The Odessa City Council has three big topics on its plate Tuesday: replacing the city manager, fentanyl and hearing the results of an investigation of alleged bullying by Mayor Javier Joven and Council member Chris Hanie.
The council’s day will start at 1 p.m. with a specially scheduled meeting to discuss what attributes they’d like to see in a new city manager.
Mica Lunt of T2 Professional Consulting will lead the meeting along with Suzie Price, a hiring assessment expert from Georgia.
T2 was hired by Joven for $338,000 within hours of the 5-2 vote to fire City Manager Michael Marrero and City Attorney Natasha Brooks on Dec. 13.
According to a presentation given last week by T2, the council will select the “superior performance attributes” of the next city manager during Tuesday’s meeting. They’ll also go through a process that will remove their bias and help them eventually compare the candidates to the benchmarks they’ve set and their interview questions.
They expect to have a candidate hired by mid-July, early August.
During the council’s workshop at 3 p.m., the council will engage in a discussion on fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. It killed more than 107,000 people in the U.S. between September 2021 and September 2022 and has been responsible for several deaths in Ector County.
The Odessa American reported in April 2022 that 93 locals had died of drug overdoses from 2019-2021. At that time, the youngest fentanyl overdose victim was a 12-year-old boy. Two 15-year-old boys had also died after taking fentanyl.
According to Odessa Police, M30 pills, which are laced with fentanyl, are among the top three most popular drugs in Odessa after cocaine and methamphetamine. They are especially popular among school-age kids.
“It’s a heartbreaking drug because it is killing kids and it’s killing kids that take it one time. You don’t have to be addicted. You don’t have to be an addict. It’s none of those other things that have stigmas attached to them,” OPD Chief Mike Gerke said during a recent interview.
During the city council’s regular meeting at 6 p.m., attorney Tommy Sheen is expected to give the council a presentation and the findings of an investigation he conducted after Downtown Odessa Executive Director Casey Hallmark twice stood before the council and accused Joven and Hanie of being bullies. She resigned a month later.
Hallmark claimed Joven once told her to watch her back because OPD was “full of murderers” and he’d gladly accept her resignation because she was a “crazy liberal.”
She has also said Joven said it was “ungodly” for her to continue going by her maiden name.
She further alleged Hanie confronted her during the Parade of Lights in December because he was upset a banner identified him as a councilperson. She quoted him as saying, “I am not a (expletive) councilperson. I am a councilman and I will be referred to as such.”
Joven and Hanie have adamantly denied Hallmark’s allegations, with Hanie citing his Christianity as a defense.
As of Saturday afternoon, Hallmark had not received the results of the investigation.
“I think it’s very interesting that it was brought about because of my outcry and I wasn’t notified of the results. It’s also interesting that the attorney who led the investigation was not hired to render an opinion. He was hired to ‘fact find’ and the the city attorney was to render an opinion on the matter,” Hallmark said via text. “It appears to me that the city hired an ‘outside’ attorney to appease the public, but has no real interest in pursuing or investigating what actually happened. If they did, the outside source would be rendering their opinion on what they found during the course of the investigation. This is now the second time I’m found out via the media that a verdict had been reached on an investigation involving me that I had no idea about.”
Hallmark filed a formal complaint against Downtown Odessa board member Tisha Crow after Crow called her “disgraceful” on Facebook. City Human Resource Director Charles Hurst decided Hallmark had no recourse under existing city rules, but Hallmark only learned of it following a call from the OA.
