Bastrop council rejects member's call for investigation, passes vote of confidence in city manager

The Bastrop City Council on Tuesday declined a request to open a council-initiated investigation into City Manager Sylvia Carrillo Trevino and instead passed a nonbinding vote of confidence.

Councilmember Cheryl Lee presented a memo she said she compiled through records requests that she told colleagues contained "information I found to be concerning in regards to questionable spending and actions taken by the city manager regarding city funds, as well as allegations that staff are operating in a hostile work environment under her leadership." Lee asked the council to authorize an independent third-party review or an ethics-commission review of the memo.

Councilmembers debated whether to hear the city manager respond in open session. After discussion and a roll call, the council voted 3-2 to allow Carrillo Trevino to present her response. Carrillo Trevino spent more than an hour rebutting the memo point by point, saying the memo lists "15 points of questionable spending totaling over $2,000,000" but disputing many of the claims and offering contextual explanations for contracts, staffing changes and budget treatments.

In her prepared remarks, Carrillo Trevino said she halted several capital improvement projects to avoid carrying the city into untenable debt and described large engineering and oversight proposals she said would have driven future costs higher. She identified a listed engineering proposal at about $8.9 million and an engineering-oversight item near $856,000, and described measures she said were taken to reduce third-party review costs to $67,000 by bringing more review in-house. "We are not ready for it," she said of moving forward on some projects without additional financial planning.

Public comment at the meeting was extensive and largely in support of the manager. More than a dozen residents told the council they saw Carrillo Trevino as an effective administrator who had improved responsiveness and advanced projects ranging from infrastructure to business recruitment. Several speakers asked the council to prioritize transparent facts and process over political disputes.

After public comment the council took a procedural vote. Mayor Pro Tem Kirkland moved to deny the request by the mayor and Councilmember Lee to call for an investigation; the motion carried 4-1, with Councilmember Lee casting the lone dissenting vote. The council then directed the city manager to return resolutions of support for staff members named in the memo and later passed a separate motion expressing formal confidence in Carrillo Trevino by the same 4-1 margin.

City Attorney Alan Borquez had advised that certain items discussed under the agenda language could fall under Texas Government Code sections 551.071 (consultation with attorney) and 551.074 (personnel matters) and that details on legal ramifications could require executive-session discussion. Councilmembers said they would consider an agenda item on standards of conduct and the possible consequences of defamatory statements by officials.

The council's actions were: deny initiation of an investigation (vote 4-1); direct the city manager to prepare support resolutions for staff named in the memo (vote 4-1); and adopt a nonbinding vote of confidence in the city manager (vote 4-1). The meeting adjourned after those actions.

What happens next: The council did not begin a formal outside investigation during the special session. Any further action (for example, a formal ethics or independent inquiry) would require a future agenda item and a majority vote of the council.