they were voting for.” 

Despite the apparent misunderstandings, however, Charter Review Committee Chairman Trinidad Aguirre said he repeatedly asked for clarification to ensure all were on board.

“I think that if we go back and we look at the actual meetings or the film of that particular meeting, I clarified that point twice just to verify that we were all under the same understanding,” Aguirre said. “I reiterated it several times and everyone nodded their head. We were requested to put in that verbiage and it has been put in…it has been put on the docket and at this point in time, that is the verbiage that is going to the ballot.”

Johnny Silvas, who was not present when the item was discussed, was not entirely knowledgeable of the decision made by council on Aug. 4 or Aug. 18. He too assumed there would be further discussion and, while he was privy to the conversation to put the item on the ballot, he claimed not to know with certainty what would be done with regard to the first appointee.

“I don’t think it’s set in stone that he’d [Chief Vasquez] be appointed,” Silvas said. “I think it’d just be a matter of the city manager and his staff…I don’t remember the conversation at all.“

Without knowledge of the discussion held during the meeting, Silvas said that he likely would not vote on a motion that was worded like the one passed in his absence.

“I probably wouldn’t, not at this point,” he said. “I would just leave it at, ‘hey, voter, you tell me what you want: elected or appointed.’ Not who is going to fall in that place. I think it’s too early.”

When Police Chief Tim Vasquez was elected to his position in 2012, he won, by his own estimation, with approximately 64 percent of the votes. While it would be impossible to speculate as to how the remaining 36 percent feel now, it is possible that one or more of those would favor an appointed chief system over an elected chief system. Given that the current language essentially asks a citizen to decide between voting for an election or voting for Vasquez’s appointment, at least one council member has said that the language she voted on still will not answer the question of what the voters actually want.

“There may be 36 percent that wanted to vote appointed but yet they’re saying, ‘well, we would have gone with appointed, but we didn’t because we didn’t want Vasquez in there,’” Gonzalez pondered. “I did not consider that. I did not think of that being part of it. I did not take that into consideration. It wasn’t brought up and I didn’t think of that at the time. It would create some kind of distinction between voting one way or the other.”

In retrospect, Gonzalez said, she would not vote the way she did at the Aug. 4 and Aug. 18 meetings. Her position on appointing Vasquez remains the same—she said he is doing a great job and is the best candidate for the position—but she feels that the wording of the amendment may mean that council has to place the item back on the ballot in the future.

Councilwoman Elizabeth Grindstaff, who initially proposed adding in the language naming Vasquez as the first appointee, said she felt the city was being rather transparent with their intentions, but expressed some uncertainty about the legality of designating an appointee to a position without opening that position up to applicants either internally or externally.

“To me, the only way to have him go into that position is to have him on the ballot,” she said. “I can’t tell you how he would be selected as police chief short of it being on the ballot without a competitive process. We’re totally here in uncharted territory.”

During the Aug. 4 meeting, however, reference was repeatedly made to the fire chief position, council members agreeing that the hiring and firing of the appointee to police chief would be handled like that position.

The fire chief is an appointed position that was filled in the past by following the same hiring procedures as for any other city position: by posting the job, taking applications and interviewing a variety of qualified applicants. Despite the fact that the police chief has heretofore been elected, appointed positions within the city are not new, and the city has procedures and policies set in place to govern hiring.

Lisa Marley, Human Resources Director for the city of San Angelo, said that requirements for job posting are set at the municipal level by city council.

“There’s an internal policy on employment as far as posting positions and how long the have to be up, all of that,” Marley said. ”If it’s an internal posting, it stays up for five days, and if it’s an external posting, it has to be up for a minimum of 10 days.”

While Grindstaff would prefer to see an opinion from the attorney general on whether or not the position has to be posted, Charter Review Committee Chairman Trinidad Aguirre said the charter amendment makes it legal in this one, excepted circumstance. Marley said a portion of the city code extends the power to “reassign employees within the city’s organization and redefine duties and responsibilities of positions within the organization” to the city manager. The city attorney declined to comment.

“I’m not going to comment on any issues with legality,” Theresa James said. “We draft the language that we believe to be enforceable. There are no requirements for a process of going from an elected to an appointed office. This is not a typical hiring situation. We would not have recommended it if we did not believe we were legally authorized to do it.”

Numerous city officials have cited the difficulty in assigning policies in this situation as the fact that the city has never been asked to transition from an elected position to an appointed one. Many have also said that the situation is unique in that Vasquez currently holds the position.

“From my perspective in Human Resources, the current police chief is an employee of the city,” Marley said. “We would never do a reorganization or a restructuring or whatever you want to call it, where we would eliminate somebody—throw them out. If this position is occupied at the time that the voters decide whether or not they want it to be appointed or elected, I can’t just throw the person out.”

Vasquez also likened the notion of taking applications for the appointed position to terminating his employment and then asking him to reapply. He said if that were to happen, he would take issue with it and does not believe that ousting him from the job and forcing him to reapply was ever the intention of council.

But should the voters choose to continue with police chief elections and should Vasquez lose, he would not be out of a job. On the current system, Vasquez’s term ends in May. At that point, if the election process continues, he will either be re-elected or have the personal choice of whether or not he wants to rejoin the ranks of the San Angelo Police Department.

“I would have a choice of either retiring or returning back to my previous position as a civil service employee,” Vasquez said. “I would definitely retire. This type of position is one that, when you’re a chief in an organization, it’s a retiring position. My intent was to continue serving this community in that position as an appointed chief. However, that would probably—if it became too questionable, I would definitely begin to second-guess my stance on the appointed position.”

Vasquez agreed, after some contemplation, that opening up the appointment position for applications would not equate to termination, but said that it would be a demotion and would further require the city to articulate that they feel he's not doing a good job. He acknowledged awareness of one other individual within the ranks of the police department that intends to file paperwork to run for police chief against him in the May election, but maintained that the city’s pre-designation of himself as the first appointee is fair.

“Yes, [it’s fair], because that person is not qualified to hold this position, “ he said. “That would be the first thing. And secondly, yes, because I’ve been through several campaigns…[and the] filing date isn’t until February. So, if this election was occurring, say, in March, I would say that that’s problematic. But the fact that the charter election is occurring in November—several months before the actual filing date…I’d say that there’s nothing wrong with this. I think it would be unfair if they tried to do that after the filing date and somebody had signed up to actually run and was raising monies and campaigning, and at the same time as they’re campaigning we also have the charter election going on in May. At the very minimum what this does is say, ‘the citizens have spoken. We are not having one (a police chief election), so nobody has to file in February.’”

Councilman Rodney Fleming said that not only is he aware of another potential candidate, he’s been approached by him, part of the reason he is in favor of changing the language naming the sitting chief.

But, he added, “My main thing is I want it to be appointed, no matter what.  My main reason [for wanting an appointed chief] is oversight on the department. To me, it almost makes more sense because this is the way 90-something percent all police departments of any size operate nationwide. There’s a reason for that. Why reinvent the wheel?”

Fleming named budget overtures and understaffing as examples of the things he would be able to more closely monitor under the appointed system, but wouldn’t name any specific instances in the past where he thought increased oversight would have made a difference in his ability to make an informed decision as a voting council member.

“I’m not going to go there with you on that, “ he said. “I’ve got to stop right there.”

Oversight was also the primary reason named by councilwomen Gonzalez and Grindstaff, while Charlotte Farmer—also a proponent of oversight—expressed additional concern over Vasquez’s well being.

“If he’s not elected, he no longer has a job, he no longer has health insurance, he no longer has retirement and all of that because he loses his job if he’s not elected,” she said, also admitting that it would the chief’s choice as to whether or not he remained employed. “Most chiefs don’t go back into the ranks. This chief has got enough time and seniority that he could retire and he would save all of that.”

From his point of view, the police chief cited temporary turmoil within the police department during election season and the need to deepen the applicant pool as reasons for his favor. He added that with changes within the city, the nation and the organization, San Angelo will need the ability to recruit qualified personnel from a vast sea of expertise to ensure the right person is picked for the job.

“We (the council) believe he (Vasquez) is the right man at this time and, going forward, we would have more time to react,” Trinidad Aguirre said. “The reason that I say that…is that in November, we have an election to determine appointed or elected, and in May, the police chief’s term is up. So we’ve got roughly six months. It’s just not enough time to really set up the criteria, post it, identify it; it’s just too short of a time frame.”

Regardless of the reasoning--or the overwhelming confusion--all agree that the split on those in the community who are in favor to those who are opposed is too narrow, and hope to determine where the voters stand on Nov. 3.

“That was the one unit that was dead even,” Aguirre said. “At one time, with all the different kinds of quasi measurements that we had, it is about 50-50 as far the public swaying from one to the other. That is one that is really a coin toss.”

To voice your opinion, take our survey here. Note: voting in this survey will not affect the actual election. To ensure your vote makes a difference, take to the polls on Nov. 3.