Weslaco city manager resigns

WESLACO - City Manager Anthony Covacevich resigned Tuesday, minutes before a City Commission vote that was expected to remove him.

Covacevich's departure comes after months of acrimony between him and Mayor Buddy De La Rosa - and two weeks after an election that put De La Rosa and his political allies in control of the commission.

Frank Castellanos, a former Weslaco city manager, will take over as interim city manager until a permanent replacement is found.

Covacevich declined to speak to the media after Tuesday's meeting.

"I have only the best wishes for the city of Weslaco," he told the board and a standing-room-only audience after submitting his resignation.

De La Rosa thanked Covacevich for his service after the city manager announced his resignation.

The mayor said after the meeting that he sought to remove Covacevich due a "conflict of management styles" between the two leaders.

De La Rosa, the city's political leader, and Covacevich, its administrative leader, have sparred frequently during City Commission meetings.

In Weslaco, the city manager serves at the pleasure of the commission, and De La Rosa never had the political capital to force Covacevich's ouster - until now.

The election of Jerry Tafolla, a De La Rosa ally, gave the mayor and his slate a 4-3 majority on the commission, compared to the three-person minority they had before. With Tafolla on the commission, De La Rosa likely would have had the votes to fire Covacevich if the city manager had opted against resigning.

This isn't the first time De La Rosa and his allies have sought to remove Covacevich.

In August 2008, the mayor led an attempt to fire the city manager, but the effort failed as the commission split along its usual partisan lines.

That last removal attempt came on the heels of a memo from then-finance director James Hiebert, who warned of the city's poor financial state and recommended that it increase property taxes, reduce city services or eliminate staff positions to help alleviate the city's financial crunch.

De La Rosa blamed Covacevich for the financial woes, but Covacevich said factors like low sales tax revenue and high fuel prices at the time couldn't have been anticipated.

By resigning, Covacevich was able to obtain health insurance benefits for a few months, as well as payment for unused sick leave and vacation time, though he won't receive a severance package, De La Rosa said.

The resignation also protects the city from a wrongful termination lawsuit.

The City Commission plans to appoint a committee of city residents who will have up to 90 days to review applications for Covacevich's permanent replacement and interview candidates for the job. The panel will then submit its recommendation to the commission.

Castellanos, the new interim city manager, will meanwhile be tasked with conducting a review of all city departments to determine how efficiently they operate, in accordance with the commission's orders.

The commission also considered Tuesday whether to hire an independent auditor to conduct a "fraud audit" of the city, though that measure was tabled.

"We want to make sure all the books are clean and all the contracts are true and blue," De La Rosa said.

Last year, Hidalgo County sheriff's investigators spent months probing the city's contract-awarding procedures - at the mayor's request - but the investigation did not result in any criminal charges.