Meeting the Manager

San Marcos City Manager Stephanie Reyes explains the job, city government on KSZM

What does it mean to manage a city? What are the daily tasks, and how do all the departments work together? What’s the relationship between the city manager and the city council? The answers to these questions may be unknown to many in the general public, but a local radio station hosted a pivotal city employee to give a peek behind the proverbial curtain. San Marcos City Manager Stephanie Reyes was featured on Human Interest with host Marianne Reese on KZSM Community Radio to give locals a little insight into what it is that she does and some of the inner workings of city processes.

Reyes said she is a San Marcos native, and she received her bachelor’s and master’s degree at Texas State University. Before becoming the city manager in Feb. 2023, she was the assistant city manager, to various city managers, for 12 years. She was also the assistant director of human resources for five years before returning to her assistant city manager position – at least for a short time – before the council approached her to become the city manager.

“I felt like my assistant to [the city manager] role was a lot more externally focused and also council focused. So I felt like the HR piece really helped me to be a little more well rounded, because now it allows me to focus internally [and] organizationally,” Reyes said. “When you’re from this community and vested in this community the way that I am … it puts a lot of pressure. Because when I look at things, I want to look at it holistically and really make sure that I’m being fair to all of the different stakeholders within the community.”

Reyes said her history with San Marcos has greatly benefited her as city manager.

“Knowing the history really does help — having context of knowing ‘who are some people that I definitely know I don’t want to leave behind,’” Reyes said. “I think that is something that is important is having those relationships, having context, having an understanding of the things that are important to our community members.”

Reyes said that her time as city manager has come with challenges, such as the first repeal of the meet and confer agreement between the city of San Marcos and the San Marcos Police Officers Association. A meet and confer agreement is a negotiation between police and fire associations and city management in order to reach agreement on certain employment matters.

“We’ve had so many more challenges than a lot of the city managers that I’ve worked with previously, and it’s been really difficult to navigate,” Reyes said. “What’s been amazing is that I have an amazing team. I have an amazing group of professionals that advise me, and try to make sure that I’m staying in the know about what’s happening. Are we perfect? No. But I also have a very supportive council, so that’s been very helpful to me to know that I have their support.”

Reyes said when thinking about the council- manager form of government, it is helpful to think of the city manager as the chief executive officer of the city and the city council as the board of directors.

“I have to make sure that I’m maintaining open communication with them,' Reyes said. “Every two weeks I try to meet with the mayor, but then monthly with my city council members … It helps us just to make sure if there’s something going on that we can have that open communication. Also, [to communicate] when things happen — critical incidents for example within the community.”

Reyes said the city has over 900 full time employees, which she said was around 300 full time employees when she started.

“I have seven direct reports that I am responsible directly for hiring, firing, disciplining, professional development [and] those kinds of things,” Reyes said. “I actually oversee three assistant city managers. Those are my direct reports as well as a director of administrative services, and then I also oversee the finance director as well as the communications director and HR director.”

Reyes said the seven employees that report directly to her have their own departments that they are responsible for.

“I’ve got one [assistant] city manager that oversees public safety, and that’s police, fire, emergency management, city marshalls, neighborhood enhancement, which involves code enforcement, animal services [and] the health department. So I don’t oversee directly the police and fire departments, but I meet with the chiefs monthly,” Reyes said. “I have another assistant city manager who oversees engineering, planning and development services, library and economic development. That’s Mr. [Joe] Pantalion. Mr. [Chase] Stapp is the… assistant city manager over public safety. Then I have a third assistant city manager who oversees IT, public works, parks and recreation and destination services. We all have our different areas that we oversee, but we work together very collaboratively as a team. We meet weekly. We talk constantly just to make sure that we don’t operate in silos.”

Reyes said coming out of the pandemic really presented a challenge to the city, because like many organizations, the city was seeing a mass exodus of retirements and employees leaving. She said that people within the city were also feeling like they weren’t receiving much attention from those in charge.

“We needed to make sure that administration was getting out there and meeting with our employees,” Reyes said. “That’s something I set out to do immediately upon even getting the interim [city manager position] was I went out and I met up with every department within the city to make sure I was getting out there. I was telling them things that were important that I thought they’d wanted to hear, but then I also left a lot of time for them just to ask me what was important to them that they had questions or concerns about. So I felt like that was a really good way for us to set the stage and make sure that they understand and that they know that we’re trying really hard to create a good culture that is not only good to each other but also good to the community that we serve.”

Reyes said not every city employee is under her purview, which excludes the four appointees of the city council, of which she is one.

“The City Clerk is another appointee, and she oversees the open records process, the agenda posting process, the boards and commissions process, passports, birth certificates [and] any of those kinds of things,” Reyes said. “The city attorney is another appointee. He oversees, obviously, giving us legal advice and things like that that we need and talking with us about making sure that we’re looking out for the city’s interests when we’re making a policy. … The fourth person … is the municipal court judge. She is on her own. She can’t be influenced by things that could influence her decision and discretion when she’s making decisions as a judge.”

Reyes said she is involved in several networking organizations that allows the city to learn from others in similar situations.

“With the International City/County Management Association [and] the Texas City Management Association. That is a collection of city management professionals around the state and actually the globe, on the international side, that are practitioners that are within the field,” Reyes said. “We share best practices. We have our conferences that we go through every single year, and we try to make sure that we stay involved in things that are happening [such as] contemporary issues that each city is facing. We don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel. We try to find where other cities have had success with certain things that we’re experiencing, so we try to share. I’m also a part of a fast-growing cities consortium [with] city managers of surrounding areas — through Georgetown, Round Rock and other areas. We’re talking about what are the challenges we face commonly. … There’s a lot of things that we are able to communicate and talk about that have been helpful.”

Previous episodes of Human Interest can be found at lllsanmarcos. org/human-interest. Human interest is on KZSM the first Thursday of every month from 2 to 3 p.m.