Dr. John Ballotti resigned from his position as mayor of Commerce on Nov. 4. He read the following letter at a City Council meeting that evening to announce his decision.
“As a college educator, I made the decision to continue to work until the enjoyment of being a college instructor and those obligations became unenjoyable or the work affected my health. Three and a half years ago I was elected Mayor of Commerce, and for the better part of the first three years the position was enjoyable. That included working with the residents of Commerce, the business leaders of Commerce, the administrators of Texas A&M University and the city council. Four years ago when I ran for the first time, there were three overriding issues on my mind. The first was to hopefully ensure that the duties of mayor would not be bestowed on a university student without an election or a vote. The second was to take measures necessary to establish and/or enforce the building and health codes and enforcement officer that would help protect the residents of the city of Commerce. The third was to form some sort of working relationship with the university administration, the major employer and industry in Commerce for the city, with the city, for the betterment of the city. I believe at this time I have accomplished those three goals.
During the last six months, the enjoyment of exercising the duties involved in leadership required to be an effective mayor have been undermined by some citizens of Commerce working against the City of Commerce, city employees working against the City of Commerce, members of the city council working against the City of Commerce government and members of the Commerce Chamber of Commerce working against the city government. No names need be mentioned at this time. Those crying foul the loudest will identify themselves. At this point, I determine that any effectiveness I may have had as mayor of Commerce has been sufficiently eroded to the point that I’m no longer effective and can no longer serve in any fashion that would continue to move the city forward. I’m inclined to believe that my obligation is to my family, to the university and to my health. Therefore effective today the 4th of November 2015, I’m resigning the position of mayor for the city of Commerce, Texas.”
Ballotti spoke with KETR on Nov. 5 about his time at the helm of city government, and why he chose to step down with about half a year remaining in his second term.
What’s next for Commerce city government?
Mr. (Richard) Hill will be the pro tem until the May election. I have no way of knowing that they would have.. .there’s no reason, actually, to have a special election. As long as there’s four people (on the city council), there’s quorum.
I had another call from another outlet earlier today that was kind of like, “Well, what’s going on with government and how come there are so many people quitting?” And I said, “Well, actually, it’s a coincidence of time.”
Our city secretary reached retirement age, so she retired. Our city manager reached retirement age, so he retired. Our finance director applied for another position, got it, so she retired. Me, the retirement document, I guess, will have to be approved at the city council meeting in November. My thinking was if I wait until the November meeting to do this, then it will be December before it’s done. So if there’s going to be any questions or chaos, that’s going to be carried over. I prefer the Douglas MacArthur, General MacArthur, format here at the United Nations. “Old soldiers never die, they just drift away.” Same with politicians. In two weeks maybe I won’t even be remembered.
Why did you resign?
A couple of things. One is – I certainly would have become a lame duck – lame, lame, duck – about the end of December, early January when the application for a ballot measure, ballot position would have been required. I pretty much had decided I wasn’t going to do that. In fact, individuals that know me, friends, and people from time to time, even four years ago when I was originally drafted, I said “it’s highly likely if I do get elected that I may not serve more than two terms, if I get a chance to serve two terms. We don’t know after the second election in two years if it’s going to happen.” I hadn’t really finished.
I had three particular issues when I got involved with it four years ago that I was hoping to complete and so I really, the last one was the ordinance code ordinance and enforcement officer, and such like that. So that particular one was still hanging out there and I went ahead and still applied for the election the second time. There was no other candidate, so it’s kind of like you win by default. You get the title and that’s what happened.
But this is a serious job. It really is and I never did take it lightly. I have my PhD. My doctorate is in political communication, specifically cognate area was media design, and so I had been involved in politics for quite some time. I worked on congressional campaigns up in Illinois when I was up there. I’ve always kind of been of the belief and reading and if you follow enough, and I’m sure you have, that when a candidate or officer, elected official reaches the point where he or she feels like they can no longer do the job, then maybe it’s time to turn the reins over to somebody else. So in this particular case, I had pretty much decided that I was not going to fill out the papers in December, and so that happened.
It just seemed like my ability to lead, as I said, was eroding, and so if I can’t hold together a coalition, and the reason that I mention those four areas is because over the course of the last seven or eight months, which is leading up to the registration time, I just felt that there were people in the city that were dissatisfied with me, so I’m not going to get any coalition there. There are people in the city government that are dissatisfied with the how the government is running, me, and so there’s no coalition there.
As far as the council, well the council, same thing, you know in other words, we tried to, I taught small group for a number of years, certainly you’d like to have unanimity, but consensus is important, and so I felt like I was losing consensus and the ability to control or complete a consensus. And then the same thing, kind of, with the Chamber. It seemed like the ability to do things with the Chamber was eroding. And so to me, it’s better to get out, pass the reins, let somebody else come in that can do those things, do them properly, and put the city back together.
What issues led to the loss of consensus?
Well it really started to begin, back when we first got the code enforcement officer. We passed the code and we upset a lot of city residents. And then it just kind of slowly progressed on from there. And certainly the unfortunate experience with Mr. Wilson for so long, and that’s why last meeting I read the District Attorney Walker’s letter into the record, because I was still getting questions from that. And it was kind of like: “Well why don’t you do something about it? Why don’t you do something about it?” And at some point in time, as I noted the three considerations at the end, I have my family to consider, a job to consider, and my health to consider, so that all kind of begins to work together and it piled on, and I just decided it was time to let somebody else take over.
Assistant City Manager Steve Wilson was investigated following allegations of misconduct. The District Attorney’s office and the Texas Rangers reviewed the situation and decided there was insufficient evidence to pursue a case against Wilson. What role did that episode play?
Well, if we follow this back to, I guess, at the beginning of it, we needed to find some way to find out if there were any offenses that reached the level of prosecution. And I think if you go back to any of the public comments that I made, I was always for some type of investigation. Let’s find out. I certainly believe that everybody is innocent until proven guilty, and at this particular point what we needed to do was to have somebody do an investigation. So I think it might have been better, had we asked him before we’re having these instances that are being reported to us, we investigate them, rather than waiting until after the instances had been made and then we turn it over to him.
Did you feel that the council had fractured into two groups because of the investigation into Wilson?
I don’t know that it’s two groups. Here’s the thing: I don’t know that it was specifically two groups. I know that I was interested in finding out what the facts were that he had, and I’m sure that all members of the, and I’m not going to speak for the other four members, because I don’t know what their motivations were or are, but to me, in order if we’re going to reach the bottom or solve this problem, then we need to turn it over to somebody. If we’re dealing with considerations that could involve criminal liability, then we need to have somebody that can do something with it other than just talk about it. So in speaking, I think all of the members of the council wanted to find out what the DA had to say.
What will the next mayor need to do to be effective?
Let’s look at it another way. Here, I’m going to answer your question. Mayor Ballotti is not a Commerce resident. Four years ago when I started, I kind of ran on that. The fact that I didn’t earn a living based on retail sales, I necessarily wasn’t beholden to, if I made a decision that would upset somebody then they wouldn’t shop from me or buy from me or something like that. I didn’t have that problem. So that seemed to be fairly well articulated, and I think it worked for a while.
But then once again, I had a very close friend here, Robert Sanders, who retired a few years ago and moved to Florida, and we used to talk. He said “John, I’ve lived here 35 years and I still don’t think I’m accepted as a resident of Commerce.” And I think maybe that plays on the mind as well that I’m not part of the city. And it’s kind of like “Well, don’t come in here and try to change us.” Now is that a truth or a fact? I don’t know but it’s how I viewed it, and you have to be true to yourself. And so once again, as I think doing the job a politician is should do, if you’re not capable of doing the job you’re supposed to do, then move out of the way.
What was good about being mayor?
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this or not. I’ve mentioned it so many times. My students often ask me, “Doc B, what do you do as mayor?” And I say, “Well, in a home-rule city with a city manager, pretty much I do three things: Go to ribbon cuttings, I read proclamations, and every third Tuesday I conduct the meetings of the city council.” That is rewarding, being able to and when we’re moving forward and I feel like something is being accomplished, which for a while I did, for about well close to 30 months of the 48.
So I think, one of the other things and I’m sure you know this, it’s often hard to get people to run for office, because after you work all day and do something like this, then you’ve got to go do something else. And say well don’t use that as an excuse, because you did it. Well I’m not, but that’s part of what’s rewarding about it is being able to see some of the things that you wanted to do maybe happen and that it works for the betterment of the city.
So I think certainly, if there was any jewel in my crown it would be the code and code enforcement, because I feel like I’ve protected the city. One more thing, and then we’ll go. The house next door to mine caught fire, and so it didn’t burn down, it burned halfway down. We went through all of the ordinance, and after a certain number of weeks and months, the fire department will come and raze it or destroy it. Never happened, and so I’m waiting, and it never happened, never happened, never happened. And so that’s kind of part of when the ‘Draft John’ proposition came along, and I decided well I want to find out, I want to get this thing taken care of, because this is silly to have a halfway burned out house there.
Well, I didn’t know at the time that the Texas Supreme Court had ruled that you couldn’t destroy houses. There was a case in Dallas that involved a lawsuit, that there was a house that was partially done and somebody destroyed and they shouldn’t have, and so the city couldn’t do it. I found that out subsequent to the election in May. We went to a seminar in Sulphur Springs in June or July, and that’s where I met Chip Matthews. So that’s when I learned that really the city couldn’t do it, but I was curious, well how can we, how can we fix that, what can we do? I said well we can start with… and people said well there are already ordinances , we didn’t have anybody really in this neighborhood, small town, that could really spend time enforcing them, so we needed a code enforcement officer.
And I believe that Mr. Clayton spent some time in communication with Chip Matthews, and Chip was able to, well he’d come and do some advising, he’d come on weekends once in a while, and look and say well this is what you can do, this is what you can do, and so we were able to get some of that. And then it became known that he would become available to hire in August I think of a year or so ago, so we put it in the budget to hire him to come and do that. So we had a code enforcement officer enforcing a code that really hadn’t been enforced in the past, and so we kind of went through the processes of designing and we used as a safety measure.
It used to bother me because the house that caught fire next to me, there were two small children, a child that was probably in sixth grade, and then there was two ladies that lived there, and I’m thinking my son came running downstairs and said “Dad, the house is on fire.” I said, “Call the fire department.” He said, “No, not ours. The one next door.” I said, “Are the kids out?” He said, “Well there’s nobody home.” So all of that, those issues began early on in the campaign. I guess I’m most satisfied with the fact that we’ve begun this really kind of beautification process in Commerce, and you can see where the houses have come down and some of the new ones are going up.
