After scheduling meetings to vote simultaneously with six other Texarkana area cities to form the Wright Patman Regional Water Supply Agency, the Wake Village City Council decided Thursday to jump ship. Less than three hours before the 7 p.m. meeting was to start Thursday, Wake Village City Administrator Bob Long said he received a call from Mayor Mike Huddleston informing him that the meeting would be canceled.
Long declined to comment on why the meeting was canceled or who decided to cancel it. He said there are currently no plans for another meeting. Attempts by the Gazette to reach Huddleston at his home Thursday evening were unsuccessful.
As for the six other city councils, only New Boston, De Kalb and Hooks agreed to pass the resolution creating the water agency. The Maud City Council voted against it in a 4 to 1 decision. At presstime late Thursday, no information was available on how the city councils of Annona and Avery, in Red River County, voted.
Oran Caudle, a Texarkana, Texas, resident who's been an outspoken critic of the plan, said he went to Wake Village City Hall Tuesday morning and presented city officials with copies of the Texas Open Meetings Handbook regulation as well as the Texas Local Government Code Chapter 422 stipulations. The cities are citing the 422 law, which authorizes the creation of such a water agency as a "public utility agency".
Codes from both the law manuals appear to invalidate the public notice procedure Wake Village took. Specifically, Chapter 422, sub-chapter C (pertaining to the "Public Utility Agency" designation, paragraph 422.054 -- dealing with public meeting notice) appears to invalidate a meeting if the city advertises two different time schedules for one meeting as advertised in a local publication. Caudle pointed to Wake Village's publication of an announcement in the January 22 issue of the Texarkana Gazette legal notices. The notice gives a meeting time as being 6 p.m. February 5. The second legal notice published January 29 stated the meeting as taking place at 7 p.m. February 5.
[COMMENT: To play the Devil's Advocate, could this have just been a newspaper typographical error? Or was it truly a Wake Villainous attempt to deceive? One would assume that the Texarkana Gazette still has in its possession the original documents submitted to them by the Comrade Chairman and that any possible typographical error could easily be reviewed, and if such as the case, be easily explained, as embarrassing as it might turn out to be for the Gazette, in hindsight. R.]
Even though Wake Village followed the law in terms of having a notice printed twice two weeks prior to the actual meeting day, the Texas Open Meetings Act stipulates "literal compliance" when it comes to publishing the time, date and meeting location in each notice with complete consistency in all three areas. In effect, the Act appears to prohibit a city council from changing the time of its meeting without first posting a corrected notice. In the case of Local Government Code Chapter 422, "Public Utility Agency resolution", this means two weeks in advance of the meeting date. As it happened, the January 29 legal notice was just one week prior to the February 5 meeting date.
"In other words, this means that thou shall not fool the public (with two different meeting times)," said Texarkana, Texas, resident Dr. Jim Presley, another outspoken critic.
[COMMENT: Even playing the Devil's Advocate in rhetorical defense of Wake Villainy as being the unwitting victim of a casual typographical error by the Gazette, it appears that nonetheless the Comrade Chairman did violate the two-week rule. And one can only conclude that from a technically legal standpoint, if the Gazette had indeed made a typo, then as inconvenient as it might have been for the Comrade Chairman to postpone said meetings for public clarification of the legal notices, no attempt was made to do this. Personally, I think they just screwed up. But what else is new? R.]
Presley and others believe the power of the agency, if created, would be too far-reaching, including how it could affect water rates in Texarkana. Caudle said the agency could have the authority to build new reservoirs, buy and sell water to other regions of the state, obtain permits for water rights and condemn land under the power of eminent domain.
Even though at least three city councils agreed Thursday to create the water agency, Caudle said he intends to pursue further legal action to invalidate the entire resolution. Two of the cities failed to act in concert with the three (or possibly five) in taking a positive vote on the stated "effective date" (February 5) as provided for in the written resolution.