HARLINGEN — The turnover of high-level officials is leaving key positions vacant months after the City Commission’s new majority’s firings of City Manager Dan Serna and City Attorney Ricardo Navarro shook up City Hall.
Since commissioners fired Serna and Navarro in September, Assistant City Manager Carlos Sanchez and City Engineer Andy Vigstol have resigned.
In the heated weeks before the firings, Danny Coyle, who served as the city’s internal auditor, resigned.
Meanwhile, commissioners have appointed lawyer Mark Sossi to serve as interim city attorney.
Now, City Manager Gabriel Gonzalez, whom commissioners appointed to replace Serna, is trying to fill the four positions.
When asked whether City Hall was facing a record number of high-level vacancies, Efrain Fernandez, the city’s longtime human resources director, said, “I don’t recall.”
While members of the previous commission blamed Serna’s and Navarro’s firings for the resignations, leaders of the new majority stood behind their push for change.
Key jobs to fill
At City Hall, Gonzalez said Sanchez, the city’s former assistant city manager for external affairs who was drawing an annual salary of $166,142, resigned last month to take an engineering job with Cameron County’s transportation division.
Meanwhile, he said Coyle, a certified public accountant who was making $87,849, took a job at a bank while he believes Vigstol, who was earning $117,470, left Tuesday to start a business.
“I’ve been here for 20 years and Dan (Serna) was the fifth city manager I’ve worked with,” Gonzalez, who served as assistant city manager for internal affairs before his appointment to the city’s top administrative job, said. “Change happens. It’s not always easy, but it happens. All we can do is keep people calm and reassure everyone, ‘Do your job and you’re OK.’”
Backlash
For months, Mayor Chris Boswell has warned the firings stir a sense of turmoil making developers and investors think twice about doing business in Harlingen.
“I have a lot of concern about it,” he said.
“It troubles me that we lost a very good team,” he said.
Boswell said he believes the firings led to the resignations.
“This is an environment they didn’t want to be in,” he said.
Like Boswell, Commissioner Michael Mezmar said the firings rattled City Hall, leading its high-level officials to resign.
“Morale at City Hall is approaching zero,” he said. “These are professionals — they’re not ‘yes men.’ They’re getting out while the getting’s good.”
Standing behind push for change
Meanwhile, Commissioner Frank Puente, who’s helped lead the push for change, said commissioners’ call for a performance audit aimed at evaluating the city management’s efficiency and effectiveness helped lead some of the high-ranking officials to resign.
“I don’t know if they’re concerned about their positions or if they’re leaving for a better job,” he said. “They have been at their jobs all these years. I’m just assuming they’re afraid of the audit. If they’re leaving, it’s probably because we expect more out of them.”
Puente also believes some officials loyal to Serna left after he was fired.
“Dan hand-picked a lot who are gone,” he said.
Like Puente, Commissioner Frank Morales said he believes the audit led some officials to resign.
“It makes you wonder what’s behind the scenes that these people are jumping ship,” he said, describing the push for change as “positive.”
Despite the resignations, Puente said morale runs high among most employees.
“I’d say 90 percent of employees and staff are happy with the change,” he said. “Change for some people is scary but sometimes change is a good thing.”
Background
In September, members of the commission’s majority fired Serna after Mayor Pro Tem Richard Uribe accused him of failing to act on commissioners’ concerns regarding issues ranging from falsified employee time cards to allegations of sexual harassment while Serna addressed the concerns as he stood behind his seven-year record.
Earlier that month, commissioners fired Navarro as Commissioner Rene Perez said he was voting to fire the law firm because he believed some of its legal advice wasn’t made in the best interest of the city.
However, during a name-clearing hearing, Navarro vehemently denied the accusation, telling the four-member majority he and his legal team worked for the city’s best interests since he took the job six years earlier, adding he believed commissioners fired his firm because they didn’t “like” a legal recommendation.
