HARLINGEN — Two weeks after firing City Attorney Ricardo Navarro, the city commission’s new majority has fired City Manager Dan Serna after Mayor Pro Tem Richard Uribe accused him of failing to act on issues while Mayor Chris Boswell and Commissioner Michael Mezmar fiercely supported his job record.
During a loud, heated three-and-a-half hour special meeting, commissioners voted 4-1 to fire Serna, appointing Assistant City Manager Gabriel Gonzalez to serve as interim city manager while they search to fill the city’s top executive job.
During a long PowerPoint presentation, Uribe accused Serna of failing to act on commissioners’ concerns regarding issues ranging from falsified employee time cards to allegations of sexual harassment while Serna stood behind his record during six years on the job he landed after working as a supervisor in the city’s top departments.
In accordance with Serna’s contract, the city’s bound to pay him a year’s worth of severance pay based on his annual salary of $260,000.
“I’ve lost confidence in our city manager and his ability to do the right thing,” Uribe told commissioners during Tuesday’s special meeting. “This is a pattern of behavior. I think if we don’t (fire Serna) we’re going to be stagnant for a long time.”
But Boswell firmly stood behind Serna, whom a previous commission hired in late 2015.
“If you look at our financial picture, if you look at the number of projects that we’ve done, if you look at the annual report, you’ll see the city manager has done an excellent job,” he said.
Boswell described Uribe’s concerns as “allegations.”
“We can’t operate the city based on chisme — we really can’t,” Boswell said. “We can’t operate it based on gossip and innuendo. I would hate for this kind of decision (to be made) based on this kind of information because it’s not reliable. We need to make decisions based on evidence — real evidence — not allegations.”
Meanwhile, Mezmar grilled Uribe, arguing Serna had responded to all his concerns.
“What we have here is a political coup,” Mezmar told Uribe. “You fired the lawyers, you fired the legal team, you’re firing Dan, you want to fire (the South Texas Emergency Care Foundation). You want to fire everybody in a political coup.”
During a PowerPoint presentation, Uribe said Serna failed to respond to cases in which employees falsified their time cards.
“In my world, that’s an immediate terminal offense,” he said. “You don’t steal people’s time.”
In response, Serna said he and Police Chief Michael Kester addressed the case of a police officer, whose employment is protected under Civil Service law.
“This item was addressed between myself and our police chief,” Serna said after requesting Uribe’s complaints be discussed in open session. “This was addressed with the assistant chief. It was documented. Police officers are afforded a level of due process that involves a discretionary file.”
Meanwhile, Serna said he took disciplinary action against a supervisor whose employees falsified time cards.
“That was addressed with all our employees,” he said as he stood at the podium near his attorney. “As a matter of fact, we reconciled with the employees. We addressed it with the supervisor — disciplinary action. The employees were compensated for the time they agreed was incorrect and the supervisor was dealt with pretty strong.”
Uribe also cited a case in which the city attorney’s staff sent a police officer’s personal information including medical records to a criminal.
“There was a file that was with our city attorney’s office. Our city attorney’s staff sent that file out,” Serna said. “It’d been redacted. Our city attorney did reach out to the individual to make it right. That was an employee error that should have never happened. We are dealing with human beings and from time to time we all make mistakes — so this was not an intentional act.”
Uribe also described a case in which he said city staff’s oversight led a subcontractor to work without proper insurance before damaging a resident’s property.
In response, Serna said the project’s general contractor adjusted the insurance policy.
During his presentation, Uribe claimed Serna didn’t follow commissioners’ directions, instead working for Boswell.
Serna strongly denied the claim.
“My job isn’t to pick and choose who I listen to,” Serna said. “My job is to carry out policy established by a majority vote of the city council. I don’t work for any single one of you. I work for the group through a majority vote of the commission.”
Later, Boswell told Uribe, “You accused me of telling him what to do, which is completely false.”
Uribe also claimed Serna’s disrespectful during closed-door meetings.
“We should be able to have a discussion and be able to disagree,” Uribe told Serna. “Don’t come at me disrespectfully. Just because you don’t like what I’m saying doesn’t make me wrong.”
In response, Serna told Uribe, “I have never been disrespectful to anyone in any way.”
“Basically, I make my comments (and) I stand by what I say but I will always state what I think is in the best interest of the city moving forward,” he said.
In response to Uribe’s concern regarding the case of a Tony Butler Golf Course employee who was allowing a golf group to use the course’s restaurant kitchen in exchange for tips, Serna said he twice addressed the problem.
In a heated exchange, Boswell responded to Uribe’s claim Serna didn’t address the commissioner’s request for the police department’s “true” operational costs.
“For you to make that statement to the citizens of Harlingen is just unbelievable,” Boswell told Uribe. “For you to say that we don’t know what the true cost of operating the police department means that you haven’t looked at any of those (financial) documents. The problem is, commissioner, quite frankly you don’t look at the budget.”
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