ODESSA, Texas — A judge has filed a temporary restraining order on the $700,000 former Odessa City Manager John Beckmeyer was supposed to be paid Wednesday morning following his resignation Tuesday night.
“This morning, we filed a petition for declaratory judgment with the Ector County clerk requesting the court review the contracts to determine their validity," Ector County District Attorney Dusty Gallivan said. "As part of that, we requested for a temporary restraining order preventing the city from paying out any monies under those contracts until the court has had an opportunity to have a hearing and review those contracts.”
The $700,000 was what was left on Beckmeyer's contract, however, that has now been halted. Gallivan felt that the petition was necessary because he said he felt that paying $700,000 for a position Beckmeyer resigned from didn’t add up.
"Something didn't seem right. We don't have enough information yet. We're still trying to collect information but ultimately the court may decide that the contracts are valid, that they have to be paid out, but it just doesn't seem right," Gallivan said. "So, before we give somebody a check for $700,000, I think we need to take a step back and make sure everything's kosher. And on the up and up, there's no fraud, there's no staff, there's no other criminal activity going on before we just hand over a check."
Odessa City Council Member At Large elect Craig Stoker said situations like this don’t belong in city government.
“I was glad to hear that was issued," Stoker said. "I know that it had to do with some of the procedural issues of the meeting last night. I believe those are just things that we need to figure out as the last act of three council members on their way out, I think it was insanely inappropriate to do the things they did in the last two minutes of their last meeting. I'm incredibly disappointed and judging by comments on social media today, so is the rest of Odessa.”
Gallivan said as of right now there is nothing criminal pending at the moment and this is a civil action to stop the city from paying out the payment for the moment while Beckmeyer's contract's looked into.