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Gun Barrel City Council reviews proposed updates to ordinance chapters 31–35
Summary
At a March 17 special meeting, council members reviewed redlines to ordinance chapters 31–35 covering municipal court, personnel, boards/commissions and public safety to align local code with state mandates and accreditation standards; staff will send the package to the city attorney for formal drafting.
Gun Barrel City held a special City Council meeting on March 17, 2026, to review proposed revisions to ordinance chapters 31 through 35.
City Manager Dr. Smith told the council the ordinance review committee spent roughly a year meeting twice a month to prepare redlines and that staff combined committee and staff notes into the draft under consideration. He said the most substantial changes affect municipal court, police, and fire department chapters so the city’s ordinances align with accreditation and recent legislative requirements.
Why it matters: the revisions clarify procedure in areas that affect daily operations (how ordinances are introduced and recorded, the city manager’s authorities, and mayoral veto procedures) and incorporate changes required by the Legislature and best-practice standards for public safety accreditation.
Key details: council discussed whether to preserve an invocation-only option versus adding a separate "moment of silence" and debated whether language that permits a "city manager or designee" is appropriate in certain places (for example, hiring authority or agenda placement). Dr. Smith said the redlines replaced many legacy job titles with "city manager or designee" to avoid brittle references to obsolete job names but asked the city attorney to flag where a designee would be inappropriate.
Council also reviewed a redline passage that removed a clause specifying that an ordinance must be introduced "by some member of the city council." To avoid ambiguity, Dr. Smith proposed replacing the sentence with: "All ordinances and resolutions shall be placed on a city council agenda, introduced, read, and acted upon at an open meeting."
On municipal court changes, staff noted new state-mandated additions, including provisions tied to a local youth diversion fund. Dr. Smith said the youth diversion program is a legislative mandate and "is managed 100% through the court, and it is a mandated program," and that the city’s ordinance language must reflect that requirement.
What happens next: staff will package chapters 10 through 35 and submit them to the city attorney for formal drafting; the council will see the attorney’s versions at later meetings for approval.
