SELBERA
by JONATHAN YORK
Appointments by the Kyle City Council are not usually heated affairs. But they became so last week after Samantha Bellows stood in front of council members to say that the public safety committee did not represent the public interest.
“Please give these appointments some more thought,” said Bellows, a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission. She said the present situation was like letting oil executives make oil policy or letting bankers set rules for the banks.
The reason for that comparison was easy to grasp. Everyone on the committee – except for Councilwoman Becky Selbera – was a current or recent law enforcement, fire or EMS professional.
After acknowledging Bellows’ statement, Selbera urged the opposite course, asking the council to appoint everyone on the committee to a new term. “We are not a self-serving committee,” she said. “I would like to ask my colleagues to support me in my reappointment.”
But instead of speaking any word of support, Mayor Lucy Johnson said that people had been asking her whether all the committee members really lived in Kyle.
“They are all citizens of Kyle,” Selbera said with exasperation. “We always get misinformed with citizens’ concerns sometimes.”
And while Councilman Jaime Sanchez began asking why Selbera had not considered new people for the committee, council members Diane Hervol and Bradley Pickett raised particular questions about one of her nominees: the present committee chairman.
“The one that concerns me the most would probably be John Moseley,” Pickett said. “I mean, I know John, great guy, but I think there might be a bit of a conflict there.”
Moseley is director of operations for San Marcos/Hays County EMS, the agency that provides ambulance service for the city. Hervol implied that working for an ambulance contractor while serving on a committee that could advise the city on ambulance contracts might pose a conflict of interests.
Moseley was away at a conference and could not be reached for comment Monday. At the committee’s meeting two weeks ago he came across as seasoned and confident and seemed able to guide the discussion with an even hand.
David Wilson, the mayor pro tem, defended Selbera’s nominations.
“Are we going to have a committee that critiques what the police department’s doing,” Wilson said, “or are we going to have a committee that does the heavy lifting? ... This is potentially a heavy-lifting committee.”
After more tense discussion in which Sanchez even suggested removing the fire chief from the committee, there was a roll-call vote to reappoint everyone except Moseley.
The vote was 4-3, with Sanchez, Pickett and Russ Huebner voting nay. This means that there will be two spots for new committee members.
Outside the meeting, Bellows seemed pleased with the changes that the council made. She said of the committee, “I just think that it needs to have more citizens on it that are citizens.”
