By James Dodson
When Mayor Javier Joven, City Council members Mark Matta and Denise Swanner, won seats on the Odessa City Council they were all endorsed by the now past leadership of the Ector County Republican Party. Their platform was to demand high ethical standards, accountability, transparency and to eliminate “good ole boy” system.
With my experience in municipal government, most prudent elected officials will spend time evaluating the performance of top leadership and the current culture to insure whatever they may have been told or perceived by insiders and outsiders is true and correct. In my professional opinion, the firing of the Odessa city manager and attorney shows there was a hidden political agenda in place from the very start and they could not wait to start executing it.
Mayor Joven and council members Matta and Swanner were in such a hurry to execute their hidden political agenda they had to have two council meetings to successfully terminate the city manager and city attorney, because they didn’t follow proper procedure.
City managers and city attorneys do serve at the pleasure of the council so if they really felt like a change was needed then these actions are well within the scope of their authority. However, rather than appoint the assistant city manager or managers to oversee the operations of the city, as has been done in the past when we terminated a city manager, Mayor Joven and council members Matta and Swanner chose to appoint a subordinate to the assistant city manager, Billing and Collections Director Agapito Bernal as “Interim City Manager.”
This only added to an already unpleasant situation, further increasing employee stress, uncertainly and hostility, that greatly destabilized the operations of the city.
At the time of his internal appointment/promotion, Mr. Bernal did not possess the required minimal qualifications for this critical position, such as prior pertinent experience or minimal education to serve as “Interim City Manager” or in his current position as assistant city manager.
The truth, Odessa, is he was rewarded for his part in the overall hidden political agenda.
In politics they call this “Propping up.” Mr. Bernal was not really promoted, he was “propped up” and placed in a high position of authority with a very high salary that he is not qualified for.
If, for whatever reason, Mayor Joven and council members Matta and Swanner could absolutely not appoint the current assistant city manager or managers, a far more prudent and professional solution would have been to bring in a temporary outside city manager who would be neutral and fair to all employees (one who had absolutely no history with any of the employees, but who knew city administration operations very well.)
There are Texas based companies that provide interim management services for municipal government. These companies contract the services of highly qualified and retired city managers.
Within hours of terminating Michael Marrero, Mayor Joven hired T2 Professional Consulting to train and assist Mr. Bernal in his new city manager role and to assist in conducting a search for a new city manager. The agreement was later ratified by the Odessa City Council for $338,000.
T2 conducted employee surveys and spent time with Mayor Joven and the council members seeking their vision, desired traits, qualities and characteristics in the new city manager. A new job description for the position of city manager, approved by the Odessa City Council, specifically stated the new city manager will be expected to have a bachelor’s or higher in public administration, business administration, management or related field. In addition, they must have three or more years’ experience as a city manager, assistant city manager or as a department head in a city of similar size to Odessa. Additional agreed upon criteria, include things like integrity, transparency, accountability, good management and communication skills.
Under Mr. Bernal’s tenure as interim city manager of the City of Odessa, during the several month long search for a city manager, other city department division heads and employees left the city, which I suspect further destabilized city operations and lowered the morale of most city employees. Every time a competent employee separates from the city, the city loses on their investment of recruiting, training and experience in the individual.
The formal search process came to an end and T2 announced that they had 50 applicants. The list was narrowed down to four to be interviewed, and one of the four withdrew. It was at this point that the name John Beckmeyer was added to the list and was subsequently selected by the majority vote of the city council.
There was an outcry and out right contempt from Councilmember Steve Thompson and rightfully so about how John Beckmeyer did not meet the established criteria and could be moved ahead of 47 other qualified applicants to the finalist list. He also stated his name should have never been included on the list of the 50 identified by T2 Professional Consulting. However, John Beckmeyer did receive the majority vote and full support of Mayor Joven, council members Matta, Swanner, Connell and Hanie.
I agree with Councilman Thompson that John Beckmeyer did not meet the designated criteria or minimal qualifications that the council itself had established. John Beckmeyer may be a nice man, but he is not city manager material for a major city, such as Odessa.
With all of the challenging issues facing our city, I fail to comprehend how the Mayor and majority of the council members could hire a person for our city manager who has absolutely no city management or public administration experience at all.
How did John Beckmeyer become our city manager? Well, it is really not hard to figure out. Just follow the people and their associations.
Beckmeyer was the executive director of the Republican Party of Texas. Mayor Joven, council members Matta and Denise Swanner were all endorsed by the former leadership of the Ector County Republican Party. Most all of them have known each other and have been networking in the Republican Party of Texas circles for years on a local and state level. During the last election, the former leadership of the Ector County Republican Party were heavily endorsed by several important and influential state and local republicans including Dick Salisbury. John Beckmeyer’s wife, Teresa is also employed as a political advisor for the Salisbury family.
I have spent a considerable amount of time researching all of these issues.
I believe that the “fix” was in from the very start, meaning that Mayor Joven wittingly and council members Matta and Swanner (wittingly or unwittingly) and others not named, already knew who they wanted for the city manager position. I suspect that billing and collections director Agapito Bernal was very high on the list from the very beginning and John Beckmeyer later came up on their radar.
I further suspect that during all of the political maneuvering that was going on to get rid of City Manager Marrero and City Attorney Brooks, Bernal and a few others played a significant role in the capacity of a trusted “co-conspirator.”
Or, I guess that we could give him the title of “confidential informant” since Mayor Joven and our current City Attorney Dan Jones seem to like that term so much, that they utilized it while misleading the citizenry about Mayor Joven’s role as a complainant about an innocent party that resulted in a controversial police response and open records request from the OA.
Mayor Joven and the council members started meeting with the consultant from T2 Professional Consulting to finalize a written job description and qualifications for the new city manager.
During one of these meetings, it appears that Mayor Joven was doing his best to influence the qualifications in the city manager job description. I think the intent here was to keep it very broad so as not to let the verbiage eliminate John Beckmeyer (private sector) and/or Interim City Manager Agapito Bernal (education).
I am going to use Mayor Joven’s own words. On Tuesday, March 14, 2023, Mayor Joven was speaking with Mr. Lunt from the T2 Professional Consulting Group and they were discussing written criteria and how to word education and experience qualifications for the job description.
Mayor Joven related “he was worried about limiting the pool of potential candidates.” He is not opposed to hiring someone from the private sector or without those specific degrees. He also said, “I am not discouraging the city council to put those criteria in, just cautioning them ‘Don’t narrow the line,’” His comments here show from the very beginning of the hiring process, his intent and willingness not to hire the most qualified city manager for our city.
After the meeting and while still speaking with the media, Mayor Joven acknowledged that by not requiring specific degrees, Bernal could theoretically be named city manager. “He’s free to apply. Never said that he couldn’t, Will he apply? I haven’t talked to him about it,” but he earned an excellent reputation during his time as the billings and collection departments head,” Joven said.
Now Odessa, do you really believe for one second that Mayor Joven did not engage in a conversation with Bernal about the possibility of him being the city manager?
The final job description, to my knowledge does not reflect the Mayors spoken desire to include the private sector or lower educational requirements. However the term “department head” is in the final job description and I am somewhat suspect of that because of Mr. Bernal being a department head.
All of the political maneuvering in the city manager debacle has cost Odessa taxpayers around $600,000 and most likely that is a very conservative figure that very well could soar when some other elements are added to it. The exit of employees only continued after the selection of the Beckmeyer.
Those costs reflect the expenditure to hire the 2 Professional Consulting firm that Mayor Joven found and hired and the one that he and council members Matta and Swanner wound up turning into a first class dog and pony show.
They disregarded their own criteria/qualifications to hire someone that did not meet the criteria and was not qualified for the position. The bottom line, Odessa, it was a “good ole boy” and “good ole gal” political hire that was not in the best interest of our city. The other hard expenditures were payouts to the former city manager and city attorney. Those costs don’t reflect any attorney fees or pending lawsuits from former Assistant City Manager Aaron Smith.
Joven, Matta and Swanner are constantly promoting high ethical standards, accountability, transparency and eliminating the “good ole boy” system in Odessa.
Odessa, how does their hiring of Beckmeyer and promoting Bernal meet any of those standards?
I wish that there was a way to compel Mayor Joven and all of the council members who voted for the hiring of Beckmeyer to reimburse each of their portion of the tax payers money they recklessly wasted.
They replaced the good ole boy system they ran against with one of their very own. They have become exactly what they said that they desired to get rid of.
Odessa, I seriously question whether Mayor Joven, and council members Matta and Swanner view the city of Odessa as a cause greater than themselves. I think for whatever reason and most of it self-serving (me, myself and I) that they may believe that they are the City of Odessa. In following them over the years I also feel that they have used and turned the city of Odessa into their own little socialite political, playhouse, while being poor stewards of the citizens money.
I would encourage our citizens that when they drive around our city and observe all of the political signs, or hear or read ads that say re-elect Mayor Joven, council members Matta and Swanner, please let it be a motivating reminder of exactly who you DON’T WANT TO VOTE for when you go to the ballot box.
Commander James (Jim) Dodson retired in 1999 from the Odessa Police Department. He is a fourth-generation Texas police officer with 27 years with the OPD. In June of 2006, he was awarded the Texas Police Association “Wallace Beasley Award” for outstanding contribution to law enforcement training and education.
