Budget standoff goes on the record: minutes show council kept spending plan 3-2 after mayor sent it back

The fight over Gunter's 2026-27 budget, and the volunteer firefighter pay it eliminated, is now part of the city's official record.

The packet for Thursday's City Council meeting includes minutes from a run of September meetings that council members are set to approve on the consent agenda, along with a three-page written response from Alderman William Stevens to Mayor Karen Souther and a resident's letter asking the council to reconsider.

How the votes went

According to the minutes, the council adopted the budget on Sept. 17 by a 3-1 roll call vote, with aldermen William Hemby, Patrick Baumia and Stevens in favor and Alan Richins opposed. The mayor and mayor pro tem were absent that night.

A long list of residents spoke before the vote, many about the Fire Department's on-call coverage, response times and the city's fire insurance rating.

Souther then returned the budget ordinance to the council for reconsideration. At a special meeting Sept. 28, after more residents spoke against cuts to the Fire Department, the council voted 3-2 to leave the budget standing as adopted. In a separate 5-0 vote, members agreed to keep budget amendments on every council agenda "until funds come available." That standing item appears again on Thursday's agenda.

The same night, after a closed session, the council voted 4-1 to end the contract of the city's administrative coordinator without cause and pay severance, with Stevens opposed. An earlier motion to terminate for cause without severance failed 2-3.

The two sides

Souther, who attended the Sept. 28 meeting, objected to cutting the Fire Department's on-call program, KTEN reported that night. She told the station that keeping "that little bit of a stipend to cover their gas" in place for volunteer firefighters was what mattered most to her.

Stevens' response, dated Oct. 1, says her Sept. 22 statement offered to withdraw her objection and sign the budget if four aldermen met and considered restoring two expenditures she favored. The mayor's statement itself is not in the packet. Stevens wrote that returning the ordinance was her right but that she could not condition the budget on getting the result she wanted.

"The City is governed by a council, not by ultimatum," he wrote.

Resident and attorney David A. Lewis, in a letter sent before the Sept. 28 meeting, asked the council to phase out the on-call stipend over time instead and warned that a weaker fire rating could raise insurance costs. "A stipend can be removed in a single vote," he wrote. "Rebuilding the participation it helped sustain could take years."

Stevens replied in an Oct. 1 email that public input is weighed alongside financial and staff information and that whether the stipend affects participation or insurance rates had not been established.

The council meets at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Gunter Public Safety Building, 105 N. Fourth St.

Sources

guntertx.gov

KTEN