CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Corpus Christi City Council held a pre-trial hearing Tuesday morning as part of the ongoing effort to remove Mayor Paulette Guajardo from office.<\/p>\n
Public comments from residents with differing opinions kicked off the hearing.<\/p>\n
Corpus Christi Mayor Paulette Guajardo removal effort moves forward following Tuesday pre-trial hearing<\/p>\n
“This is bigger than just one little thing this is a nonpartisan issue,” Alejandro Benavides, a Corpus Christi resident, said.<\/p>\n
“Many residents are looking whether this effort is truly about serving the public or whether it has been driven by political pressure,” Sandy Fernandez, a Corpus Christi resident, said.<\/p>\n
Another resident was more pointed in her criticism of the process.<\/p>\n
“It is a circus. Everybody in town believes this is a circus… It’s time that you wake up, do the right thing, and stop acting as judge and jury and witnesses in this case,” Susie Saldana, a Corpus Christi resident, said.<\/p>\n
The mayor’s attorney argued that moving forward would violate Texas law, while the attorney representing one of the petitioners said the process follows the city’s charter and should continue to a full trial so the evidence can be heard.<\/p>\n
Councilman-at-Large Roland Barrera, who recused himself from the proceedings, said he believed participating would have compromised the fairness of the process.<\/p>\n
“Basically any individual that is deemed a witness cannot serve as a juror or part of the judicial process, and I think it taints the process and it shows obvious bias on the part of anyone that does want to participate,” Barrera said.<\/p>\n
Councilwoman Sylvia Campos said the hearing is about accountability and allowing the city’s process to work as intended.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s important that we hold ourselves accountable and that’s all we’re doing is we’re just following the process. There is a process for people that feel that we’re not doing our jobs or that we have violated some kind of charter and we’re here to hear those facts,” Campos said.<\/p>\n
Councilman Eric Cantu echoed that sentiment, saying the hearing is not a vote to remove the mayor but rather a step required under the city charter.<\/p>\n
“Look, all we’re doing is upholding the charter. We took an oath when we got sworn in and we’re just upholding the charter,” Cantu said.<\/p>\n
Council Member Mark Scott said he was concerned by some of the changes made during the hearing, including a motion stating that Texas rules preventing a presiding judge from testifying as a witness would not apply in this case.<\/p>\n
“The witness juror issue is yet unresolved, and I think that’s gonna lead to additional legal proceedings, which is gonna lead to additional expenses for our taxpayers. so that, that is, that’s a concern to me,” Scott said.<\/p>\n
Councilwoman and Mayor Pro Tem Carolyn Vaughn said the council has no choice but to move forward.<\/p>\n
“The charter says we shall hear the petition that was around 2300 people that put the petition in. Do we like it? Am I happy with it having to do it? No, but we’re following the charter,” Vaughn said.<\/p>\n
The council voted to move forward with the process.<\/p>\n
The trial for the removal of the mayor is set for July 22 and 23. Before then, two more pre-trial hearings will be expected to be held June 8 and 9, both starting at 9 a.m.<\/p>\n
Mayor Guajardo said she is disappointed the council is moving forward.<\/p>\n
“It’s unfortunate that we continue to spend time, resources, taxpayer dollars to fund all of this because it’s unnecessary,” Guajardo said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Corpus Christi City Council held a pre-trial hearing Tuesday morning as part of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[4574,62425,155,2950,157,92785,156,114804,82448,114806,2954,10873,114805],"class_list":["post-320184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-carolyn-vaughn","tag-city-charter","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-city-council","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-mayor-removal","tag-corpus-christi-news","tag-corpus-christi-politics","tag-mark-scott","tag-mayor-removal-hearing","tag-paulette-guajardo","tag-stephanie-molina","tag-texas-mayor-removal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}