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Weston Mayor, four council members resign, will continue serving on council
By Penny Rathbun
prathbun@acnpapers.com
Weston Mayor Scott Morrissey, council members Danny States, Tony McDaniel, Pat Louthan, and Mayor Pro Tem Mark Morales accepted their own resignations at a special city council meeting held last Saturday. The remaining council member Jerry Randall's term is up and he does not plan to run again.
At the Feb. 9 council meeting the council disannexed areas of Weston that left the mayor and four council members living outside the city limits of Weston and ineligible to serve on the council.
These actions have left every seat on the council and the mayor's seat open for the upcoming election in May.
The holdover provision in the Texas constitution allows the council members who have resigned to continue functioning as the Weston city council till replacements can be elected in May.
The council then called a special election for the May ballot to elect council members to replace those who had just resigned. Candidates elected to those positions will serve the remainder of the unexpired terms.
The meeting lasted barely five minutes and did not include any opportunity for citizen input though there were about 35 people present.
“We're just following state laws,” Morrissey said after the meeting. “Weston will still exist and there'll be no disruption in city business.”
“We've got a grant to fix the community center and to upgrade for going green, about $23,000. We're following through on good things like that. Things are still getting done.”
Morrissey said the reason for the disannexations was because the city was unable to deliver city services to the areas disannexed. He pointed out that the areas disannexed were strip annexations by previous administrations and were not now legal.
The disannexation issue had been on the council agendas for months. Citizens in one of the disannexed areas presented a petition stating they were not receiving city services. After council member Jerry Randall questioned the petition, the annexations were made under the government code that deals with disannexation of a sparsely populated area.
Loretta and Joe Fischer live on FM 543. They did not know they were being disannexed.
“The state pays for the highway that goes by our house,” Joe Fischer said.
“They set out to hurt Weston,” Loretta Fischer said of those who had resigned their positions on the council.
“A great injustice has been done,” said former city council member Bruce Morrell. “There has been a misuse of power. We think the citizens need to step forward, pick up the pieces and right this wrong.”
He plans to run again for the city council.
Former Weston mayor Patti Harrington also plans to run again for mayor. As of Wednesday, no one had filed to run for mayor or council, but six candidate packets had been picked up.
“We can't vote in the city election now,” Joe Fischer said.
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