Odessa Voters Face 44 Propositions, Including a Hotel Tax and a Big Raise for Council

Election preview. Odessa voters face 44 city propositions on Tuesday, Nov. 3, lettered A through RR. One asks for a new hotel tax to pay for a sports complex. The other 43 would rewrite the city charter, including a big jump in what the mayor and council can be paid.

The city has posted the full ballot, a marked-up copy of the charter and a notice of estimated costs on its voter information page.

Proposition A: a hotel tax for a sports complex

Proposition A carries the label "THIS IS A TAX INCREASE." It would designate the Odessa Sports Complex as a venue project and add a hotel occupancy tax of up to 2%. The ballot says that would bring the total hotel tax from all sources in Odessa to as much as 17% of a room's price.

The city's cost notice estimates the new tax would raise about $2.14 million a year. That is based on roughly $107 million in taxable hotel room sales, which bring in $7.5 million a year under the city's current 7% hotel tax. The notice says those figures are revenue estimates, "not the total construction or operating cost of the sports complex." The tax is charged on the price of hotel rooms.

Downtown Odessa in March 2020. Photo: Jrs432 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Proposition AA: council pay

Under the current charter, the mayor can be paid no more than $1,000 a month, and council members get $10 per meeting, capped at $50 a month. Proposition AA would let the council set pay of up to $4,000 a month for the mayor and $2,000 a month for each council member, by ordinance, taking effect the January after an election. Members could also be reimbursed for expenses.

The city's notice estimates the full cost at $197,280 a year if the council set pay at the maximum, or $98,640 under a midpoint scenario at half those amounts. The notice says those are total costs, not the increase over what the city pays now. By our math, the cap for a council member would rise 40-fold, from $50 a month to $2,000.

Petitions and the rest

Propositions MM, NN and OO would lower the number of signatures needed for recall, initiative and referendum petitions from 50% to 30% of the votes cast in the last mayoral election. The minimum of 7,500 signatures would stay for initiatives, referendums and recalls of the mayor or an at-large member. A recall of any other council member would still need at least 2,000. The same amendments replace fixed deadlines for the city secretary to check petitions with "a reasonable time."

Other propositions would require the city to maintain full-time police and fire departments, make the mayor's role ceremonial with no administrative duties, drop the rule that the city secretary live in Odessa, remove a six-month residency rule for voters in favor of state law, and set up a charter review every five years starting in 2030. The city says Propositions B through Z and AB through RR have no expected cost.

Other Texas voters face money questions Tuesday too, from Washington County to Weimar ISD.

Our view

A charter is a city's constitution, and 44 changes at once is a lot to ask of busy voters. Much of it is cleanup to match state law. But a few items deserve a hard look. Paying council members a real salary may help working people serve. Yet the jump is large, and the people who would set the pay are the ones who would collect it.

Lowering petition thresholds hands more power back to citizens, which is a good thing. But swapping firm deadlines for "a reasonable time" gives City Hall room to drag its feet. Read the marked-up charter before you vote.