Barrientos discusses latest happenings in city;

Police Chief position may be filled in three months

A.D. Ibarra

-Eagle Pass

City Manager Gloria Barrientos, in our first interview since being officially named to her new position where she informed The News Gram of the fact that they are in the first stage of the budget process as we speak, is having to deal with the hiring of a new police chief among working to repair damages caused by the June 15th flood.

"I was actually scheduled to attend the TCMA (Texas City Manager Association) Conference in San Marcos when we first heard of the heavy rains which had fallen in our area, and of course that week we were dealing with the disaster and I could not attend," stated Barrientos, "What I have learned when attending previous conferences with Mr. Valenzuela, is that we have a code of ethics to abide by and our main priority is the organization and not self-preservation or protecting our job.  Our main concern is service to the community and we're told to stay away from politics as well."

Right now, she said, the city finds itself in phase one of budget preparation for the next 2013-2014 fiscal year and she has met with all her directors who have made their individual requests for next year.

The second phase will entail a detailed report from the Department of Finance who will provide her with revenue projections for this particular time frame which she will look at and compare to the requests made by the directors.

"We have to have a proposed balanced budget," stated the city manager, "You can't spend more than what comes in, revenues and expenditures have to be equal."

Phase three will be addressing debt service and whether the city will need to borrow money or not borrow, whatever the case may be.  This is the first opportunity city administrators will have to look at the tax rate which is the third highest of all four major taxing entities in our community in comparison with the EPISD, Maverick County and the MCHD.

Barrientos also informed The Gram that they are hoping to begin the process of hiring the official new police chief which n her estimation will take approximately three months due to advertising for the position for 4-6 weeks, reviewing all applications, form a committee, scheduling of interviews, sometimes a secondary interview is required before making an offer to the finalist and running the appropriate background check.  The entire process should take approximately three months.