During the public-comment period, Erin Hartwell, a candidate for Place 2, told the council she posted concerns on social media about the availability and posting location of notices for a workshop that she initially could not locate on the city website. Hartwell said she had retracted one earlier statement that the workshop itself had not been posted and apologized for that misunderstanding, but said the notice had been "obfuscated" by placement in a "More News" section that residents might not check. She said she had submitted a formal request to the city secretary asking for website posting protocols to be updated.

Hartwell said she had raised concerns about a scoring committee that vetted construction-consulting services and suggested the committee included “stakeholders privy to insider information,” a claim she framed as a call for clearer, unbiased vetting processes for council-related committees.

Earlier in the public-comment section, a resident (speaker identified in the meeting) brought up a tax statement mailer from the Cameron County tax assessor and asked the council to call attention to the items printed on the back of the statement. The commenter read slide information showing multi-year tax-rate and property-value comparisons and summarized: on a typical South Padre Island property about 42 percent of property taxes go to the Port Isabel Independent School District, about 29 percent go to Cameron County and about 13 percent go to the City of South Padre Island.

Why it matters: The Open Meetings Act requires public bodies to post notices so the public can find them; Hartwell urged clearer, more prominent posting to reduce confusion. The tax-statement breakdown clarifies how local property-tax dollars are distributed among taxing entities; the numbers were presented by a resident during public comment and reported here as stated in the meeting.

What’s next: Hartwell said she has filed a formal notice to the city secretary asking for a seven-day remedy to improve posting prominence; she said she expected the city to update protocols.