Editorial: Resign already, Councilmembers Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo
Last week, the El Paso County Board of Commissioners voted 4-2 to support a resolution that would remove the El Paso City Council from future consideration of hiring and retaining the city manager and related city employee positions. Both the El Pasoans who supported the resolution and the El Pasoans who opposed it came together to make their displeasure known.
It is unclear what caused the El Paso County Board of Commissioners to approve this resolution, but it is clear that the resolution was written and orchestrated to stop the city manager from ever walking back his resignation from the city council –– that resignation was accepted on April 15, with both El Pasoans and city people coming together to end the city manager’s career in El Paso.
For those who have watched a city manager walk out on the council over a matter they view as a personal issue, there is a simple solution. Tell the city manager to go to his or her job at the city manager’s office, leave his or her resignation in the council mailbox, and walk out. Leave the door open so his or her successor can walk in.
If the city manager has not gone to his or her job, and left his or her resignation in the council mailbox, then the public should not have the right to ask the city manager to resign.
As soon as this resolution was written, the El Paso City Council should have been removed from consideration of the city manager position and the city manager should have resigned. However, those who came together to stop the city manager from resigning were not the El Pasoans who supported the resolution and voted for it; they were city people who opposed it on the grounds that the City Manager should be able to resign when he or she has exhausted all other options for employment.
For the City Council to be removed from consideration of the city manager position, an entire group of city people would have to stop supporting that position. That
