On Tuesday’s city council agenda there is an agenda item asking for the city council to vote on canceling the city’s contract with Weststar Bank and banning them from providing services to the city for three years. The item first appeared on the council agenda for the August 18 meeting. Item number four on the consent agenda was postponed for two weeks at the request of the City’s Purchasing and Strategic Sourcing Department after the long and contentious meeting where the city adopted a budget and tax rate increasing the amount of city property taxes that taxpayers will be paying next year.
The item was postponed giving Weststar and the city time to address the concerns, according to city officials.
The original agenda item and the item on Tuesday’s agenda calls for “terminating” the city’s contract “due to contractor’s [Weststar] violation of laws and regulations” related to the contract. The two agenda items have not cited any laws that Weststar is accused of breaking.
The city’s real estate department alleged that WestStar Title, LLC., a subsidiary of the bank “breached its contract by acting on behalf of the city beyond its authorized scope of services and authority.”
At issue is an October 2024 three-year contract for $300,000. City officials accused the title company of performing work outside of the contract’s scope and the agenda item alleges “violation of laws and regulations.” However, city officials have not released details of the alleged violations, and Weststar officials have refused to comment.
Contract No. 2024-0095 was awarded to Lone Star Title Company of El Paso and WestStar Bank Holding Company on October 8, 2024. The contract was requested by the Streets and Maintenance Department for real estate title services. According to the presentation made to the city council, awarding the contract would “improve closing services for Real Estate transactions” for the city.
Although city officials have said that the bank has agreed to a “specific corrective action plan,” the language of the plan has not been released publicly and is being treated as an internal administrative document. However, the issue stems from an allegation that the title company closed title documents before receiving approval from city officials, according to a source who spoke to us on the condition that we do not identify them to allow them to speak to us candidly.
KTSM News, which first reported the contract dispute reported last Wednesday that president and CEO of WestStar, David W. Osborn told them that the bank is “pleased to report that our concerns and issues with the City of El Paso have been resolved.”
Although bank and city officials have reported that the issue has been resolved with the corrective plan, the item remains on the city’s agenda for Tuesday due to strict regulatory requirements that do not allow city officials to remove an item without first holding a public vote on the matter.
Dear reader, I hope you appreciate this article. Before reading more, I ask that you consider my work and make a small donation to help keep this publication open for everyone. El Paso lacks news diversity. I offer 20+ years of historical knowledge about El Paso’s politics and public policy. Media diversity matters. Make a small donation today to help keep my work going for another 20+ years. Thank you.
Questions Remain
After the item first appeared on the agenda it was postponed for two weeks as part of the consent agenda. According to officials the postponement was to allow both sides to address the issues. Neither has released details about the underlining issue other than to say that a corrective action plan has been presented to the City that resolves the problem.
Neither has released details about what led to the attempt to cancel the contract with Weststar and questions have gone unanswered.
Because the agenda item on Tuesday is on the consent agenda, the city council could vote to remove it from the city’s agenda without commenting on the item as part of the general vote to adopt the consent agenda, leaving the community without knowing what led to the request to ban the bank for three years.
Should a city council member choose to move the item out of the consent agenda, the city council would then have to vote on the item separately and possibly discuss it in open session.
Several members of WestStar’s Board of Directors are frequent campaign contributors to curent city council members. They include Richard Castro, Lane Gaddy, Edward Escudero, Miguel Fernandez, Paul Foster, L. Frederick “Rick” Francis and Josh Hunt, son of Woody Hunt.
Escudero, Gaddy, Fernandez, Francis and Josh Hunt were among the top 20 campaign contributors in the 2024 elections. Fernandez contributed $46,500 to several city council campaigns including Alejandra Chávez, Cynthia Boyar Trejo, Ivan Niño and Renard Johnson. Francis contributed $27,000 to Josh Acevedo, Chávez, Johnson, Deanna Maldonado-Rocha and Niño. Escudero made $26,500 in campaign contributions to Acevedo, Boyar Trejo, Chávez, Johnson and Maldonado-Rocha. Josh Hunt contributed $12,250 to the campaigns of Boyar Trejo, Chávez, Johnson and Maldonado-Rocha. The last Weststar official on the list of the largest campaign contributors during the 2024 elections is Gaddy who made $12,000 in campaign contributions to Chávez and Johnson.
Chávez and Niño are facing reelection campaigns in November. Niño has not reported any campaign contributions from the Weststar board members for the current election cycle. However, according to the latest campaign finance reports from July, Chávez has received $12,000 through June 30 from six board members of Weststar. Castro contributed $2,500, Escudero contributed $2,000, Foster made a $2,000 contribution, Frederick contributed $2,000, Gaddy another $1,000, and Fernandez made a $2,500 in-kind to Chávez’s campaign.
Unless a member of the city council moves the Weststar item out of the consent agenda, the details of what drove city officials to consider banning the bank for three years and how the city council members who accepted significant campaign contributions from Weststar officials will vote on the ban will remain unknown.
There are no known criminal or regulatory proceedings pending against the bank or its officials.
Cover photograph credit: Photographic illustration from screen capture of Weststar Bank website.