10 June 2025 Council Meeting Review by The Community News, 12 June 2025 Online Edition

• Summary: Willow Park City Council Meeting reviewed by the City of Willow Park newspaper of record, The Community News. Topic: • Home Rule for Willow Park • Budget calendar approved • Green Ribbon Grant awarded • Other items on the agenda.

• Latest Update: posted 13 June 2025

• Note: Willow Park Civics is about Willow Park but is NOT associated with or managed by the City of Willow Park.

• Reprinted with written permission.

10 June 2025 Council Meeting Review by The Community News, xx June 2025 Online Edition / Subscribe / in html / in .pdf

Topics

• Home Rule for Willow Park

• Budget calendar approved

• Green Ribbon Grant awarded

• Other items on the agenda

Home rule city discussion continues

By Alex Hoben The Community News

Excerpts

The city council for Willow Park was given an in-depth presentation about home rule cities versus general law cities during their first June meeting Tuesday night.

This discussion is a follow-up to the request Mayor Teresa Palmer made in her first speech as mayor. She started this meeting with prepared remarks about how she believes the home rule city model should be adopted since it is a way for the voice of the citizen to be heard, which her platform ran on.

“Bottom line, the charter will be created by the citizens if we go that direction, don’t know yet,” she said. “But it’ll be created by the citizens, approved by the citizens, rather than by the state-defined general law.”

The presentation was given by city attorney Pat Chesser, who has worked with other home rule cities in the past. He explained that while general law A cities, which currently Aledo [correction: Willow Park] is designated as, are governed strictly by what is laid out in Chapter 22 of Texas local government code, home rule cities are instead governed by a citizen-elected charter that is composed by a committee.

“Home rule cities derive their powers from the Constitution and possess the full power of self-government and look to the legislature not for grants of power, but only for limitations on their power,” Chesser said. “Home rule cities essentially have an inherent authority to do just about anything that has a public purpose that is not contrary to the laws.”

Home rule cities can also choose their own structure according to what is outlined in the charter, which can be amended every two years. Some key things he mentioned are how the charter can determine how many city council members there are, the voting power of the mayor, how council elections are held, city administration structure, and set term limits. With general law cities the structure is set at the number of city council seats, set two-year terms, and the mayor does not vote except to break a tie.

Between the two city types, Chesser said there are four main differences along with the term limit differences and charter amendment ability:

• Initiative — The right of direct legislation by citizens through a petition and election

• Referendum — The right to repeal legislation by citizens through a petition and election

• Recall — The right of citizens to remove a member from the city council through petition and election

• Removal — The ability to remove a city council member due to absences and intentional violations of the charter including conflict of interest issues

He said that general law cities do not have any initiative, referendum or recall capabilities, and the removal of city council members is only done through the District Court. Also, there is no flexibility in regard to term limits and changing the structure of government.

While home rule cities do hold a lot of power, they are also subject to preemption, a legal doctrine that allows a higher level of government to limit the power of a lower-level government institution.

Chesser said that the Texas Legislature has been using preemption more frequently to limit the power of home rule cities, including HB 2127 or as he called it the “Death Star” bill. This bill would require cities to show that their regulation is consistent with the state’s.

“That’s shifting the burden significantly, not to mention in that bill there’s lots of potential for cities to get sued,” he said. “It created quite a stir. A number of cities challenged it, and it is still pending in the [Texas] Supreme Court.”

Aside from preemption concerns, Chesser said the only downsides to home rule cities are the cost of preparing the charter as well as conducting the election. This can also be a time-consuming process for both the staff and volunteers on the charter commission. But other than these concerns, Chesser said he believes with a clear and unambiguous charter, there isn’t a disadvantage to this style of government for the city of Willow Park.

The cost of the process was not given during the presentation, but an estimation is anticipated to be presented to the council after concerns were raised by council member Greg Runnebaum and some residents.

After the presentation, residents were able to address the council with any concerns or questions. One person who spoke was Gene Martin, a previous Willow Park councilor and member of the home rule charter commission that was formed in 2009.

“[The commission] came up with a 36-page document, at least formatted the way this one is, and it didn’t cost anything,” Martin said. “The reason it didn’t go forward is we didn’t have 5,000 people at that time.”

He explained how they had referenced home rule charters from across the state of Texas to get an idea of how to craft one for Willow Park and advised the same for this committee if it was to be formed.

“I think the resources available to run a home rule charter committee today is infinitely better than it was 16 years ago,” Martin said.

The next steps for this process are to form the charter commission, which can be from 10-15 people, who will then begin holding public meetings to come up with the charter.

Council member and Mayor pro-tem Lea Young said she would like to see a comprehensive packet at the next board meeting addressing the budget concerns brought up, as well as more information on what the charter commission would look like so that residents can have an understanding about, if they apply, what sort of responsibilities and time commitment it would be.

“I don’t want to rush naming people to a commission and not have people have the opportunity to understand what we’re doing,” she said.

Chesser recommended that the council, if they choose to move forward with this process, aim for the election of this charter to be in May 2026, so that the deadline for calling the election would be in February, giving the commission seven months to work on the document.

Budget calendar approved

During the meeting, the council also approved the timeline for the budget election as presented by city manager Bryan Grimes, with one addition of a special meeting to vote on the tax rate in accordance with state law.

Included in the timeline are two budget workshops that Young and Palmer encouraged residents to come to so they can be more educated and involved in the budgeting process, which would be a starting point for gauging interest for a financial oversight committee, which was another point of discussion Palmer brought up in her first speech.

“When I was knocking on doors people said, ‘We want to talk about the finances,’” she said. “I think they want to be involved, not necessarily oversight, but they want some involvement. So, I would like to see the same type of vehicle form and how we bring in the citizens to actually have a voice to do that.”

The key dates with the calendar are:

June 24 — A city council budget workshop on all enterprise funds July 8 — A city council budget workshop on the general fund and I/S On or before July 25 — The budget must be filed with the city secretary July 25 — Central Appraisal District’s deadline to provided certified appraisal tax roll August 26 — Discussion and setting the date to conduct a public hearing on the tax rate August 29 — Notice of public hearing posted in The Community News September 9 — Public hearing about the budget, followed by a council vote on it. Public hearing on tax rate September 10 — Council meeting to vote on tax rate

Green Ribbon Grant awarded

After coming out of executive session, no action was taken but Young made an announcement about how the city of Willow Park received the Green Ribbon Grant from the Texas Department of Transportation. This grant, according to TxDOT, is used to help beautify highway corridors with trees and other plants.

“The goal of this project is to use a conscientious planting and irrigation design to identify and highlight the city’s western limits along the highly traveled interstate 20,” Mandy McCarley Director of Parks and Recreation said. “The proposed planting and irrigation improvements will enhance the commute of daily drivers as they move through the corridor and help mitigate poor air quality.”

McCarley said the application was submitted earlier this year and the work will begin in September and must be finished by August of next year. The city will be working with a landscape engineering firm to ensure the work is done in compliance with TxDOT requirements.

Other items on the agenda

In other council business, city manager Bryan Grimes was designated as the one to calculate the no new revenue tax rate as well as the approval rate. Also, the minutes from last month’s meeting were not approved due to an error and will be brought up again at the next meeting.

They also postponed the item about seeking competitive proposals for health, dental, vision, life, and short-term disability benefits for city employees to the next meeting due to a new bid being submitted.