Gee, where to start? The Tarrant County College questions are piling up like food on a three-meat barbecue plate.
In the fine print of the contract for sale of RadioShack’s downtown property to TCC is this tidbit: The electronics retailer will continue to occupy part of the campus rent-free for three years. At least TCC got the mineral rights to the land. And second – in the same June 25 meeting at which they OK’d the RadioShack property purchase, TCC trustees voted to give Chancellor Leonardo de la Garza a 10 percent raise and a three-year contract. Bad enough, considering de la Garza was the spiritual architect of the college’s downtown campus fiasco. But wait for the after-taste: Recently elected board member Joe Hudson said the raise and contract extension were voted on only after he and another trustee left, after being told there was no more business to conduct.
That’s according to a letter of protest to the board that Hudson released late Monday – and that the Weekly initially reported on its blog that night (www.fwweekly.com/blotch.asp?id=173). Hudson wrote that he learned of the contract extension and raise in a Star-Telegram story.
Adding to the murkiness of the decision is the fact that just a week before, on June 18, Hudson said, the board had voted to give de la Garza a one-year contract and a raise “commensurate with what other employees are expected to get.”
The June 25 meeting was a special session called, Hudson thought, just for the RadioShack vote. The agenda, though, said that the board would go into executive session “to discuss real estate transactions and personnel matters,” including, possibly, the chancellor’s evaluation.
“I was present and voted on June 25 to purchase RadioShack,” Hudson wrote, “but because it was a special called meeting – and because I knew of no other urgent item that would be acted upon that day – I departed for work. It seems that board courtesy would have called for the chairperson to let me know about her intention to bring the chancellor’s contract to a second vote with new terms. … How did this occur? Why was I not informed that the official vote of the trustees on June 18 would be reconsidered?”
Board president Louise Appleman didn’t return the Weekly’s calls but told the Star-T that board members were aware that de la Garza’s contract would be discussed. And she said Hudson is wrong about the board increasing the size of de la Garza’s raise. The $325,000 salary was approved on June 18, she said, and the only change made June 25 was in the length of the contract.
Hudson wrote that he wants to “revisit this matter at the next board meeting.
“Everything about Tarrant County College should be transparent,” he wrote. “While the chancellor may be embarrassed by this letter, I believe it is my responsibility to speak on the record.”
