8-2-22 City Council meeting: elected vs. appointed police chief

[0:00:00] next we will have a discussion and direction regarding the charter review committee's presentation and i think we have many folks in the audience for this today but judge gilbert you're the spokesperson you're on thank you thank you very much our committee that you put together a selection of of council members to work on and to look at the elected voice versus the appointed chief charter revision is here with us today and i want to introduce each one of those to you so that you know who each one of those are i want to tell you that all my years of public service working with the city i've been a lot of committees never been on one that worked as hard as this committee so let me happily introduce to you our our committee members we have candy candy pool of course billy i believe everybody knows billy dewitt jeff curry mark lack and j.j graham thank you for the work these committee members have worked extremely extremely hard along with your staff and i want to mention your staff teresa and julia and heather were with us at every meeting they worked very very hard with us they never tried to persuade us in any direction but they gave us all the information that we needed and worked very hard so and we had a lot of homework to do this committee had a lot of homework doing as you can tell by looking at them they had done homework in a long time so it wasn't real easy for us to get all that done and we've developed this kind of relationship that i can say those kind of things i believe so uh but our our purpose on on our uh let me get this thing working here there we go

[0:02:07] okay our charter purpose that we had our committee purpose that we had that was given to us by you as the city council was to evaluate the elected and the appointed chief and to provide a recommendation back to you each member of this committee some of us came in with preconceived notions of what we thought should happen and so we had long talks about that and everyone committed to look at this with an open mind a complete open mind because we want to look at one thing and that is what's best in the best interest of the city of san angelo and that's where we went to you gave us a very simple chore elected versus appointed you know if you talk to people in san angelo there's two things that you can get somebody from san angelo really fired up about that's football and the elected chief and this committee has found that going out into the public and talking to people about this sometimes they needed bodyguards because people tell you and that's okay that's what we want to hear is we want to hear what people have to say and so we we took a very long look at a lot of things let me tell you what we did in our our process that we had we spent five weeks we were told we want to try to be ready in case there's a november election to make a decision on this so we had five weeks to do this so this committee met twice a week at least two hours every meeting and then they did their homework and we went through a lot of things we talked to individual people we spent over 16 hours just in meetings we spent over 20 30 hours and talking to individuals we looked at section 60 and 64. of the city charter we reviewed the state and local statutes the texas local government code 143 a civil service that controls the police department and the

[0:04:09] chief the texas government code 142 meet and confer we looked at all that we looked at los angeles civil service regulations we interviewed elected and appointed officials and we did informal conversations with people throughout the community so to tell you what we did so that you know that we didn't just sit in there and talk about this is what we've heard we went and found the facts we looked into the facts and we did talk a little bit about what we heard let's look at the sa angelo city charter the city charter was created to effective to have the elected police of chief for the city of san angelo 61 says that the chief shall have been a resident of the city of san angelo for a period of at least two years immediately prior to his election and shall possess the qualifications of electors in said city so are you telling me that the only two qualifications to run for chief of police is they have to have lived in this city for two years being elector yes ma'am you must have been looking at my paper got that written down right making sure that's correct and that the term of the chief is going to be for four years those are the requirements that's it is there an age requirement uh you have to be an elector so you got to be 18. just to say that you have to be 18 years of age you have to be a resident of the city of san angelo for a period of at least two years prior to your election that are the only requirements that there are to run for chief of police there's no experience required no ma'am so when we looked at those and we started we kept going through the city charter and looking at what are the other requirements that we have or anything that we have in the city charter we have section 63 which is the duty and the powers judge gilbert may i just stop one moment

[0:06:13] because i think what we did i don't know if you said as part of your committee members david howard because i think he's in the back of the room that's right we haven't i want to make sure everyone understands that we had a representation on this charter committee as well from the police department yes david howard he's the assistant chief of police and he was with and sent with the committee each and every meeting and he added a lot of information gave us a lot of things and we very openly and it was you would think it's kind of hard because there's a policeman sitting right there that's assistant chief but he was very good about taking everything that came at him and he came back at us so it made for a real good situation in our committee it really worked out really well okay 63 says that let me get to 63 here it shall be the duty of the chief of police to preserve law and order within the city of angel and especially to enforce the ordinances of said city that's the duty in the powers the authority under 64 says that the chief shall have the exclusive control of the police department of the city of sangelo and shall the right to select employee discharge that will and prescribe the salaries within the monetary limits fixed by the city budget the employees and such department so we have 63 and 64 the duties of the authority and through our research we find that under authority that this statement is not correct that it is not correct and i will explain to you why here in in just a moment then we looked at the texas local government code 143 civil service statute and under that it provides for appointed chiefs under that statute it does not provide for elected chiefs that provides for appointed chiefs and it sets them up that's totally in contradiction yes ma'am the civil service provision

[0:08:16] not really contradiction it's just there's not a provision here for elected chief there's a provisions for appointed chief and one of the reasons why that is is that we are the only city in the state of texas that has an elected chief now there may be another small one out there somewhere we didn't find but uh as far as we know we are the only city in the state of texas has an elected chief and so that's why there is no state law that authorizes chief of police we have state laws that authorizes the sheriff's department and the election thereof but chief of police because they can be done through charter you can have a charter that provides for elected chief just like we have you can have ordinances that give this authority and so it's not mandatory or required that you have to have a state statute in order to have an elected chief of police now through the years as as most y'all know i was with the city for almost 50 years and i watched a lot of appointed i'm sorry elected cities slowly turn into appointed and so that's happened through the years until the point that in about within the last 12 years there were three left now according to the information we have there's one left and that's us so that's why you don't see uh provisions in state law provisions some in the civil service because there are no other departments other than us how does that work then with civil service teresa i mean how does that legally work basically civil service as the judge will go through talks about how the benefits and rights of the officers there is a reference very brief in civil service about elected but it talks about if you're going to have an appointed chief this is how they have to be appointed and that's appointed by city manager and confirmed by council so um and then it's like unless elected is the only part that it

[0:10:19] says in civil service rules so what the judge is saying is that it talks about how the chief is selected in an appointed system but does not have any reference at all to qualifications or anything related to an elected system all right let's move on to that was the local government code of civil service so let's move to 142 which is the provision for uh meet and confer and you all are very familiar with me and confirm some of you are and and we have that in our police department but we are a city at this time i believe they call it meat confer without a contract so we're operating now under civil service in the city of san angelo because civil service was adopted back in the 1960s by the city of san angelo so we we operate under civil service and then provisions come and meet and confer then you'll operate under provisions of meat confer and civil service so you can be confusing [Music] yes ma'am believe me you can ask these people we went and and i'm liable to get some of this wrong so i apologize if i do but we found there's a lot of complications in a lot of things but that's going to be whether we have an elected police of chief or an appointed police chief because these are just the provisions that affect and how our police department has operated all right so let's let's move on and tell you a little bit about the people that we interviewed because we spent considerable amount of time talking with them uh as you'll see on here we have uh frank carter who is our current elected chief of police we have brian dunn who was appointed fire chief for the city of san jose for many years and then we have the appointed police chief from brownwood ed cady and so i'll tell you a little bit about each one of these individuals and i haven't even looked i'm sure frank's in the room i don't see frank back there but i've known frank since he was this big and watched him grow up through the ranks well some of y'all have done that with too so i don't i got to be careful

[0:12:22] i guess but watching come up through the ranks and how he did and frank's done a great job he has done a terrific job as the chief of police for the city of san angelo so we got his feeling and what he felt about the elected versus the appointed and being in his position he gave us surprisingly gave us some information that he thought was important on both sides of the road we brought in brian elect the appointed police chief because we wanted to know we've heard things that say well we don't want an appointed person because they're appointed by the city manager and we don't want them to be just totally under the control of the city mandarin i'm just going to i'm going to lay the facts out to you y'all may not like some of what i'm i'm gonna say but this is what we are dealing with and people say they don't want that uh well we brought brian in brian has he says in all this time he's never had problems with city managers trying to control his department you know and we know i know you know that can happen but that can happen with any given thing so we were able to get information from both sides from the elected versus the appointed the reason we asked mr cadin to come in for brownwood because he is an appointed chief of police in brownwood they were just a few years back went from elected to appointed but ed was also a lieutenant in los angeles police department who ran for chief of police here and didn't get elected here but went to brownwood as chief so we brought him in to give us perspective of what he's seen since he's gotten there and what is it like and the information that he told us and and he said that uh having worked in both systems uh even though as an appointed chief ed says that you know you can have problems with people not liking you they're still trying to go to the city council go to the city manager but that's going to be in any job that can be in teresa's job that was in my job as the judge and assistant city managers those

[0:14:24] things can happen regardless that's not going to be just the chief of police that that situation happens in uh but ed was very happy with dealing working with an appointed system and he did tell us the good things about the elected that he thought the few things that he thought was there so we we heard both sides of everything that everybody had to say and questioned them at length of what their feelings were and the facts not only just their feelings now we went out and talked to people in the community and here's one of the first things we got from their responses as you will see is that they said not again when we talked about elected versus appointed does it need to go to an election uh not again it's been up for elections several times and i think the last time and i may get this wrong but i believe it was 73 percent to stay elected than city of san angelo so one thing that we as the committee talked about and talked about and talked about is we may have feelings about how we would like to see it in the city of san angelo maybe we want it to be elected maybe we want it to be appointed but what it boils down to is what the public what they want what the community what the citizens of san angelo want because they told us that they didn't trust the city government that was one of the biggest things we heard the city runs on a buddy system with self-interest as city management and taking priority over city needs the city just wants to appoint someone that will do their bidding an elected police chief is free to do whatever he wants when he wants and the only answers to the voters and that the city wants to control this the police budget we already control the police budget but these are i'm telling you these are the main things that we heard from people when they say that they the police chief only answers to the voters

[0:16:27] what does it take what percentage of the voters would it take to recall a police chief [Music] the recall provision that i'm familiar with speaks directly to the mayor and the city council members for a city council member it would be well city council and mayor i'm sorry i'm 30 percent of the registered voters but it doesn't specif it's not specific about a police chief so and i ask because if someone was trying to get signatures or whatever happens i think it would be the same but i'm not sure but there's as we go through it there's a number of areas where the police chief just isn't anticipated to be the same so we would follow the same process for recall but of course without any precedent or any direct language in our charter to address that that would be something that could be open to challenge [Music] we're and we're going to address that just a little bit here in a second but we wanted you to hear the comments that we heard from some of the people and so and we brought these questions forward in the committee also and uh uh you know not again yes we've had an elected system for 70 odd years now in the city of san angelo uh and so there's a lot of we just grew up with this system there's a lot of that it's just that's the way it has been that's the way it should be i'm not the distrust in government i'm not so sure uh i can tell you that i've heard that in my whole career my whole life when i was on the city council in 1974 way through you hear that but you really don't there's not factual stuff there but that's that's something that we do here the city runs on the buddy system hey there's been some good ol boy stuff

[0:18:29] through the years i will guarantee you that is i've seen that they want to appoint somebody to do their bidding i i don't really see that factor um the the chief of police is free to do what he wants with the department that's absolutely not true there are controls in civil service and city ordinances and things that give control to that and so but here's what we found was the other side of this that when we talked with people most of it was shock and sometimes disbelief at the lack of qualifications required for a person to run for chief of police indicating that several people some of the people that talk to other people said well you could run or i could run or this and yes if you politically your student you can do that you have enough money you can do that we've been fortunate the majority of the police chiefs that we've had i think i went through either 11 or 12 chief of police in my career and most of those were extremely good chief of police we've been very fortunate with the majority of our police chiefs that have come through and they did a great job and most of them have been people that were qualified and had the things that were necessary in order to be the chief of police the lack of knowledge about how the chief's duties are regulated by federal and state law was another thing that people said they had no idea they thought the chief of police could i can hire them i can fire them i can do whatever i want they can do this and that and and our findings we found under the elected under the elected chief of police the requirements did not include prior police experience the chief due to civil service statues and meet and confer does not have exclusive control over the department and its employees the elected chief divides the department during the elected period election

[0:20:32] period which begins once an officer announces their candidacy an elected chief who is also legal as a city employee is exempt from discipline when it comes to violations of rules and policies explain that well meaning that because they are elected they don't fall under the same classification or category that julia does or theresa does or or rick does that they're elected so therefore if they do something wrong the only way that it can something to be happened is through your recall petition to get them out of office there is no provision correct me if i'm around no provision for suspension removal administrative leave any of these type of things because of the elected chief that's correct so you you have ma'am that's pretty um yes so um so as you can see those are the things there that provided because they're not appointed that it opens the door to a lot of a lot of areas and so and i'm not trying to tell you right now elected or appointed i want you all to know this i'm giving you the facts as we found them from the committee if you had an appointed chief of police which of these things would change if you had an appointed chief of police there would be requirements [Music] the duties of the chief and the authority of the chief are going to stay the same whether they're appointed or whether they're elected because civil service meet and confer and the laws provide for what those are that's not just an open door that's going to be the same regardless elected chiefs divide the department we wouldn't see that because of the election there wouldn't be that election but there is something else i'll get to in a minute on that but as an appointed then you would also have the provision of suspension removal

[0:22:35] things of this nature that you don't have under the elected system so we found under the under the appointed chief of police civil service statute defines minimum requirements for an appointed chief so you have minimum requirements before you can be appointed what would they be um if we can hold one second i believe it's about two down okay the chief of police under civil service and meet and confer is going to be the same with appointed the police department would not be divided in ranks during an election but may be united and is disdain for the selection of the appointed chief i mean they could still be upset because they didn't like who the city manager and the city council appointed so there could still be that but you wouldn't have nine months eight months six months of political election time going on during that is did you hear comments about how divided the police department becomes during an election time period because someone i mean people choose sides so how disruptive is that we did hear that yes ma'am we did hear that uh that is pretty much the norm i will tell you this that in the last with our last chief well frank that's come in probably the least amount of that i've ever seen i have honestly seen it being right i know as the judge i was probably the closest city employee to the police with being outside of that there has been a lot of that in the past where if you support the wrong candidate you might get moved to nights or you might get moved to the basement to do evidence or things of this nature that has happened uh that has happened at certain times so yes that's there okay here's kind of a comparison here for the research findings elected chief is two years residency 18 years of old not a felon not mentally

[0:24:39] incapacitated you have to be an elector versus appointed which the minimums there are five years as a licensed police officer a teco intermediate certification that's the minimum requirement under civil service and what's that t cole texas commission on law enforcement okay and these requirements are set up in civil service but they're not required of an elected chief they're not required as elected chief yes ma'am you don't have to be a licensed police officer to run for police chief now one thing we found out you don't even have tablets is driver's license so um tom did you have a comment on that i heard something you have a son who's fixing to graduate you know you can say i'm fixing to throw his hat in the ring here tom could be police chief no okay so as you can see i'm giving you both i'm giving you both sides of this for you to look at here and i guess what it all boils down to is the reason you wanted us to come here today was to give you a recommendation well as i stated we've had five weeks we've had a lot of work we've talked to a lot of people this committee they've done such a terrific job of discussing everything we just talked about discussing every bit of it and believe me they took both sides and i can tell you that two of them that i'm not gonna say which two because i haven't even told them this but in my mind i feel like they were totally on one side and then as of the last couple of weeks they were right in the middle just like me because the first thing i told this committee when they asked me to be chairman was okay but you got to understand i'm not crazy i'm going to argue both sides and i'll look up now and every member of this committee

[0:26:40] argues both sides they argue both sides and i think that's something that's great because we're we're not just looking at one side but the recommendation that we have for you today we're not going to recommend that we have an elected or an appointed right now we're going to recommend that give us some more time you know you have an election coming up in november but we also have an election coming up in in may from what we've been told from the community from what we've heard and we've talked to a we're not talking about we talked to 10 people we've talked to a lot of people and what we find is well first off i'm going to ask y'all how many of y'all knew civil service overruled most things that the chief of police could do anybody know that okay did anybody know about meet and confer overrules a whole lot of things that the chief can do and the chief's not even involved in that just didn't know what those were okay all right okay so i'm talking to you as the city council and the mayor do you know how many people in the public knows that information you know we haven't found anybody that really does that hasn't been involved i don't think you probably found many people who understood how the qualifications were so nothing that's right that was that was a major factor i i can tell you candy everybody talk that candy talked to just about that was their major major deal right there because every meeting she would go up talk to three more guess what they said and so but here's what we're recommending and i'm i've got it written down here but i'm just going to tell you from the heart we need to talk to the public we need to inform i'm not going to say educate we need to inform the public of just some of the more than what i've informed you

[0:28:43] today because believe me we can go on for another 30 or 40 minutes we need to inform the public and whichever way the public wants to vote on this that's their job but i believe they need to vote after they are informed now this committee and we have totally agreed to this we are not going to recommend one side or the other to the public until we have received all of our information back from the public of what they want after they've had a chance of being informed so what we want to do is we want to ask you to let us have until january to come back with a recommendation that would go on the may election and in this time period of time we want to develop a public outreach and public education plan to inform the citizens angelo of this extremely important project we want to elicit feedback from the public so that we can develop that we can develop our recommendations and here's our here's our potential program that we want to do we want to work with the local media to distribute all this information social media is how you get it done in today's world we want to host a town hall meeting maybe one maybe two whatever it takes we want to work with the communications department with the city i think teresa and nemo and julie have already talked about to brian about helping us with doing this we want to do a social media outreach we want to use channel 17 we want to provide bilingual we want to provide as much information that is information not a political campaign for or against we want to provide information to the public that allows them to receive this and then they can vote informed one thing that i might have missed and

[0:30:47] you might have covered it but because we elect what we also find is that most of the candidates are within our current police department yes ma'am so you don't have people from other cities who might have terrific experience or good experience coming into our city to run because it does become more of a popularity contest with credentials than um and so you your candidate's candidates all come from a pool of existing police officers primarily is that correct did you talk about that earlier yes no i didn't but we did discuss that in the uh we did discuss that and and one thing for your information if we use the minimum let's say let's just for example we went to an appointed and let's say that we use the minimum standards that that civil service uh has here my and i may be wrong on this number but my understanding was that uh dave gave us the information and maybe the chief did that we have roughly 70 officers that would qualify to be appointed to the chief of police coming from this unit okay and we even looked at well what if the qualifications were this this and this and it was even we had 60 officers in our department that would be eligible for appointment as the chief of police if you made those requirements because we got requirements qualifications from cities all over the state and looked at those not just we didn't just look at civil service teresa and them got us this information we looked at it and we felt like if we were going to do this it had to be raised so we have already looked at both sides of this picture what we would do if it if we came back and recommended elected what we would do if we had to come back and do appointed we have some thought processes here that we want to lay that we would lay out i think also

[0:32:48] i think most of us sitting up here would also say that this isn't about the current police chief there's as you said before chief carter's done a terrific job as police chief so this conversation has not come up because of his performance i think everyone here would say he has strong support from the public and from council so this isn't about our current police chief and we just need to be very loud and very vocal about that yes it is and and the committee itself we made that i believe we made that clear the first day the very first day we made that clear that this has nothing to do with the current administration police chief assistant chiefs it has nothing to do with them this is a matter of as a community for us to look at what direction do you want to head in okay i'm just going to ask each council member if there's questions for judge gilbert or any comments so everyone has a chance to voice something i'm going to start with tommy thank you mayor uh alan did y'all talk about if if we felt that it was important to address the lack of qualifications for police chief be it elected or appointed if we wanted to do something about that now how would we go about inserting into what the framework we have right now how would we go about inserting that into the the process we knew that was going to be a question tommy and i appreciate you bringing up yes sir if let's just say for if right now and we give a lot of yes let's say we were to be going to faller head and go on into november for the election okay if you wanted to put on the ballot and say we're going to keep an elected chief but we're going to require that they have these qualifications let's say a master's under t cole uh 10

[0:34:52] years experience i've been a supervisor have been a commander and i'm just throwing out some stuff here to you but you could stipple you could put all those in there requirements uh texas driver's license you could put all those requirements in there and then it could be voted as an amendment to the charter and then your next elected police chief would have to meet these standards in order to be elected yes that was that was my main question thank you tommy tom you know alan the the thing we look at here in being an advocate of looking at this process and we can't thank the charter group enough for going through what they're going through but i've had lots of phone calls on this and i put the scenarios in front of them and i say the purpose of this charter one thing is to take and they've heard me say this before it's kind of to take the politics out of public safety and with that i don't know how that agenda moves forward but i thank y'all for for doing what you're doing but i want to say my question to the group is the majority of the objections you have to this is it from people not knowing the entire situation and how this goes because i would say the 10 15 people i've talked to after i've explained to them kind of the purpose of looking and going down this path is the more they learn about it the more open they are to the other side is that what you found mark come on up come on up come on up get a turn at the mic you need to be on the microphone this is this is mark black hi i i in my personal conversations i'm not going to say exactly who but everybody in this room knows who i have spoken to even they when i gave them the the qualifications they got shock so it wasn't just a typical person in the grocery store that we may say you know did you know that your 18 year old child can now run for chief of police and actually i would tell people that my daughter's who's about to turn 18 will

[0:36:54] be eligible to run and i said she she even laughed at that and thought that was hilarious i said no that that according to our city charter that is correct if you talk to people who have been involved in our city government they are shocked at those lack of qualifications so it's not just a one or two people that we've talked to it's people who we would expect to be well informed are completely uninformed as to the process to elect our chief of police thank you for those comments tom you're good harry tom go ahead i'm sorry i'm a judge mayor i'm sorry mayor what you're saying is exactly what we're saying from the committee we're saying that the public hasn't been informed of all these years that has come up for election never has there been a situation that allowed for information to be given out to the public it's always put on the ballot as appointment yes or no or election yes or no and there's never been as far as i know a committee like this that is willing to go out and do these type of meetings to inform the public inform the citizens of what we've just informed you of and you're absolutely correct i didn't there's some things in here i didn't know and there's some things in here y'all didn't know so we know they don't know and they may know it and still decide they want to go one way or the other but the you know my requirements of everything in my life has always been before you make a decision become informed and that's what we want our public to be as informed and if they're informed however they decided then that's the right way but they have the right to be informed thank you harry yes i'll reiterate a little bit about what tom said i certainly appreciate people that are sitting on this charter review committee i app they had the opportunity to serve on the last one seven years ago

[0:38:58] and one of the things that we were not able to accomplish because we didn't do a very good job of getting the public educated was to talk about uh an appointed chief that didn't pass the last time so i want to say thank you i appreciate it and i and i agree with what you've you've recommended here and that is let us educate the public let us get out there and do that so we don't have to rush into this thing in november and personally i would rather rather make sure that every citizen had the opportunity to learn uh what's going on and and to be educated before before they went out and voted so i want to say thank you i also want to say go back and say this again one of your first slides that showed the qualifications all you got to do is live in san diego for two years you do not have to be a police officer if you've got the time and want to run then if you win the only thing that you've got to do is become a certified police certified peace officer within 12 months i mean that's that's state laws that is that part of our charter no okay but i think what they have to do is they have to become a chief administrator of uh and tracy and david might be able to help with this but the chief administrator there's this course for that and they need to complete that course but i do not believe that requires being a peace officer a certified peace officer not a police officer peace officer police officer right i do not believe it requires that you just have to become a chief administrator and there are situations where police chiefs are purely administrative and run the department and they don't do the law enforcement work but okay so with that i just hope that we can get to the spot where people understand what we can do i offer one other suggestion that i've offered to the city manager for years and that is if the

[0:41:01] citizens still do not trust city hall to appoint a police chief that would run this particular city maybe they should look at it appointing a police commission not a police commission i want to say safety commission that looks at the fire chief the police chief and the emergency manager i mean there's other other ways to do this and i just offer those a little suggestions but anyway thank you lucy excuse me mayor may i address that with harry right quick under the civil service provisions because we talked about this exactly what you said civil service provisions if you go to appointed is going to be city management appointment with consent of counsel because that's requirements under the civil service there are some cities within the state of texas that have police or safety commissions one of them they can but i i have to let theresa address this more but that's the requirements that are set up under the city our civil service it's down the road someplace else lucy oh i just want to thank you for every one of y'all for your past present and future time that you're putting into this it is much appreciated and we thank you for the information that y'all are bringing to us karen um i won't waste any more time the good questions have come from the colleagues on the other side of the table so thank you for your wisdom and prudence and the recommendations that you're making going forward i appreciate that larry i can first of all say ditto to everything has been said but now the question is who's going to create the prerequisites we wanted to create watchers who's going to create these prerequisites if we do it for elected i mean what would it would still be this committee would also come back and recommend to us what they would the language for qualifications that would still have to be voted on by

[0:43:02] the public because it's part of the city charters so this same committee if they chose to not uh change it to appointed but elected would also have to come up with those because it would have to be part of that language for the vote okay yeah and last of all some folks may have a fear that if you stack the prerequisites too severely you're eliminating part of the potential field for folks to run for office for this office you certainly use other cities and they're you're not just gonna throw darts at things and come up with them we would have to use other cities requirements and knowledge and information about all of this we're not gonna we're not gonna try to make it an impossible feat we need a strong police chief we need someone elected or appointed to follow following frank carter's steps because he has done a great job and he could be a great source of information to anybody elected or appointed just as his assistant police chiefs could be as well and as i said earlier we have looked at all these requirements and if we were to go to the top level of requirements uh we would still have roughly 60 police officers in angel that would be eligible so that would not says a lot that's great yes that says a lot for our police department that says a whole lot for our police department thank you okay all right so with that um does anyone on the committee the charter committee want to come forward and offer any other comments or say anything before we go to a vote and look like anyone's coming forward yes okay so then with that i would like i think what i need is a motion to for to delay or put may in as a time period for a potential election on this issue what do we need julia we have this posted as

[0:45:05] discussion and direction so if the council i think we have a consensus that you'd like the committee to come back in january with a final recommendation i think that'll be good right is there anyone opposed to that or any for the comment all right so i think you all have direction from us and as a final thank you for what you've done the work you've put in and the work you're going to be putting in because it's not over yet so thank you very much all right with that it's 1007 we are going to take a break we'll be back at around 10 15. if you could stay just a few more minutes if you don't mind okay tommy needs ice and not ice is in law enforcement just the cold kind all right we are now open for public comment on the conversation um presented by the charter committee on elected versus appointed anna bartosz smd-1 um just a few things i wrote down and to me the biggest concern that seems to been expressed is qualifications

[0:47:08] um the election process generally flushes that out i as part of the tea party i remember years ago when uh frank or chief carter ran uh that was probably our biggest meeting ever it was packed and we had all of the candidates for the police chief and there were a lot of questions so as far as qualifications i'm not that concerned yes you could write that in the chart and that would take care of that and and not worry about the elected versus appointed i don't know how many times this has been before the public the citizenry of san angelo and every single time appointed versus elected has been defeated it's been several times it's been on our ballots i think 11 would be the number 11 would be that number uh so uh with i don't know 73 percent in the last election voted the point is is that it was well stated by judge gilbert that even though it was put on a ballot in the past no one did anything to educate or meet one on one with citizens and opened up that conversation okay and my next concerns are what are the qualifications of the appointers the city manager what's the qualification there um so you're worried about the police chief and yes they do need to have qualifications and i really feel like the election process flushes all of that out but you can put that in the charter and satisfy everybody uh anyway those are my comments um and when you take the power away from the citizenry which should be every in everybody's mind and every decision you make does this interfere with the power of the people um

[0:49:10] i would always have to vote no thank you i think i have a question larry go ahead yes ma'am um i mean here we talked about 18 years old and you know the other minimal prerequisites you're not in favor of of eliminating eliminating other possible prerequisites for an elected or selected chief of police is that correct correct correct if you put it in the charter then whoever is appointed or elected needs to meet those qualifications thank you i'm derrick kirkpatrick and i live on coral way and i want to thank the committee i know i've been on committees and it's a lot of hard work so i do appreciate that to me the education is very important to educate the public but also i think that we need to change the requirements everything every job that any that i've ever had you had to have a list of requirements to qualify for the position but then we don't need to be like other cities i keep hearing this so and such and such city has this and that we're san angelo so let's stay san angelo and we don't have to be like everybody else but let's not take away the power from the people because today the marxist agenda is to control everybody and we do not want to be controlled so let the people vote that's

[0:51:15] what i say thank you city council for always listening further public comment we'll give it a one [Music] a two a three conversation is concluded all right thank you all charter members again and thanks for hanging around for a few more minutes

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=LojNRm9hm2g