Resident sues Lakeway claiming city manager does not live in city

A Lakeway resident is suing the city, as well as the city manager and several elected officials, claiming the city manager does not meet the residency requirement to hold her job.

Christopher Levy filed the suit in district court on June 14 on behalf of himself and other voters, residents and taxpayers in Lakeway. The lawsuit alleges that City Manager Julie Oakley, who was offered the job by the City Council in November 2019, does not live in Lakeway, which is required for the person in her position.

The lawsuit names the city, Oakley, Mayor Tom Kilgore, and council members Louis Maestrangelo, Sanjeev Kumar and Gretchen Vance as defendants.

The residency requirement for the city manager is decades old, and residents voted to keep that language in the charter in November 2020. The option to change the charter language was rejected by 64% of voters in that election.

The charter dictates that the city manager can be appointed by a majority vote of the City Council and must reside within the city “within a reasonable period of time after accepting appointment.”

Spokesperson Jarrod Wise said in an email that the city was served with the lawsuit Tuesday and the city’s legal team has conducted a legal review of the allegations. The city’s legal team found there are several completely false statements in the lawsuit, as well as vague and conclusory statements and misstatements of Texas law, Wise said.

“The City's position is simple. The City Manager is a resident of the City of Lakeway, and she, the mayor and city council members named in the lawsuit are in compliance with the Lakeway City Charter,” he wrote. “The City of Lakeway believes this lawsuit is politically motivated, is without merit, and has been filed solely to harass city staff and the city’s public officials."

Wise continued, "It is unfortunate that the tax-paying citizens of Lakeway will have to fund the defense of this frivolous lawsuit that is built on false and misleading information and incorrect statements of law. The city will vigorously defend the lawsuit, and we are confident the court will rule in our favor.”

Among the allegation, the lawsuit claims there was a conspiracy between elected officials to knowingly hire and employ Oakley despite her not living in the city.

Oakley, formerly the city’s finance director and assistant city manager, lived with her family in Burnet County when she was offered the job, according to the lawsuit. Oakley’s husband, James Oakley, serves at the Burnet County judge. The lawsuit claims that although Levy believes Oakley has leased an apartment in Lakeway that she does not actually live there.

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This apartment, the lawsuit says, “served as nothing more than a subterfuge — a sham residence — intended to mislead and satisfy any interested party into believing that Oakley had actually moved her residence.”

Because of this, the lawsuit claims Oakley’s hiring as city manager “was improperly and illegally accomplished” and asks the court to declare that her employment contract is not enforceable.

Kim Brown, who is representing Levy, said it is not uncommon for “home rule” cities in Texas to have residency requirements for certain elected or hired government officials. He said the definition of residency should match with what is required of politicians to run for office in a jurisdiction or voters to vote in a jurisdiction.

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“The city manager has absolute authority over all employees, overall expenditures in the city, over its contracts and its members. It's a very important position,” Brown said. “When I contacted the Texas Municipal League, they told me that of 1,200 cities in Texas, of all sizes that belong (to the league), about two thirds of those cities have residency requirements in their charters for the city manager.”

Brown also said that the voters made it clear in 2020 when they rejected changing the charter that the residency requirement matters to them.

“It's an issue that the founders of Lakeway thought mattered, and it's an issue the voters re-approved and reemphasized during Oakley’s tenure as the manager,” he said. “Mr. Levy’s interest is that he's a resident, a voter, a taxpayer, and under all of those hats, he believes that the City Council and the last two mayor's have done something that's not lawful. And it's an important matter locally in the city of Lakeway.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Resident sues Lakeway claiming city manager does not live in city