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Changes will soon be implemented in how the city of Mission conducts elections, keeps track of its financial health and more after voters approved a bevy of changes to the city charter during the city’s charter amendment election on Saturday.
For one, Saturday’s election marks the city’s last to be held in the month of May.
Beginning in 2026, Mission will hold its elections on the uniform date in November after a whopping 78% of the more than 4,100 residents who voted approved Proposition D.
The proposition to move Mission’s elections to November was just one of 24 similar updates to the Mission City Charter that voters greenlit by mostly overwhelming majorities.
The election also marked the first time in decades that Mission had attempted to overhaul its governing document.
“The original charter was from 1961 and there was a couple of times that it was amended, but only maybe like one amendment at a time,” Mission Mayor Norie Gonzalez Garza said on Monday.
“This was the first time since 1987 that we’ve had a charter amendment (election),” she added.
The changes will impact various sectors across the city, from how Mission defines its boundaries, to how it will hold elections and fill vacancies, to eliminating redundant or obsolete departments.
TERM LIMITS
Among the changes that voters approved over the weekend is one that will impact the mayor directly — the implementation of term limits for the office of mayor.
Henceforth, a mayor will be limited to serving a maximum of three four-year terms.
Some 3,182 Mission residents voted in favor of implementing mayoral term limits while 973 people voted against the idea.
Gonzalez Garza, who sat on the five-person charter review committee that came up with the two dozen proposals, said including mayoral term limits was her way of making good on a campaign promise.
“When I was running for mayor, that was one of the questions that was posed to me by some of the residents … and I’ve always thought it was a good idea,” Gonzalez Garza said.
Though her current term in office likely does not count toward the new three-term limit, Gonzalez Garza said she would “honor” it as her “first term” should she seek reelection.
As to the rest of the seats on the city council, term limits for them may be an item for discussion further down the road, she said.
TRACKING FINANCES
Another major change voters approved on Saturday was to codify the position of an internal financial auditor who can work independently from the city’s regular administrative chain of command.
Instead, the auditor will report directly to a three-person committee comprised of two councilmembers and one member of the local business community.
Nearly 75% of voters cast their ballots in favor of the solidifying the permanence of the auditor position.
The auditor will be empowered to conduct a financial audit of any department within the city, to report their findings to the audit committee, and to propose changes based on those findings.
City Manager Mike Perez — whom the city council hired in mid-March to clean up myriad financial and administrative inconsistencies after a flurry of questions surfaced last fall — likens the auditor’s role to that of similarly positioned employees in other cities.
“Kind of like how McAllen does it. (He) doesn’t report to the city manager or finance director, no. They’re independent,” Perez said.
Even Perez himself will not be privy to what the auditor wants to examine until he’s ready to begin investigating.
“I don’t know that he’s going (to do) until he sends me an email that says, ‘I’m going to the golf course this morning to do an audit on cash and on controls,’” Perez said, illustrating a hypothetical example.
Over the last few years, Mission officials have budgeted for someone to fill the auditor position, however, it wasn’t until last fall that one was finally hired, according to Place 2 Councilman Ruben Plata.
“That’s one of the things that I’d been asking for a while, but we finally hired an auditor,” Plata said Monday.
“We probably had it in the budget for the last five years for sure, but they never hired an auditor,” he added a moment later.
Though the city had long made space for an auditor, it had no policy in place for how that person would function — including who he would report to, or what kinds of powers he would hold.
That’s the primary reason for including Proposition K as part of the charter amendment election, the mayor said.
Had the proposal failed, the city council could have taken action to codify the auditor role via an ordinance, Gonzalez Garza said.
As a retired banker, Plata said he’s accustomed to working with an auditor whose job it is to ensure that staff are following sound financial practices and recordkeeping.
Gonzalez Garza, too, lauded the position’s newfound and voter-approved permanence.
“I sat on the school board for nine years … and we had an internal auditor at Mission CISD. And I thought it was a very good tool to keep a check and balance,” the mayor said.
But both the mayor and Councilman Plata denied that hiring an independent auditor was related to the financial management questions that arose late last fall, when the city’s economic development corporation discovered that the city had failed to transfer over approximately $3 million in sales tax revenues.
Not surprisingly, that discovery led to numerous questions. And it was Plata who largely led the charge during council discussions throughout December.
Nonetheless, Gonzalez Garza admits that some residents may continue to harbor concerns over the city’s fiscal transparency.
To that end, the council will soon be considering passing an ordinance that will require Mission to post quarterly financial statements on the city’s website, the mayor said.
The matter will likely be included as part of next Monday’s meeting agenda.
That’s also when the council will canvass Saturday’s election, Perez, the city manager said.
“As soon as the city council certifies the election, then they (the charter amendments) go into effect,” Perez said.