Nixon names Becker city administrator without interim status

The Nixon City Council unanimously named interim City Manager Darryl Becker the new City Administrator and took away the word “interim” at their Monday, Dec. 16, meeting following a lengthy executive session.

“Everything we’ve discussed as far as his pay and what he’s doing is going to stay the same, but he will no longer be the interim city manager,” Mayor Ellie Dominguez said. “He’s going to be our city administrator until further notice.”

Dominguez said the city will not be looking for a new administrator or city manager at this time and the job will be Becker’s “until he tells us otherwise.”

Becker’s role at the city is part time and he receives a salary of $45,000 per year but no healthcare or retirement benefits for the position, though he is furnished a city truck for use while he is on the job. Becker also serves as the elected Gonzales County Precinct 4 Justice of the Peace.

The announcement regarding Becker comes nearly one year to the day he was first appointed interim city manager to replace Harold Rice, who was terminated in December 2023 after five years in office with four years and four months still left on his contract.

Two residents spoke up during the regular meeting in support of keeping Becker on as city manager or city administrator after seeing the item was on the agenda to discuss and take possible action on posting of the city manager position.

Pablo Aguirre told council members that “in order to have effective municipal governance, you have to have a very competent city manager.” He complimented Becker on his leadership, strategic vision, governance, policy implementation, accountability and administrative and financial management.

“Ever since Daryl has been there, he has talked to me about his vision of where he wants to take Nixon and his leadership skills, I think, are impressive,” Aguirre said. “Public accountability — he has that. He has legal and ethical compliance awareness, and is able to see what is right and wrong, and his execution of all of these policies — I've been impressed as a citizen of Nixon.

“Every time I talk to Daryl, he's talking about the budget, and he's aware of where his limits are, and he's working within the budget. To me, that was pretty impressive in that he's trying to do so much and still trying to juggle a small budget or a minimal budget, depending on what the situation is.”

Aguirre also praised Becker’s communications and interpersonal skills, saying he calls or texts him back whenever he asks a question or reaches out.

Don Watt called Becker “a known entity” and said “everybody I talk to right around town all say he's doing a great job.”

“Everyone tells me the same thing — ‘Best city manager we’ve had in years,’” Watt said. “So we have a known entity right now, but now we're thinking about going outside and hiring another individual to operate our city who's going to come here and try to take a city manager position in Nixon, Texas?

“If you have somebody successful, they’re not going to come here. They're going to go for the big job, they're going to go to Seguin, Gonzales, Victoria. We're going to have an extremely hard time finding a competent city manager. We have a known condition that's managing our city for us. Why would we put outside risk in the city by bringing an unknown?”

Council members met in executive session for an hour to discuss the position and meet with Becker and City Attorney Eddie Escobar.