Original post 11/18/19:
Kyle City Council Member Daphne Tenorio has resigned from her seat and joined the race for Hays County tax assessor-collector, which will be on the ballot in the fall of 2020.
Council members accepted her resignation at a special meeting Nov. 18 and called a special election for Jan. 25 to fill the seat. A second reading of the ordinance will take place Nov. 19.
Tenorio was elected in 2015 to the single-member District 6 seat, which represents the east side of Kyle as well as parts of downtown. She ran again unopposed in 2018.
As it did in the wake of the last resignation, Kyle now faces scheduling issues due to the complexities of state election law.
In this case, City Council must call a special election to replace Tenorio for within 120 days of her resignation but is also prohibited from scheduling the contest for any date within 30 days of a primary election. With the 2020 primary scheduled for March 3, the special election must take place, at the latest, on the first Saturday in February.
But the early voting period must run for two weeks prior to the election, which means that for a contest taking place even as late as Jan. 18, polls have to open not long after New Year's Day.
Several council members expressed concern about a holding an election so close to the holidays considering that both voters and poll workers may have plans to be away.
Council stated in the first reading of the ordinance that, if possible, the polling station should be Chapa Middle School, with Fire Station No. 2 to serve as a backup.
The tax assessor-collector is a partisan elected position; Tenorio said she has already started running and that her first contest will be the March 3 primary—if she draws a Democratic challenger. The general election will be Nov. 3.
Community Impact Newspaper has reached out to the county to confirm a filing deadline for a Jan. 25 election.
