Howe council censures mayor, strikes write-ups from administrator's file

HOWE — The Howe City Council censured Mayor Karla McDonald on Saturday and voted to pull disciplinary reports from City Administrator Monte Walker's employee file, according to the posted agenda for the Sept. 5 special meeting and the city's official video of the session.

The censure came as Resolution 2026-0004, listed on the agenda as an action item. The video records the council approving the motion by voice vote, with no opposing vote noted before members adjourned. The resolution says the censure concerned McDonald's conduct involving Walker, City Secretary Katie Lowery and other city employees, along with disruption to City Hall operations.

The agenda carried separate votes on disciplinary report No. 1 and disciplinary report No. 3 in Walker's file. The video records the removal motions passing.

Walker told the council he considered three write-ups issued June 23 retaliatory, tied to his interest in another position, the video shows. He asked members to strike hostile and retaliatory write-ups and a retaliatory annual review from his personnel record. McDonald denied retaliating. She told the meeting that her actions rested on legitimate city concerns and on evidence rather than on personal conflict.

The council had met eight days earlier, on Aug. 27, in a special session whose executive-session topics included personnel, procedures and policy, the city administrator and CCN matters, that agenda shows.

Residents at Saturday's meeting discussed a petition that would move Howe from its strong mayor-council structure to a city-manager council form, according to the video. A council member said the drive would need 72 signatures. Chapter 25 of the Texas Local Government Code lets a general-law city adopt the city-manager form by election, and Section 25.022 sets the petition at 20 percent of the voters who cast ballots for mayor in the most recent mayoral race. Grayson County's official results from May 2023 show McDonald won that election with a majority of the votes cast, and that turnout is the figure the threshold is drawn from.

If voters approved the switch, Chapter 25 would give the council 60 days to appoint a manager, who would serve at the council's pleasure.

Cities around Howe already run that way. Gunter says residents elect the mayor and council while the council appoints a manager to handle daily operations and carry out policy. Denison says its appointed manager oversees personnel and serves at the council's pleasure. Gainesville, a home-rule city, says its city manager is the chief administrative officer under a council-manager form. The International City/County Management Association's snapshot of municipal forms counted council-manager as the most common arrangement among the cities in its dataset, narrowly ahead of mayor-council.

The Texas Municipal League directory lists Howe as a general-law Type A city in Grayson County with about 3,700 residents.

_Editor's note: Everyone charged with a crime is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law._