Email to Mayor Felix, February 25th, 2022
Two days after sending that infamous email to Jeff, I emailed Mike Felix to demonstrate to him that his concerns about the CEO were baseless, and to ask why he hadn’t called me if he had concerns. I was trying to follow-up on my previous email (which he hadn’t replied to) where I had asked him to help me identify who was misleading him, and I was hoping if I gave him some written documentation showing that he had not been told the whole truth that he might help me deal with those who had manipulated him.
Ben’s Departure
In my email dated February 25th of 2022, I sent Mike a copy of an email which showed the CEO notifying me that Ben had put in his two-week notice, and I pointed out to Mike that by his own admission he had “no idea” why Ben had quit.
The CEO Working from Home due to Covid
Mike had stated one of his concerns as the CEO “wasn't coming to her office, ever.” For this issue I need to give some background.
In March of 2020, Covid hit Texas hard, as I expect everyone remembers. My three kids came home for a week of Spring Break, and we were told that it was too dangerous to return to in-person schooling, as so many other kids were. I was told I couldn’t go into my office for work anymore as I wasn’t critical to the production going on. I’m sure all of you remember your own lives changing at the time.
On March 15th, the CEO emailed me asking for permission to work from home starting immediately. I approved of her request, because it was what everybody was doing, and we agreed to revisit the topic regularly as the situation developed. The city’s offices were essentially shut down at this time as well. As President of the board, I believe I had the authority to approve of her request, as the by-laws gave me “general active management of the business of the corporation”.
At some point, I think in May, when the city had at least partially reopened, Jeff called me to tell me that he was going to talk to the CEO about how he felt it was important for her to return to the office. He said that he was giving me a heads-up, since I was President, and he didn’t want it to be like he was going behind my back to talk to her. I was fine with him raising the issue to her, as we were all trying to find our way through an unprecedented situation dealing with a pandemic.
It is important to note that Jeff had given me a heads-up that he was going to give her some guidance. Recall that I recounted in an earlier blog post that he would later say he felt that he had the authority to go to her directly, but this instance shows that he knew it was at least a questionable thing to do. He wouldn't have given me a heads-up otherwise.
The CEO and I spoke later, and though I don’t have a clear recollection of the conversation I think she said that there was very little benefit to returning as she didn’t have any employees to manage (since Ben had resigned in February) and the city administration was discouraging face-to-face interactions. There was little benefit to her being in the building where she would just sit in an office by herself all day, and substantial risk both to her and to the city’s essential workers who had to be there to do their jobs. I agreed with the CEO's assessment and allowed her to continue working from home. Again, it seemed reasonable. Schools were still shut down, and my own office was still telling me I wasn’t allowed to come in due to the continued risk of Covid.
I didn’t feel like I was in the middle of the issue, as Jeff hadn’t asked me to rescind the CEO's authority to work from home. He had said he was calling her to talk to her about the issue, but he hadn’t tried to convince me to do anything. I don’t recall any follow-up on the issue at that time, from either end.
In July, we had an item to continue the CEO's review, which was the previously mentioned continuation of discussing Ben Walker’s exit interview, and I asked the board to weigh in on the CEO working from home. While there were various opinions on the issue, the board authorized her to continue working from home at her own discretion as we felt that she was being productive, and face-to-face meetings were still frowned-upon due to Covid. Many other board members recounted how, like me, they had still not yet been allowed back in their own offices, so it seemed to be a completely reasonable action which many organizations were taking to protect their staff. As I recall, none of the board members felt like the CEO's productivity had fallen off from working at home.
Shortly after the board authorized the CEO to work from home, I think just a few days later, the CEO called to say that Jeff had talked to her and was pressuring her to return to working in the office. As the board had just given the CEO the authority to use her own discretion on the matter, it was frustrating that Jeff was pressuring her to make the decision which he wanted, though as board liaison he had no authority to do so. The CEO recounted that Jeff had said something like “I’d hate to see you get fired over this”, which was absurd because the board (which was the only authority which could fire her from the corporation) had just authorized her to work from home.
It was also frustrating because I learned that, at the same time Jeff was pressuring the CEO to return to the office, the council was allowing the City Secretary to work from home due to Covid. The CEO knew that it was in her best interest to keep Jeff happy, so she returned to working in the office near the end of July, putting her health at risk to satisfy Jeff’s request. This also shows that the CEO knew how important it was to stay on Jeff’s “good side”.
If she was willing to risk her safety to appease him, why would she have ignored his request to do the Strategic Plan to his liking as he alleges?
On Monday, September 14th, the CEO called me to tell me that she had been running a fever since Friday. Thankfully it wasn’t Covid, but most likely just a random virus. We were supposed to be having a board meeting that following Thursday, the 17th, but the CEO had been working in the office and the city’s policy was that staff had to be fever-free for 72 hours prior to returning to the municipal offices.
The CEO asked if I was okay with postponing the meeting, as she wouldn’t have time to properly prepare for the meeting due to her illness. She asked the city’s HR department if she was intended to work from home during those 72 hours, and she was advised that she should use the time to recuperate, and I agreed.
Later that day she spoke to Jeff, and then she called me. She said that Jeff was irritated that the 72 hour window could potentially be cleared by the time of the meeting Thursday evening, if her fever broke that afternoon, so he was not happy that she had postponed the meeting. He again made a comment about how decisions like that could lead to her being fired. And it was again an absurd statement, because I had already approved of the decision to postpone the meeting.
It was ridiculous to expect her to spend her days worrying about putting together the meeting material when she should be resting. Also, there was nothing urgent on our agenda for the postponed meeting, so there was absolutely no damage done by postponing the meeting.
The CEO asked me “Is this what it’s come to? That I’m in jeopardy of being fired for getting sick?” In retrospect, I should have intervened in Jeff’s behavior at that point, and I regret that I didn’t. I think I rationalized doing nothing by believing that the matter was settled, we were postponing the meeting and there was no way the board would fire the CEO over the decision since I had explicitly approved it.
I will point out that the CEO's account of her conversations with Jeff have to be taken at her word, as there was no other witness, but she confided in me about these conversations immediately after they happened, and it would have been very dangerous and pointless for her to have lied to me about what the Board Liaison had said to her. She had nothing to gain, and everything to lose if she was making it up. In my almost 7 years of working with the CEO I never had any reason to doubt her, and I don’t doubt her about those conversations with Jeff either.
On November 16th, with Covid infections rising rapidly, I ordered the CEO to return to working from home until further notice, and I emailed the other directors (as well as Jeff and the city manager) to notify them that I had done so. I stated in that email that I felt it was “important to take this precaution to minimize the risk of having to essentially shut down SEDC operations if she [the CEO] were to become infected.” Nobody criticized my decision or argued against it, and several board members voiced support for the decision, which, again, as President of the board, I was authorized to make.
While I knew that Jeff likely disagreed with my decision, since he had previously pressured her to return to work, I was also aware that several city employees had tested positive for Covid, and with face-to-face meetings prohibited by the city there was no point to having the CEO go into an office building everyday exposing her to unnecessary risk. And, again, the council was allowing the City Secretary to work from home, so they were making the same decision for one of their employees.
Jeff never raised the issue to me after that November email. I was hoping that by directing the CEO to work from home and removing the responsibility for the decision from the CEO, she could focus on work and not worry about pressure from Jeff. That order to work from home remained in place until her resignation.
In summary, the CEO worked from home from mid-March until late-July, and then again from mid-November through the end of her tenure. In the middle, she had been in the office for three and a half months, to satisfy Jeff’s request to have her in the office. All of her working from home had been approved by the board and me, and the last 4 months was under an explicit order from me. The board felt like she was being productive at home and I had no concerns with the arrangement.
The fact that Mike Felix stated he had a concern about the CEO working from home was a surprise to me, for two reasons.
First, if Mike had such a concern while the CEO was still working from home at the beginning of February of 2021, then why had he not talked to me about his concern? I had emailed him asking him to share his opinion with me, and he had refused to do so. It made no sense to me.
Second, the CEO had approval from the board of directors to work from home, in fact at the end she was working from home under my direct order. I assume Mike had no idea that I had directed her to do so, as if he had then his concern should have been directed at me for ordering her and not at the CEO for following that order.
It felt like somebody had told Mike there was an issue with the CEO working from home, but had again failed to tell him the facts of the issue. Surely he would not have been concerned about the CEO working from home if he had known she was only following my directive, right? Also, as I mentioned earlier, the council was allowing the City Secretary to work from home at the same time. Why was he concerned about the CEO working from home but not concerned about the City Secretary working from home?
Back to my email to Mike Felix on February 25th
In addition to the email showing Ben’s resignation, I sent Mike several emails about the CEO working from home. They showed my original approval of her request in March when Covid hit, an email from the CEO showing she had returned to the office in July, and a copy of my email from November where I notified the board of directors, including Gina and Jeff, that I had directed the CEO to return to working from home due to rising Covid infections, and that Gina and Jeff had been aware of that directive.
I asked Mike who had led him to believe these baseless criticisms of the CEO which he had stated to me, and I asked him why, if he had these concerns, he hadn’t called a joint session when I reached out to him the prior February asking for one.
He never replied to my email.
Because Jeff had previously forwarded my email to the entire council, I forwarded this email to the entire council also. I was hoping it would resonate with others who had been manipulated to hold the same concerns which Mike had held.
I prefaced my forwarding email with this:
“As Mayor Pro Tem Bickerstaff seems to want all of you copied on my correspondence I’ll save Mayor Felix the trouble of having to forward this email himself.
If any of you were similarly misled about matters involving the SEDC in the time leading up to the by-law change, I would hope you would be honest about the claims which were made to you, and who made them. The lies which have been used to manipulate the Board of Directors and the City Council have been festering in secrecy for over a year, but if I have to take it upon myself to expose them I will.
All I have ever asked for is to have open and honest communication about these matters. I would have hoped that you all felt the same, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
I was very much hoping to prod them to take my concerns seriously. Even if they weren’t on “my side”, I needed them to want to investigate and resolve these issues. Sadly, as of April of 2025 they still have never addressed the issue of Jeff’s misconduct, nor have they addressed the lies they were told to manipulate them into believing there were problems in the SEDC.
You can read that email to Mike below: