ODESSA, Texas — Changes are coming to the Odessa Development Corporation.
On Tuesday night, Odessa City Council voted to remove Kris Crow as president of the ODC.
A change in Odessa leadership.
“A little shocked more so than anything else," Crow said.
Odessa Mayor Javier Joven believes there was a lack of communication between city council and the ODC.
“The conversation is to allocate monies from ODC to address the infrastructure that we are facing right now – the 80-year-old infrastructure," Mayor Joven said. "How do we do that legally?”
The Odessa Development Corporation helps promote the city and attract business, but recent efforts also include helping the city’s aging infrastructure.
“What better use for economic development than something that will benefit every taxpayer in the City of Odessa and Ector County," Crow said.
Now former ODC President Crow believes there was a lack of patience as they worked to find a way to do that.
“The vice chairman and myself had reached out to the attorney and said, ‘is there some way we can find to help the city with this huge need we have?'" Crow said. "I mean, our infrastructure is collapsing. And he said, ‘yes, there are actually a few ways.’ And so, that’s when he broke down the three different ways – we asked him to spell that out in an email for us, which he did – and that was going to be an item on our very next board meeting, which would be coming up next week.”
Mayor Joven said they should’ve had access to ODC’s attorney too since he also advises the city.
“This is about being able to speak to board members that council appoints to be able to accommodate the council to be able to get on the same page of how we can achieve being able to invest tax dollars that [are] generated by taxpayers to address our infrastructure," Mayor Joven said.
Crow said they were following their normal process by going to their board first before going to city council.
“Any time any entity wants to tackle a project, they’re going to work internally on that first to see what their capabilities are," Crow said. "And that’s normal, standard operating procedure as well is we should reach out to our attorney first to find out what we can and can’t do.”
The hope is to still allocate those funds to the aging problem.
City council will now need to appoint a new member to the ODC board, and the board will then select which member will become the new president.