The City of Odessa is reforming its operations to focus on providing residents with essential services.
“We need to reinvest in our infrastructure and get back to the basics — having the city stop being everything to everybody and getting back to five basic principles: fire department service, police, roads, water/sewage, trash,” Odessa Mayor Javier Jovan told The Dallas Express. “If we have programs that do not enforce that, then we have to question whether we need to continue or let them go.”
Odessa launched a task force in December 2023, which was led by its new city manager, John Beckmeyer, to analyze ways the municipal government can improve efficiency. The task force included managers and directors with experience in audits, finance, risk management, and communications.
Beckmeyer, who was chosen unanimously for the job last year after serving as the executive director of the Republican Party of Texas, said some departments will likely be cut as part of the reform effort. However, he said employees would keep their jobs and move to more essential departments.
“This is something I’ve found happens in no cities, but it’s a natural thing that should happen,” he told The Dallas Express. “I don’t care if you’re a city of 12,000 or 1 million. You should be looking at your departments on an ongoing basis — it’s good business to do that.”
Beckmeyer, who previously worked in software management, stressed that the city is still in the early stages of its reforms but pointed to departments that provide unnecessary services like event planning as an example of what needs to go.
“Some of them are great events, but is it what a city should be doing?” he told The Dallas Express. “Should we be putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into events, or should we be fixing holes in the roads?”
Jovan, who was elected in 2020, noted the lack of transparency in some city programs, such as the hotel/motel tax, which provides funds to advertise events that draw people to the city and boost the local economy. Reforms and cuts, he said, are necessary for long-term success.
“Is it going to cause some pain? Yes. Will it cause some programs and departments to be vacated? Yes. But the level of service from the city is going to go up,” he told The Dallas Express.
He said the appointment of Beckmeyer brings an outside perspective to the city that will lead to a more efficient operation.
“I didn’t want someone from that same management tree,” Jovan told The Dallas Express. “I wanted someone different that would bring another worldview able to handle the bureaucracy and have some common sense, stay consistent, stay cool.”
Jovan said the task force’s first priority was to find a way to balance the budget, which would clear a path to spend on essential services.
“We’re proud to be Odessa,” he told The Dallas Express. “We’re proud to be Friday Night Lights, high school football, small town, family values, where we invest in our families, in our city, God, and our state.”
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax recently announced he would be resigning after seven years, during which the city saw taxes, municipal spending, and crime rise while Dallas officials struggled to deliver essential services.
