EXCLUSIVE: Gunter City Council Members Who Quit Are Raising a Middle Finger to The Community, Town’s Mayor Says
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A quick scan of The City of Gunter’s Facebook page shows the last three posts from the Grayson County community involved the close of business: on Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, and Martin Luther King Day. But the screeching halt of operations in the North Texas municipality goes much deeper than a few holiday closures.
In December, all five Gunter City Council members quit their jobs, citing a hostile work environment. The city attorney walked out, too. The city manager was fired last year following a legal accusation. No replacement was named.
Simple business can’t be conducted without a quorum of city officials to vote on it. A sign is posted at City Hall notifying residents of a special election to fill the City Council seats in May. The filing deadline for candidates is Feb. 16. As of late last week, no one had filed.
The five City Council members who resigned — Mayor Pro Tem Spencer Marks, Larry Peters, Patsy Whitaker, Cheryl Cohagan, and Connie Eubanks — remain listed on the city website with a notice that the City Council meets at 6 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month.
It took a few days to get her on the phone, but Mayor Karen Souther — the only elected policymaker to remain on the job — cheerfully agreed to a candid interview with CandysDirt.com.
“When people talk to us, they’re like, ‘Oh, the mayor doesn’t have horns. She didn’t create cancer.’ They’re pleasantly surprised because the narrative is that I ran everybody out of town,” Souther said.
The Plight of Gunter City Council
Gunter’s “strong mayor” form of government referenced in some recent news coverage about the small town isn’t entirely accurate, Souther explained. Because Gunter has less than 5,000 residents, it doesn’t have a city charter and operates under Texas law.
The “amazing city staff” including City Secretary Detra Gaines, are keeping day-to-day operations afloat and at least seven people have expressed interest in filing for the five council seats up for grabs in May, Souther said.
“[The staff is] really running things, and of course, our day-to-day operations continue,” she said. “What we can’t do is new development, new ordinances. We can’t handle things like that because I don’t have a legislative body.”
What the Gunter City Council members did, Souther said, was to raise a metaphorical middle finger not only to her but to their community.
“By law, when they resign, the governing body has to accept their resignations,” she said. “They engineered it so they did it all at the same time. If the governing body does not come in and accept each other’s resignations and appoint a new person to their seat one at a time, by the eighth day of their resignations, the State of Texas accepts their resignations on behalf of the governing body.”
Now the seats are held hostage, Mayor Souther explained. But there’s a caveat called the “holdover provision” in the Texas Constitution.
“They are holdover officers and they must continue to serve for the purpose of continuity of government, so it doesn’t shut down, until each of their successors are duly qualified, meaning whether they’re appointed or elected,” she said. “This council, the aldermen, have a duty to do that. They’re refusing it. That’s a problem. We still have meetings. I still show up to them. I’m running out of patience with them.”
What Happened in Gunter, Texas?
About 2,500 people live in Gunter, and according to reports like this deep dive from Zach Despart at the Texas Tribune, none of them were made aware of a development agreement with BNSF Railway that would allow for a 949-acre rail facility, the largest development in the history of Gunter. The council unanimously approved the agreement in May 2023 with no discussion.
“The city had not told residents this was coming; officials never posted details on the city website, nor sought any public input,” Despart wrote in his Jan. 18 report.
The railroad deal would create hundreds of jobs and boost the city budget by $1 million, BNSF Railway officials told council members last year. The city doesn’t have authority over half the site, which is in unincorporated Grayson County, according to the Texas Tribune report.
It seemed like a win for the small community, former council members have said, where the city is struggling to pay for infrastructure.
But by July, residents were storming City Hall, calling for the resignations of those who approved the deal. Gunter City Council members were accused of lying and corruption. Residents said their elected officials brokered a backroom deal years prior and lied about it.
Souther said she thinks some of the claims have a ring of truth.
“We had a culture of corruption for so long, and by corruption, I mean dishonesty for personal gain,” she said. “Whether or not money is involved, I don’t know. Is there any doubt BNSF has promised something to them? I don’t know how you look at what’s happening right now and say no. They are throwing away their legacies … you don’t go this hard, this far, for no reason.”
The aldermen who resigned have denied the accusations or refused to respond to them. Some said the hostile atmosphere of last summer’s council meetings made them feel unsafe.
But you can’t say you’re scared of the people while you’re taunting and challenging them, Souther said.
“It’s not about safety and they are not scared of the people,” she said. “Nobody’s ever threatened them. Think about it this way. If somebody’s upset, are you going to do more of what pissed ‘em off in the first place? If you’re truly scared of the people, don’t you think that resigning and holding your seat hostage makes it 10,000 times worse? It shouldn’t be a surprise that [the residents] are more angry than they’ve ever been before. They didn’t have to do it this way. They did that.”
The Deal With BNSF Railroad
The council tried to “float a compromise [with BNSF Railroad] in August,” Despart reported.
“It would impose stricter zoning on the city BNSF land, limiting the kinds of businesses that could be built next to the railroad, while still annexing the county parcel,” the Texas Tribune report states.
The residents kept fighting, saying they would accept no deal with the railroad. So the council agreed in mid-October to cancel the development agreement with BNSF.
Mayor Pro Tem Marks resigned in early December and the remaining four council members submitted their resignations the following week, Despart reported.
Souther said if the Gunter City Council members were just mad at her, they would have called her crazy and allowed for another council to be appointed in a proper, timely manner.
“There are 1,544 registered voters in this city,” she said. “If they’re mad at me, they’re going to go punch each one of [the voters] in the face? It’s not about me. They organized and engineered a group resignation and held their seats hostage … [after they] unanimously approved 1,000 acres of heavy industrial without any notice.”
Souther said she “worked like hell” to get rid of the deal and the railroad backed out.
What’s Next For The 123-Year-Old Town?
The future is unclear. There’s not really a watchdog in Gunter. There’s no local newspaper and city council meetings are recorded but not posted online. The Texas Tribune reported that private social media groups “are the new public square. Sort of.”
And while some residents have filed complaints about corruption and the lack of transparency in Gunter City Council with Texas authorities, those grievances appear to have fallen on deaf ears. On the day last week that we spoke to Mayor Souther, she’d already taken three phone calls from the state Capitol in Austin.
“It’s embarrassing,” Souther said. “When things like this happen, we just sound like a bunch of backwoods hicks who don’t know anything about civics. We look stupid.”
Under the “Procedures to Obtain Information” tab on the city website, a disclaimer cautions interested parties: “Please bear with us — while electronic records exist for many documents created in the past few years, older records are stored away in boxes, and we need to search for them between normal daily activities.”
A CandysDirt.com reporter visited Gunter and had a hard time finding someone willing to talk. An administrator of the “OurGunter” Facebook page advised there were a few locals who might talk, but they ultimately didn’t respond to requests for an interview.
Brandy Cochra with the Gunter Chamber of Commerce provided the following statement to CandysDirt.com on Friday morning.
The Texas Tribune report references a tentative deal to “resolve the council vacancy crisis.”
“The council members are open to attending a meeting to conduct time-sensitive city business — like renewing a sales tax key to the city’s budget — with the assurance that the mayor will not attempt to appoint interim replacements before the special election in May,” the report states.
An agenda was posted for a Jan. 18 meeting, but none of the council members showed up.
Souther was there, she said, and she’ll be at City Hall again on Feb. 15 because she took an oath of office to do so. Despite the bad blood in the community and with the former council members, Souther said there are a lot of residents who support her and want Gunter to thrive.
“I can’t even explain how much support I have,” Souther said. “People who don’t want to complain and don’t want to put things on Facebook text me and call me. I had an elderly couple call me and ask if they could do anything to support me.”
Stay tuned to CandysDirt.com for updates as this story develops.
