Aldermen met behind closed doors Monday to discuss new city manager

Yoakum city leaders met in a closed-door session Monday evening, as part of special called meeting of city aldermen with the lone agenda item being the “appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of the City Manager.”

William Linn, the council hired to the city manager’s post on Nov. 30, 2023, hasn’t even made a full two months on the job yet. The notice for the meeting went up on the city website late in the day Friday, so the newspaper reached out to Mayor Carl O’Neill over the weekend to find out what we could.

“We just heard about a few things that we wanted to discuss quickly so they did not become big problems later,” O’Neil said Saturday, adding “That is about all I can say at this point.”

The newspaper set up a follow-up call with O’Neill after the Monday evening meeting. It started at 5:30 p.m. at city hall. More than three hours had passed before Mayor O’Neill returned our call.

First and foremost, no official actions were taken regarding their lone agenda item, O’Neill said, though he said they would likely revisit the topic again at their regularly scheduled monthly meeting coming up on Tuesday, Feb. 13.

Given that the lone agenda item deals specifically with personnel matters— in this case, involving the city’s highest-ranking employee— council members are limited on what they can and can’t say about such matters to the press.

That said, most courts have also held that position like Linn’s, a supervisory role that supersedes nearly all other posts within the city government body, are in fact held to higher standards than one might expect of other positions within the same entity.

Because of the power their position holds, they are viewed as public figures in the eyes of the law, placing them on the same rung you might include celebrities, elected officials or other such PRcentric position (school superintendents, athletic directors and even certain police officers).

Still, slight reprimands or refocusing plans often deal with issues that state lawmakers have deemed exempt fin matters concerning state open records laws. In effect, lawmakers contend that while they are indeed the face of the city, they are entitled to certain they involve matters of a private nature that are legally protected by the law.

O’Neill said that other city department heads were involved in Monday’s closed-door talks, and that Linn was given a few specifics to address over the next few days. Keep in mind, however, he continues to work as before with no restrictions of any sort in place, as even a censuring of any actions he may have done, would in fact also require a public action by those on the council, and that’s just to provide notice that they were, in fact, not happy with something.

That did not occur, based on what the mayor said.

Likewise, too, such laws would not prevent Linn from completing certain tips or suggestions designed to alter outcomes in a more positive light.

“We’ll basically see where that goes, and we should have a really good idea by the time our next meeting is up, at which point, we’ll revisit it all once again.”

Linn was one of at least two dozen applicants who tossed in their hats in for Yoakum’s top city leadership post. His hire came almost three months after longtime city manager Kevin Coleman was let go last summer, just as the city began its annual budget planning process.

No specifics were ever offered on Coleman’s rather abrupt job change by any of the aldermen, other than to say they wanted someone with a “different type of management style.”

Not much was known about Linn when he was announced as the city’s lone city manager finalist last November, and let’s just say he’s been anything but accommodating to the local press in the weeks since.

About the only thing we have learned about him thus far indicates he’s no stranger to agenda items precisely like the one we saw Monday.

Agendas just like those appear in the minutes of every city job he’s held since to play a significant part in his departure from every city post he’s held since 2016, when it appears he got started in this business, all prior to his coming to Yoakum, which included stints with Valley Mills (near Waco), Leonard (about halfway between Dallas and the Oklahoma border), Kenedy (here in South Texas) and Taft (near Corpus Christi).