Gunter hosts town hall after all 5 city council members resign at once

KXII
By Garrett Stringfellow
Published: Dec. 13, 2023 at 9:23 PM GMT-7

GUNTER, Texas (KXII) - On Tuesday, all 5 of Gunter’s city council members submitted a letter of resignation, leaving both city officials and citizens confused about what comes next.

“There’s just no roadmap for this, and it hasn’t happened anywhere else that I know of,” interim city attorney William Stevens said. “There’s not a lot of case law, so whatever we do, we’re inventing it as we go.”

On Wednesday, the city was set to hold a special city council meeting, but that didn’t happen.

All 5 members were absent despite their resignations not officially going into effect.

Without a quorum, Gunter Mayor Karen Souther decided to hold a town hall instead to answer questions and hear feedback from the citizens.

“The citizens of this town have made it very clear for the last seven, almost eight months that we’re unhappy with this council, that we were unhappy with their actions,” one Gunter resident said.

If council members aren’t present, the city council cannot take action on any city matters, which means potentially delaying projects and costing the city thousands of dollars.

“We have big problems coming our way,” Mayor Souther said. “We can’t settle some things, we’re going to be devastated.”

A special election to replace all five members isn’t possible until March, but the city says due to deadlines, it likely wouldn’t happen until May.

However, Mayor Souther says that if they could get three council members to future meetings, they could replace them two at a time, preserving a quorum and allowing them to continue handling city business.

Gunter citizens are imploring their council members to do the right thing to help them get back to business.

“If they will come back here one more time, sit down and make one vote, people here will step up and fill those positions,” one resident said.