a day ago
Councilman resigns days after WP council selects mayor pro tem
WILLOW PARK — City council members selected a mayor pro tem on Tuesday and hired landscapers for a beautification project on Interstate 20 during a largely drama-free meeting.
The drama came later in the week, when Willow Park Councilman Greg Runnebaum resigned his seat — for the second time in as many months.
'Essentially, what he told me he was not going to put up with it anymore,' city spokeswoman Rose Hoffman said Friday.
Runnebaum previously stepped off the five-member council in July, but changed his mind within the eight days needed for it to take effect.
Councilwoman Lea Young had resigned within days of Runnebaum, and with two vacancies the city would have had to hold a special election.
Runnebaum changing his mind eliminated that special ballot, leaving him and the rest of the council free to appoint a replacement for Young.
Tuesday's meeting was new Councilman Scott Smith's first.
Runnebaum was not immediately available for comment Friday.
Hoffman said Friday she has not yet received direction from the council on proceeding. With an Aug. 26 council meeting canceled by Mayor Teresa Palmer, the next scheduled session is Sept. 9.
The council also trimmed its Christmas lighting project to decorate only city hall, in a cost-cutting move.
But one of some 35 residents attending the meeting in the Trinity Christian Academy gym announced his business would decorate parks and other areas cut from the holiday lighting plan.
'Thank you so much,' Palmer told Rod Foreman, who stood up after the council agreed to spend $34,100 on city hall lighting. 'That's wonderful.'
The price tag was trimmed from an initial $46,955 in a proposal that included the public safety building and King's Gate, Cross Timbers and Memorial parks.
'If we're shy (of funds), we'll do the rest of it,' Foreman had said, after motioning to the mayor he wished to speak.
Tuesday's session was markedly less volatile than some recent meetings, during which residents in a packed gallery consistently spoke up when they disagreed with something said on the council dais — or with what someone was saying during the public comments section of the agenda.
'I hope for better things out of all of you,' resident Clifford Voorhies said during the comments section, after congratulating Smith for his appointment to succeed Young, who resigned in July. 'It's OK to disagree on how the city should move forward, but at the end of the day you accept the direction the council has chosen.'
Clifford was one of five who spoke during the comments section, all to applause.
Young also had been the city's mayor pro tem. and Councilman Nathan Crummel was appointed Tuesday to that second-in-charge position after debate over whether to also name an alternate mayor pro tem to lead meetings when both the mayor and pro tem are absent.
Crummel and Smith, the latter of whom ascended from the city's planning and zoning commission, had asked for some mechanism for when the pair are unavailable.
Palmer suggested the most senior council member lead meetings in her and the pro tem's absence, and Runnebaum included that in his motion naming Crummel as pro tem.
The council on Tuesday also met Andy Messer, a municipal attorney invited by Councilman Chawn Gilliland, who had been assigned to find a replacement for William Chesser. The city attorney also resigned in July.
Messer, co-principal in statewide municipal law firm Messer & Fort, sort of saved the meeting when council members hesitated to hire the firm without researching an engagement letter they were just then seeing.
'A lot of these things (on the agenda) are tied to having an attorney,' Palmer said, with the city attorney item third among 23 agenda items.
The lawyer, whose firm also represents Mineral Wells, suggested the council appoint him as its interim city attorney to get them through the session, which they did and moved on.
Just before that item, the council had approved City Manager Bryan Grimes' recommendation that the city attorney position be moved from under the city manager's oversight to report directly to the council.
Grimes' position with the city has been uncertain, chiefly owing to a contentious relationship between him and the mayor.
The council emerged from a closed session later Tuesday to authorize a continued negotiation toward a separation agreement between Grimes and the city.
Also Tuesday, the council agreed to spend $80,000 of a $400,000 beautification grant from the Texas Department of Transportation on a section off Interstate 20 at Mikus Road.
Under TxDOT's Green Ribbon grant program, the city pays the landscaper and is reimbursed by the state.
Other council actions Tuesday included the following:
— Renewal of an interlocal agreement in which the Parker County Sheriff's Office handles dispatching for the Willow Park Police Department.
The cost is $107,908, Chief Ray Lacy said.
'I cannot put in a dispatch center for that amount of money,' said Lacy, who was hired in March.
The chief also said he would bring a renewal of an agreement to use the Parker County Jail to the next council meeting.
— Authorized city staff to work with developer Skorburg Co. to write an agreement to build a 244-lot high-end housing development on 82 acres overlapping Willow Park's northwest city limit.
Skorburg Development Partner Bryan Holland told the council lots are slightly less than one-quarter acre.
He also said design for The Clearion and The Heights of Clearion additions ' ...was based on our conversations with the council and neighbors.'
Meeting backup material shows plans for homes of 5,000- to 19,800-square feet ranging from $460,000 to $1 million.
Resident Mark Wagner had signed up to speak on the development when the agenda item arose. He said the council should better maintain existing infrastructure before adding more development.
'The roads are junk, the water is failing,' he said. 'And now we're planning on doubling down with the addition of these houses.'
— Appointed 14 residents to a commission that will be tasked with writing a charter for Willow Park to become a home rule city.
Such a classification would give Willow Park more autonomy from the state than it has now as a type A general law city.
The mayor selected the members from 28 applicants she attracted on her mayoral Facebook page. She said their work will ' ...allow the citizens to define the framework for the city's future.'
Palmer is targeting a May 2026 public referendum on the document the commission writes. Its meetings will be open to the public.
Commission members are Tandy Blackstock, Darrell Boughner, Carol Bracken, Michael Chandler, Mary Diedrich, Gwendolyn Galle, Charles Gilchrist, Charles Hodges, Roy Kurban, David Laurenzo, Gene Martin, Dixie Smith, Jonathan Stickland and Brian VonHatten.
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