A split Kyle City Council last week confirmed the city manager’s appointment of a north Texas police chief to lead a fragmented police department here.
The council voted 4-3 on Thursday in favor of offering the job to Jeff Barnett, the police chief since 2005 in Princeton, a town of about 7,500 residents in Collin County on the edge of the Dallas metropolitan area. In doing so, they effectively passed over Joe Muñoz, a politically connected Austin police officer and Kyle resident who was the favorite of council members Jaime Sanchez, Brad Pickett and Russ Huebner.
City Manager Lanny Lambert named Barnett to the position upon the recommendation of eight of nine members of a committee selected to vet the 75 applicants. The panel, which included council members Diane Hervol and Becky Selbera, ranked Munoz second and Hutto police chief Harold Thomas third.
“I suspect that whoever we put in as chief is going to have his hands full with this police department. The last chief left a hornet’s nest in the department,” Lambert said, referring to Michael Blake who resigned in February to take the police chief job in Bastrop.
Barnett still has to accept the offer and agree on a contract with the city before taking the job. The job was posted for a $90,000 annual salary.
Barnett has been on paid leave as the Princeton police chief since April in order to complete his criminal justice doctorate. From 1994 to 2005, he served various management positions in the Mount Pleasant Police Department including lieutenant, commander and interim police chief.
Despite an email that was sent to hundreds of Central Texas police union members, only seven people turned up at Thursday’s special meeting to speak in support of Munoz, a former Hays CISD trustee who resigned in 2009 after moving out of the district he represented. In 2010, he fell short in his bid to return to the school board in a different seat, drawing 164 votes to Marty Kanetzky’s 358.
