Commissioners uphold Trammell appointment to ESD1 board

Jacey Trammell will remain on the Gonzales County Emergency Services District No. 1 Board of Directors after Gonzales County commissioners chose to uphold her appointment at their meeting Monday, April 24.

Commissioners voted unanimously on April 10 to appoint Trammell to replace Christina Jahns on the ESD board after she requested to be considered during the public comments portion of the meeting. However, the ESD1 board already had asked the court to appoint Ken Smith to the position because they already had vetted him for the position.

In fact, the agenda item for the April 10 meeting read “Appoint Gonzales County Emergency Services District #1 (ESD) Commissioner to serve the remainder of Christina Jahns term ending 12/31/2023 (Ken Smith).” There was no indication the commissioners would consider appointing Trammell or anyone else instead of Smith.

Jahns resigned from the board as its treasurer after a letter went out earlier this year to eight rescue team volunteers, terminating their membership for failing to meet training and participation requirements by not participating in at least 20 hours of training per year and not taking part in at least 25 percent of “calls” as defined by the district. Trammell, along with her father Jason Haile, was one of those terminated members.

Members of the ESD Board of Directors, including President Rene' De la Garza and Vice President Commie Hisey, sent signed letters to the commissioners, asking them to withdraw the appointment. Both men were at Monday’s meeting, along with other board members and ESD executive director Eddie Callendar Jr.

Hisey complimented Trammell, calling her a “sharp lady and I have nothing against her at all” but said the board expected commissioners would go with their pre-vetted choice.

“My issue I want you to think about is, from our standpoint, when we send someone to you, it’s usually someone we’ve vetted,” Hisey said. “Sometimes, it’s somebody that we have a deficit on our board and this person may bring a strength to our board. We want that person to help us get our work done and be cohesive.
“The EMS has had some tumultuous times. We’ve turned that around. This board is doing great and I would like to think we’ve had a lot of successes here lately and done a lot of great things with this board. If we’ve done something to change your view of that, we’d really like to know and do whatever we can to fix that.

“If you choose to have Jacey on the board, we can work with her,” Hisey added. “That’s not my reason for being here. My reason is this is one of the first times we’ve sent someone to you that hasn’t been considered and someone else was put in their place and brought to our board.”

Smith’s wife, Mary Ellen, spoke up on behalf of her husband and decried the thought that “it’s nothing personal; it’s just politics” when it came to commissioners not even mentioning her husband when they discussed the position on April 10.

“All politics are personal because every decision an elected official makes does indeed affect someone, or two or 10 or maybe even 100 people, or how about even an entire precinct, a city or a county?” Mary Ellen Smith said. “So, no, it’s not just politics. It’s not a reasonable explanation for any decision an officeholder might make.”

County Attorney Paul Watkins pointed out that the agenda item at the previous meeting did only list “one name” being considered for the position.

After listening to what Dr. Hisey had to say, I think it would be appropriate if you allowed the board to do what they did for that one,” Watkins said. “If anybody else wants to be nominated for that board, they could go to that board and be vetted also and then the commissioners could choose from those people that had been vetted.

“They don't want to present anybody to you that is not qualified. They only had one candidate, so you only had one choice. It seems pretty clear to me that that's not what you wanted. And so, since the agenda item for the last meeting appeared to only have one person on it, it didn't appear to the public that anyone could come in and nominate themselves during the public comments.

“No one's saying that commissioners can appoint whom they want. It's just the proper rule wasn't followed,” Watkins added.

Precinct 2 Commissioner Donnie Brzozowski disagreed with Watkins, claiming “the court made its decision unanimously and the court moved forward. The other person that was here (Ken Smith) didn’t get up and speak at all.”

“When we get these candidates that come up for something like this and we’re spending county money, I think we need commissioners need to look at this,” Brzozowski added. “It needs to be advertised like we get advertised. If we’re running for commissioner or you’re running for county attorney, it gets put in the newspaper. People would come forward that way and we may get some people from Nixon, Smiley, Belmont, Oak Forest, Waelder. There's probably a lot of people out there, qualified people. this seems a little handpicked to me.”
Precinct 3 Commissioner Kevin La Fleur said his phone rang off the wall following the termination of the eight rescue team members and that “my input is what the people want and the people didn’t want what y’all were up to.”

“It seems like we pulled a rabbit out of the hat, but it wasn't pulled out of the hat. Like I said, my phone rang off the wall — or out of my pocket, so to speak, because people were concerned about what was going on,” La Fleur said.

“I'm not going to change my mind today. I think we need to change how we do these candidates. When y'all have a place that's going to open up, we'd appreciate you calling to let us know. let the judge know, and we'll put it on the agenda. We'll put it in the newspaper where these people can come apply. The commissioners will look at it and decide who we think will be the best fit. That's all I have to say.”

Commissioners voted unanimously to leave the appointment as is and later in the meeting, decided to postpone action on appointments to the Gonzales County Historical Commission until the positions could be advertised and brought back for reconsideration.