Two days after five Texarkana area cities voted to establish the Wright Patman Regional Water Supply Agency, little is known about the organization's ultimate buoyancy amid the weight of controversy.

Initially, Wake Village, New Boston, De Kalb, Hooks, Maud, Avery and Annona were all set to be the agency's seven charter cities, with all set to vote simultaneously at 7 p.m. Thursday to create the agency. Of these seven cities, New Boston, De Kalb, Hooks, Avery and Annona all passed a resolution creating it, with most of Maud's council voting against the plan and Wake Village canceling their meeting altogether.

In New Boston, all council members were present and the resolution passed with a unanimous vote. The meeting lasted two minutes and only residents attended the meeting. City officials declined to comment about the vote, but Mayor Johnny Branson said Wake Village had to cancel its meeting because of a clerical error -- two legal notices published in the Gazette listed two different times for their meeting.

In Hooks, all council members were present and the vote to establish the agency was approved unanimously without any questions or discussion. Mayor Pro Tem Steven Foltz declined comment before and after the meeting, which lasted less than 10 minutes. After the meeting, the four council members used all three doors from the council chambers to other areas of the building or outside. Only one person who was not a member of the city staff or the press was at the Hooks meeting.

In De Kalb, all council members were present and the vote approving the resolution was unanimous. The meeting lasted five minutes and about 10 residents were in attendance. A couple of residents attempted to ask questions but Mayor Paul Meadows declined comment.

And then there's Maud, where Mayor Robert Wells opened the meeting by saying he couldn't take questions from any of the 10 residents present and couldn't take many questions from the council itself, since he was under a gag order. "We can join this agency now or we can join later, but if we join later, we could be paying more per 1,000 gallons of water," Wells told the council. Wells went on to say that there would be no guarantee that water rates would be better by joining the agency, but he added the water rates residents were paying now had no future affordability guarantee either. As an incentive to vote in favor of the agency, Wells told the council that by voting to start the agency with the rest of the cities, Maud would get one vote on the agency's future board.

Some Maud council members asked if the agency's creation had anything to do with the Marvin Nichols Reservoir controversy. Wells said he couldn't find anything in the resolution that had a Marvin Nichols connection. The mayor also told the council that if for any reason the city was dissatisfied with the agency, it could drop out at any time.

However, the council generally expressed misgivings about not having a voice as far as the agency's policies are concerned. Some took issue with the possible cost of having to build a water line out to Lake Wright Patman, if that was where their future water supply would be coming from.

Some council members also asked if the current lawsuit that Maud along with the six other voting cities had with Texarkana, Texas, and Texarkana Water utilities had anything to do with the agency's proposed creation. Wells sternly warned them that he was under a judicial gag order and couldn't comment. "I'm under gag order and I'm not going to jail over it," he said.

While some council members had no problem signing onto the plan as long as they could "back out of it" later, most couldn't see voting on something they didn't have much information on. After some further discussion, a motion to approve creating the agency died after failing to get a second motion.

The mayor then asked for a motion to vote against creating the agency, to which four council members voted against it with one abstention. "It failed and that's all I can say about it," was Wells' only comment after the meeting adjourned.

Wake Village Mayor Mike Huddleston declined to comment on why he canceled his council's meeting. He was also mum on whether his city plans to hold another meeting on the issue and whether the agency is viable without all seven cities supporting it.

(Reporters John Bridges, Pam Kumpe and Jan Shirley contributed to this report.)