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Residents urge council to cut visioning costs and reprimand official social-media use
Summary
Two residents criticized the council's plan for two visioning workshops and questioned the use of an official council page for national-political posts; speakers urged one local workshop and better credit-card oversight.
Two residents used the public-comment period on Jan. 13 to press the Kyle City Council on workshop spending and on a council member's use of social media.
Stephanie McDonald told the council she had recently learned that Council member Zapata posted what McDonald described as "inflammatory" content on Friday, Jan. 9, on what McDonald said was the council member's official government page. "This page should have been reserved for city business, not to grandstand a platform on national politics," McDonald said, adding that the rhetoric was "divisive" and urging Zapata to use a personal page for that content.
McDonald also urged the council to hold a single, local visioning workshop to save money and allow residents to observe deliberations. She asked the council to examine hotel and food expenses and raised concerns that the city finance director told her he did not personally review city credit-card statements and that department heads are "supposed to" review them — a practice she said merited further oversight.
Larry Stamps, the second commenter, read line items from the proposed workshop budget and called several amounts excessive. He cited lodging at $11,200, a meeting room at $3,500, meals and incidentals at $6,000, a facilitator fee at $9,430 and transportation around $5,000. "That's an overpriced amount of lodging," Stamps said, and urged the council to hold the workshop in Kyle so constituents could attend and the city could avoid the travel expense.
Council members addressed the public comments during their debate over workshop location and cost before voting to authorize the workshops. No council response to McDonald's social-media criticism appears in the transcript.
