(Seguin) — The city of Seguin is discussing its plans to fill a vacant seat on the Seguin City Council.
District 7 Councilwoman Penny Follis resigned her seat last month after moving outside of her district.
City Attorney Andy Quittner says the council is not allowed to appoint someone to fill the rest of Follis’ term, which runs through November.
“If there is a vacancy, what our charter says is it has to be filled by a special election and that is held according to state law which that’s left vague kind of on purpose. One, the Texas Constitution says if you have terms more than two years, they have to be filled by election. They can’t be appointed but it also says if you don’t have some other procedural way, you should fill within 120 days. That’s been in there a long time and hasn’t looked to what’s happened in election cycles over the last 10 or 15 years,” said Quittner.
Most local, state, and federal elections have been consolidated into the November general election date. There are a few exceptions, but Quittner says that consolidation means that most local entities have their elections run by a county elections administrator. That’s certainly the case for the city of Seguin, which is another reason why it would be harder for the city to hold a special election prior to its regular council election in November.
“Big cities can do that for a large part. Cities like Dallas and Houston and Austin that take up all of the county pretty much or maybe all of the county plus some. They run their own elections. Most cities, smaller cities in particular, haven’t run their own elections in a long time. It’s expensive trying to keep up with the equipment with a small city and all that – it would be a real pain let alone an expense. As it is, it cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000 each election cycle to run our own and that’s splitting it with the county, the school districts, special districts and everybody else that is in there,” said Quittner.
The uniform election dates are in November and May. There is likely not enough time to host that election in May. Quittner says the November date is the city’s best option for filling the seat.
“There is a way out of the uniform election dates. They are required for everybody but if other law says that you can do it, you can but then again, we’d have to go to the county and say ‘hey, can you do it?’ Well, this is an even numbered year. Right now, they are busy because it’s primary season so they are filled with primary season and probably this year, I wouldn’t be surprised looking at the state and that if there aren’t runoffs, so they are going to be busy all the way up probably till the end of April or so. So, it makes it very hard,” said Quittner.
Quittner says the city’s charter, as currently written, also brings about some additional challenges for any candidates that would be interested in filling the unexpired term if an election was held before November. Not only would it require them to potentially run for the same seat twice in a calendar year, but it would also greatly limit the total amount of time that they could serve on the council.
“If we were to decide to have an election and fill that seat, that person would be seated whenever the meeting following the election when the results were canvassed – they would have to run again in November because you only fill an unexpired term. So, they would have to run again in November, but our charter also says that you cannot qualify if that term will bring you more than eight years. So, any person that went this year would serve four or five months then could serve a four-year term and then they’d be termed out which in some ways is not fair. That’s the way it’s been written for a long time. That could be changed but if it was changed, it would not affect that person because any changes in the charter having to do with council and mayor and those kinds of things, they only go into effect after your term ends. So, they would still be lifed-out,” said Quittner.
One of the other challenges with this issue is the fact that Seguin has eight single-member districts. That means each part of the city gets to choose its representative on the council, and that councilmember must reside in that district. The city for decades had an at-large council system, which meant that each council member was chosen by the entire city. A federal lawsuit filed in the early 1990s changed that process, which it was alleged that the city’s at-large system diluted minority representation on the council. At the time, it also alleged that the city’s at-large system violated the one-man-one vote principle, because some neighborhoods lacked access and representation on the council. The single-member districts were established to provide representation for individual parts of the city, while also allowing council members to focus on the overall needs for the city.
The current issue is further complicated by the fact that the city is currently conducting its redistricting process for the city’s eight single-member council districts. Redistricting is required after each census, and the city must make sure that the population count of each district is in balance with one another.
City Manager Steve Parker says they are adding a resident from District 7 to serve on the Redistricting Committee as a way to ensure that those residents have a voice as part of the redrawing of the boundary lines for each city council district. Parker says redistricting is another reason why it is best to wait until November to hold the election.
“So, you may have somebody that runs that might not even be in that district after – thinking which we’ll probably be finished with that sometime around May or June is what we are shooting for – and so that causes some concern. I think that’s why we recommended not doing anything at this time with a special election because it would kind of handicap everybody. I think everybody agrees that this city council looks out for the best interest of the city as a whole anyway. I think the big item for representation is redistricting and making sure that there is a representative from that council district on there.
We have a recommendation tonight for somebody that can sit in that spot and be a representative on our citizen committee to make recommendations to our council to make sure they have a voice,” said Parker.
The redistricting process is really just getting underway for the city, and Quittner says a number of changes are expected across parts of the city.
“There will be substantial changes in the districts to balance – or some of them and that’s one of them and you try and keep everybody there – the people that don’t have to run in 2022, their house has to stay in the district. Otherwise, they would be out and that can create havoc plus it isn’t fair to the constituents and that. The others though are somewhat fair game, so you want to do it in enough time. I’m actually hoping we get done before June. I’m thinking April would be much better, but we’ll see how long it takes. We do have a lot of disparity in pure numbers. That comes with growth, so I guess that’s both good and bad,” said Quittner.
Mayor Donna Dodgen, who is a resident of District 7, says while that seat will remain vacant for more than 10 months, she believes that there will still be adequate representation for the people in that part of town.
“Past Mayor Keil lives in that district as do I and I do believe openly and honestly and wholeheartedly that all of us as a council will take care of it,” said Dodgen.
Meanwhile, Parker says it’s up to the council to decide if it wants to propose changes to the city’s charter that might make it easier to fill a vacant seat in the future. Any proposed changes to the charter would have to be approved by the voters.
“I think we could possibly look also at some amendments of how, if this happens, again, is there a way to come up with a special appointment process where they would just appoint for that amount of time. That would have to go to voters for change because that is in the city charter – or it’s not in the city charter so we have to put something in the city charter to run it that way and then possibly maybe look at something where you could serve more than eight years if you filled in for somebody and so if somebody did five months, they could still have two eight year terms kind of like the President who is able to go 10 years. So, those are all things we can look at for a November election as well and I think we’d recommend any of that to make some improvements,” said Parker.
The plan now is to proceed with the redistricting process, and then fill the District 7 seat during the November general election.