Council set to discuss returning charter to May 2 municipal ballot

By Marc Robertson - Editor | January 21, 2026

Will Cotulla convert to home rule?

A January 29 meeting of the Cotulla City Council includes discussion and a possible vote on whether residents will have the option of converting local government to home rule.

The Cotulla city charter that outlines a system of government giving local control over ordinances and enforcement is being refloated by the council after lying dormant for three years.

Drafted in 2022, the original charter had been put to the vote in May 2023 and was turned down by city voters who, according to City Hall and the city attorney at the time, had been misinformed over its implications for council rule.

Differing from the Texas general law system of government for municipalities, the home rule charter adopted by a growing number of cities gives councilors control over local ordinances, enabling them to ask voters whether to enact laws specific to their communities; and may enable a city to annex adjacent properties more rapidly with landowner consent for purposes of economic development.

A home rule charter also enables councils to ask voters whether they wish to change the length of their elected officials’ terms of office and set term limits.

Critically for Cotulla, however, is a requirement by many business developers that the cities in which they build commercial enterprises have adopted a home rule charter, according to both City Administrator David Wright and City Attorney Steve Pena.

Councilors learned at meetings in 2025 that the absence of a city charter may dissuade retail and grocery stores from expanding their reach to Cotulla.

Comparable in size but having a greater number of businesses and industries, the cities of Pearsall and Hondo are governed by home rule charters.

Two consecutive ten-year strategic plans for Cotulla have included adopting a city charter as vital to economic development prospects. The charter was the single goal on the city’s earlier strategic plan that was not met. It was repeated on the current plan and may be put to the vote a second time on Saturday, May 2.

Councilors were to have met Thursday, Jan. 15, to discuss adding the charter to the May elections but failed to assemble a quorum.

The city administrator said last week that he believes opposition to the charter is generated by political activists who are disseminating false information via social media in order to undermine elected officials’ economic development goals.

“There is a question being put out there over whether Cotulla is even eligible to adopt a charter, because of a stipulation that we have a population of at least five thousand,” Wright said on Friday.

“Well, our records show that we definitely have more than five thousand people living in Cotulla. If we use the state formula of calculating three people per city utility service connection, we have a population of 5,280.”

The 2020 US Census listed Cotulla as having a population of 3,718.

“When we count the number of people by the number of service connections we have, we are not including any of the hotels, the RV parks or apartment complexes,” the city administrator said.

“That’s potentially many hundreds of additional people who are living or staying in Cotulla, who use our services, pay local taxes, and abide by our ordinances and are subject to our city government.

The population tally also omits the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Cotulla Unit, a detention facility on the outskirts of town that is connected to city services.

“Based on guidelines from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the base line is still over five thousand people,” Wright said. “Our estimate of eight thousand is very realistic.”

Atty. Pena told councilors at their November meeting that they are within their rights to return the charter to the election ballot at any time, the document having earlier been approved by a unanimous vote.

“There have been two charter commissions,” Atty. Pena said this week. “The first produced a document. The second did not. What we have here is a charter proposal that essentially gives the city more autonomy, and it lands favorability with developers who are seeking to bring business here.

“If you adopt a charter, you are bound by the constraints of state law,” the city attorney added. “You look to the general law as the limitation, but you can adopt ordinances that meet your city’s characteristics and needs.”

Atty. Pena said he believes recent actions by the state legislature have reined in a number of larger cities enacting ordinances that fall outside the boundaries of state preferences, and cited the cities of San Antonio and El Paso, where ordinances related to minimum wage and climate change had been brought to the table.

“That kind of thing can’t go on anymore,” Pena said. “But Cotulla can enact ordinances to create industrial districts, where it can draw payments in lieu of taxes from industrial or commercial developers.

“In day-to-day operations, a charter would mean very little actual change to the city,” Pena added. “Any and all ordinances would have to go to the voters. Those are the people who ultimately decide the future of their community and what direction they want it to go.”

At City Hall, Wright dismissed allegations that a charter represents a power seizure by a select few government representatives and that it allows a city free rein to annex property.

“That’s a misconception, a falsehood,” Wright said. “We have no authority to do that. The people have the say over that. They have to come to us if they want their properties to be annexed.”

Annexation of industrial properties to draw city sales and property taxes is limited to ten percent of the total coverage area of a city. Cotulla has a brief track record of annexing commercial real estate, first in crossing the Nueces River to envelop the Kemosabe highwayside development, then in picking up real estate west of IH-35 now occupied by the Garros Subdivision, which includes commercial and residential properties.

“The bottom line is that a home rule charter gives the mayor and council more power to make decisions based on the will of the people,” Wright said. “It does also give us more authority for industrial annexation. But the motivator here is economic development. We need this if we are going to attract more business to Cotulla.”

“Essentially, the city wants to be taken seriously,” Atty. Pena added in a Tuesday interview. “Not that it isn’t already being taken seriously, but the corporate decision makers need to know there is a level of sophistication here, and Cotulla has made great strides already.

“Cotulla continues to grow, just as Laredo is continuing to grow and spread north,” the city attorney said. “It’s a reality, and Cotulla is going to need housing and economic development. The council wants to put the tools in place, allowing Cotulla to change in changing times.

“If it were to pass, it would mean change that is not immediately recognizable,” Atty. Pena said. “It helps us recoup taxes from developers setting up near city limits but using all of the city services.

“Essentially, it’s a constitution,” Pena aded. “Either way, the voters get to decide.”

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