ALPINE — Alpine City Manager Megan Antrim tendered her resignation to the mayor and members of the City Council on Wednesday, June 4, after a council meeting the previous evening included discussion regarding her performance and current contract.
The agenda item was brought forth by new Councilmember Robert Rückes, a previous city building official who publicly clashed with Antrim this fall over changes to the city’s zoning ordinance. Rückes resigned from his role at the city in November, then ran unopposed for the Ward 3 council seat and was appointed; the other new council member, Richard Portillo, was elected to represent Ward 1. New council members were sworn in on May 13.
Last Tuesday, Antrim requested that her performance and contract be discussed in open, rather than in closed, session. Rückes said he brought forth the item for discussion because he was unsure why Antrim did not have a regular performance review in April, as is typical, and because her current contract will need to be acted on soon. Mayor Catherine Eaves told The Big Bend Sentinel it is Antrim’s responsibility to put her review on the council agenda.
“I also thought it was fitting that, since we need to do an evaluation, that we’d also discuss what direction we’re going with the contract,” Rückes said. “Are we going to allow it to automatically renew from September? Are we going to renegotiate?”
Antrim, who first moved to Alpine in 2003 and initially held roles in finance with Brewster County, started working at the city in 2013. She served as the director of finance for many years until she became interim city manager in May of 2021. The then-council appointed her as city manager in September of 2022. Eaves is the only remaining official who was sitting on council at that time.
Antrim’s three-year contract was set to automatically renew in September unless acted on with 30-day notice. Some council members pointed out that the contract is actually in violation of the city charter, which states that the city manager “shall be appointed for an indefinite term.”
Councilmember Lucy Escovedo stated that her two concerns regarding Antrim’s employment related to overspending. She wondered if too many services were being outsourced rather than performed in house and why Antrim’s salary of $157,000 was so high — a concern echoed by citizen Oscar Cobos in the public comment portion of the meeting.
“I think that there should be things that a city manager should be doing [that] we’re constantly paying somebody else to do,” Escovedo said.
“I wasn’t here when council decided to approve the amount that you’re getting paid,” she added. “I think it’s a lot for the City of Alpine. I do have a lot of people asking me, ‘Why is that being allowed?’”
Rückes stated that he was not in favor of Antrim’s contract automatically renewing and pushed for a formal evaluation and a survey of city employees about her leadership. He added that employees were not satisfied with the process and outcome of a recent compensation study, which was done by a third party and involved changing starting salaries to $15 an hour as well as evaluating compression for all positions and how to bring them to market level.
“Our morale is extremely low,” Rückes said. “We can have the most fantastic city manager in the world, and if we don’t have a team under that city manager that’s willing to work with them, we have a bigger issue at hand. Unfortunately, that’s kind of the general consensus, from what I’ve gathered with people coming to me over the last month.”
Councilmember Portillo said he has been approached with similar concerns and voiced support for the employee survey. “We just have to figure out what the problem is and get to the bottom of it,” he said.
The issue of the long-vacant utilities director position was also discussed in relation to Antrim’s performance. The city has struggled to fill the job — with either an internal or external candidate — for 16 months. Originally listed licensing requirements were dropped, and both temporary and permanent options were presented to try and broaden the search.
Johnny Marquez — Antrim’s partner who works as the utilities manager and also tendered his resignation last week — had served as the interim utilities director as had Antrim while the search was underway. Council members Rückes, Escovedo and Portillo expressed concern that other existing utility department employees had not stepped up to apply for the higher paying job.
Recently, on May 6, council discussed the possibility of hiring a head hunter — a costly service — to locate either a temporary or permanent utilities director for the city, but did not ultimately approve a contract. When Antrim asked why the vacant utilities director position was a part of the discussion surrounding her performance, Mayor Eaves said she took issue with how Antrim handled the matter. “It is part of your performance, because I feel like you were moving forward, even though council asked you to stop and wait,” Eaves said.
At the Tuesday meeting, Councilmember Rick Stephens — and previous Councilmember Darin Nance — both spoke in defense of Antrim. Nance, during public comment, stated that governance is slow, and ongoing initiatives would likely suffer from a change of city leadership.
Regarding the issue of Antrim’s pay, Stephens said based on his research into cities of comparable size, Antrim was being paid a fair wage, and perhaps more data needed to be shared with the public to illuminate the issue. “I think there’s some misperceptions about whether Megan is paid fairly and equitably given the size of the city or not,” Stephens said. “The data I looked at, because I looked at a lot of years, she’s right within the midpoint in terms of what you would get for a city this size.”
He argued that the council needed to follow a regular performance review process, including asking for a list of Antrim’s goals and objectives to measure her against. He said he wanted to ensure her employment was a “fair and equitable” discussion, and there were two sides to every story regarding city employee feedback. Plus, he argued, there “aren’t many people around” who can manage a $17 million organization with 100 employees, something council members should keep in mind.
“Getting people to this town has been tough, and keeping them here to work in a city leadership position is a difficult situation,” Stephens said.
He also offered a counter point to the criticism of how Antrim has handled the vacant utilities director position, stating it was a grim situation she’d been weathering and he was in favor of hiring a head hunter to help locate some candidates. “We have really struggled,” Stephens said. “We can’t get anyone to step up to the table, and so to continue to push that out and say, ‘Hey, city manager, suck it up.’ I think that’s a little bit difficult on our part to not recognize.”
Stephens advocated for hiring a third party to perform the employee survey, rather than trying to do it in house, to ensure its accuracy and success. “We have to think about what we are trying to measure. It can’t be a witch hunt,” Stephens said. “It’s got to be about: How do we improve the operation of the city? How do we give feedback to whoever is leading the organization?”
Eaves disagreed, stating that the survey could likely be crafted and disseminated in house. Council went back and forth regarding how to do the survey and decided evaluation of city council members and the mayor should also be on the table — for both city employees and citizens to comment on. They voted to continue the discussion, formalizing Antrim’s goals and objectives and the survey questions, for the next scheduled meeting on June 17.
Antrim then indicated that she saw the writing on the wall, with the majority of council seemingly against her continued employment, and asked for the decision not to be drawn out. “If it’s a consensus of the council not to renew, I need to know sooner so that I can make arrangements,” Antrim said. “This is my livelihood.”
The next day, at 8:04 a.m., Antrim sent her resignation letter, which was obtained by The Big Bend Sentinel, to the council. She wrote that given the “clear indication” that her contract will not be renewed, she saw “no reason to prolong [her] tenure unnecessarily.”
“Upon reflecting on last night’s meeting, it has become evident that the majority of City
Council does not share support for my continued service as City Manager,” Antrim wrote. “While I agree with the proposed inclusion of an employee survey as part of the performance evaluation process, I do not believe that the current council can approach this process with the objectivity it requires.”
Antrim’s last day at the city will be June 13. In her letter she stated that she already has a new position which she will start on June 16. Antrim declined to go into detail with The Sentinel about her new job but said it is not in public service and she will still be in Alpine part time.
“I greatly appreciate the time that I have served the residents of the City of Alpine,” Antrim said. “I wish the employees and the city the best of luck, I really do.”
This week council moved to appoint City Secretary Geo Calderon as interim city manager. Eaves told The Sentinel that council will work through a city manager job description at their June 17 meeting and post the position soon after that. She expressed gratitude to Antrim for her years in public service at the city and the county.
“During her time as finance director and city manager, she was instrumental in getting the city out of a deep financial hole which would not have been possible without her hard work and dedication,” Eaves wrote. “I wish her well in all of her future endeavors and I hope to see her stay involved with the community. Her expertise and advice are valuable to the growth and development of our town.”
In his podcast “The Ward 5 Perspective,” which aired on KVLF on June 5, Councilmember Stephens shared the news of Antrim’s resignation and reflected on what it means for the city moving forward. Stability in leadership, while paramount, is something the city has been unable to achieve, he said. “Clearly, being a city leader is not for the faint of heart,” Stephens said. “We’ve had four city managers in the past 11 years in Alpine and are now headed for number five.”
He said that the review process delineated in her contract was not properly followed on Tuesday, and in the future council needs to stick to previously agreed upon procedures. He recalled that Antrim received scores of “above average or excellent in all areas,” in her last performance review in April of 2024 and was given feedback not to micromanage and to add capable leaders across departments.
Antrim worked hard on several initiatives, he said, including the compensation study, electric water meter system installation, purchasing of new road repair equipment, implementation of a new utility billing system, handling lead and copper pipe removal mandates, the opening of Pueblo Nuevo park, support of weekly farmers markets at the Visitor’s Center and more.
“In my view, there is a lot to be proud of that our city manager helped orchestrate,” Stephens said. “But always, there’s a need for the opportunity for improvement.”
“City Council has its work cut out for it,” he added. “Including really deciding what it wants in a city manager, how it will evaluate the city manager’s performance, and making sure there’s a real dialog about that performance.”