The Brookshire City Council will again attempt to finalize its selection of a chief of police when it meets in special session tonight at 6 p.m.
According to the meeting agenda, which was posted at 3:50 p.m. last Friday afternoon, council members will again take up a “discussion and possible action regarding hiring a police chief for the city.”
Tonight’s meeting is the second time within a week the council has taken up the vacant police chief position.
During its regular meeting last Thursday, the council interviewed a third applicant for the position, but took no action following an hour-long closed-door executive session.
In what many saw as a surprise, the council moved into executive session last Thursday to interview candidate Rex Morgan White, a long-time Brookshire resident, former police chief and current director of the University of Houston-Downtown Criminal Justice Center.
Like tonight’s agenda, the posted agenda for last week’s meeting had only called for “discussion and possible action regarding hiring a police chief for the city” and made no mention of White or a possible executive session.
White remained behind closed doors with the council for about 35 minutes. After he emerged, council members continued its private deliberations for another 25 minutes.
A crowd of large crowd of residents was on hand for the meeting. Most remained while the council deliberated, milling around the lobby or just outside the front doors of city hall.
When the council re-convened in open session, Alderwoman Kim Branch moved to table any action on selecting a police chief “until we can investigate some questions that come up in executive session.” Branch’s motion was approved on a unanimous vote.
No further information was given on the nature of the questions the council wanted to resolve.
At the time she made the motion to table any action, Branch signaled the council was considering calling a special meeting to act on the police chief selection, rather than wait its next regularly-scheduled meeting in two weeks.
The move to interview White came as something of a surprise after an earlier effort by Alderman Jimmy Sanders to interview the veteran lawman failed on a 2-2 vote with Alderman Eric Green abstaining.
White was among the original 12 applicants for the position, but was not named a finalist by the police chief selection committee comprised of Mayor Joey Vaughn, Mayor Pro-Tem Marilyn Vaughn and former police chief Joseph Prejean.
The two finalists named by the committee – San Felipe Police Chief Brandal Jackson and Austin County sheriff’s detective Charles Holmes – were interviewed by city council in August. Following the interviews, no council member made a motion to hire either man. That was when Sanders initially proposed to re-open the interview process to include White.
Brookshire has been without a permanent police chief since June when Prejean stepped down in what was termed a retirement.
Since that time, Lt. Darrell Branch has been serving as interim chief.
Also on tonight’s agenda is possible action on a budget for the city’s hotel-motel tax revenue for the 2010-2011 fiscal year.
The meeting will be held in the council chambers of Brookshire City Hall.
