There’s a vacancy to fill now.
The Board of Trustees publicly and formally invites qualified members of the public to apply to be considered for appointment to the position of HCC Trustee District II. The Texas Education Code requires that the position for HCC Trustee, District II be up for election at the next regular trustee election in November 2023 for the unexpired term. The current term for HCC Trustee District II will expire on December 31, 2025.
The proposed process the Board will undertake to fill the vacancy for the position of HCC Trustee District II is as follows:
An announcement regarding the position will be posted on the HCC website from Wednesday, January 12, 2022 through 12:00 p.m. on Tuesday, January 18, 2022. Interested, qualified applicants should apply by submitting a cover letter and resume to board.services@hccs.edu no later than 12:00 p.m. on January 18, 2022. The Board may interview applicants and make a final selection at a Board meeting on Friday, January 21, 2022. Notice of the meeting to include the date, time, and location will be posted 72 hours prior to the scheduled meeting in accordance to the Open Meetings Act.
To be qualified, the applicant must meet the following criteria:
- Must be a U.S. citizen.
- Must be 18 years of age or older on the first day of the term to be filled on the date of appointment.
- Must not have been adjudged by a final judgment of a court exercising probate jurisdiction to be totally mentally incapacitated or partially mentally incapacitated without the right to vote.
- Must not have been finally convicted of a felony without a pardon or otherwise released from the resulting disabilities.
- Must have resided in HCC District II for at least six months and in the state of Texas for at least 12 months immediately preceding the appointment by the Board.
- Must be a registered voter on date the appointment is made and be registered to vote in HCC District II.
See here for the background. I’m told there’s a somewhat obscure provision in state law that would have allowed the Board to not name a replacement within 30 days of the vacancy and thus force a special election on the next uniform election date. That would have meant a May election in Harris County, and would have been the only thing on the ballot in Harris County at that time. (Yes, there will be primary runoffs in May, but those don’t happen on the May uniform election date and aren’t set up to accommodate a concurrent general election. It would have been messy and needlessly confusing.) It also might have meant that Rhonda Skillern-Jones would have continued to be Trustee for at least some period of time longer, even though she had resigned in December. The Board made the right choice here. Get your resume in if you qualify and are interested.