No action taken on City Manager’s evaluation

Maintaining distance
Pictured is San Benito City Manager Manuel De La Rosa addressing City leaders at Tuesday’s City Commission meeting streamed live for the public.
(Courtesy photo)

By DAVID LOPEZ
editor@sbnewspaper.com

San Benito City Commissioners convened for a regular meeting Tuesday, in which they took no action on the evaluation of City Manager Manuel De La Rosa during a closed-door session. No action was taken at the last regular meeting either when commissioners first brought up the item this year.

At the beginning of the meeting, Mayor Ben Gomez wished to clarify the circumstances of the City of San Benito, given the current pandemic and Governor Greg Abbot’s announcement last week to set forth guidelines on reopening the state of Texas.

“I know the governor and county judge are working on reopening businesses, but this pandemic is not over. This is something very serious, but we have to support our leaders on what they want to do,” he said.

Still, Gomez suggested everybody continue following the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on social distancing, avoiding gatherings, and sheltering-in-place.

“I think we haven’t even reached the peak [of confirmed cases] in Cameron County. We’re a population of 500,000 plus people, and I don’t think [the state] is going to send 500,000 tests,” Gomez continued.

In other items, Commissioners denied AEP Texas Inc.’s application to increase its distribution rate within the city. City Manager Manuel De La Rosa recommended commissioners deny AEP’s proposed rate increase.

“As you might recall, they just got a rate case increase in the last six months,” De La Rosa said. “This new increase would increase everyone’s residential customer bill by $1.83 a month, totaling about 39.87 million to AEP.”

The Public Utility Commission of Texas will be hearing the item next.

Commissioners also approved the annual membership payment of $10,000 to the San Benito Chamber of Commerce.

At first, Mayor Gomez said he was going to suggest approving only $5,000 because of the difficult financial situation caused by the pandemic. However, Gomez refrained after receiving a letter from the Chamber’s Executive Director, Megan Treviño. In her letter, Treviño stated that her organization is doing everything it can to help local businesses, who have been hit especially hard due to the shutdown.