Fernanda Figueroa | THE RIDER
The Edinburg City Council voted 3-1 to deny a proposed ordinance amending the city’s nepotism policy during its meeting Tuesday via Zoom.
The current nepotism policy prohibits individuals who are related to city council members, such as parents, children, siblings, nephews, nieces, parents-in-law and siblings-in-law, from being employed by the city.
SCREENSHOT TAKEN BY AALIYAH GARZA DURING TUESDAY’S EDINBURG CITY COUNCIL MEETING VIA ZOOM
Councilmember Johnny Garcia put forth the proposed revisions that would eliminate the policy altogether or would create an exception for civil service employees such as police officers and firefighters.
“These ordinances and other rules like it across the country are in place in order to protect our community,” Edinburg resident Ruben R. Ramirez said during the public comments section of the meeting. “If you start creating one exception for this, then where do we stop? We don’t. It’s a slippery slope. Nepotism has no place within the city of Edinburg, or any of our cities or government entities.”
Councilmember Garcia proposed the change to the nepotism policy so that his daughter has a chance of becoming an Edinburg city police officer. As per the nepotism policy, she is not allowed to become an officer even if she meets all the necessary requirements.
“We are not removing nepotism from the policy,” Garcia said. “It’s more of allowing the civil service process to take its course. This was not about asking favoritism to hire anybody, but allowing, in this case, my daughter to go through the civil service process because she does meet the requirements.”
Councilmember David White strongly opposed the change and moved to deny approval of the amendment.
White argued that approving the amendment would open room for corruption within the city’s government entities.
“Nepotism laws are there to stop the corruption,” White said. “We are here to avoid the corruption, to stop the corruption and it’s got to stop here and it’s got to stop with us. This is the reason why other cities, governments, federal governments have nepotism rules.”
In other business, City Manager Ron Garza, Assistant City Manager Brian Kelsey and Economic Department Director Blanca Davila provided the city council a presentation on the city’s economic development.
“I want to start this to explain why I, as one of the new staff members, am so excited about the future of economic development in the city,” Kelsey said. “So I just wanted to spend a few minutes going through a couple highlights to explain why I’m excited and really show how the outside world, at least when it comes to economic development, looks at our community and looks at our region.”
Some of the city’s economic development include:
–a $23 billion economy with a 22% GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth since 2010,
–a 2.3% annual job growth since 2010,
–contributing $2.3 billion to GDP via health care,
–$200 million fruit and vegetable farming and product manufacturing industry; top five citrus market in the U.S.
–manufacturing contributes more than $2 billion to the region’s GDP.
