Council members agreed to wait and see if the Texas Legislature will address a statute that requires election of the entire governing body after new district lines are drawn.
A measure to address this failed in the 2025 legislative session, however Gunnar Seaquist, attorney with Bickerstaff Heath Delgado Acosta, said he expects some sort of solution in a future session.
“I would expect this or something like it to get through in that timeframe,” he said. “I think that this is going to be just so disruptive that the political will will build behind this.”
In a nutshell
In a presentation during a special meeting held July 22, Seaquist broke down the current legislative framework for drawing new council districts. Seaquist worked with the 2024 Charter Commission which recommended further analysis of changing the council’s composition ahead of the 2030 census.
The City Council is currently composed of seven members including the mayor and two council positions elected at large. The remaining four members are elected to represent a single district.
The charter commission’s discussions focused on increasing the number of single-member districts to six while maintaining the city’s current hybrid system, Seaquist said.
“The part of it that we didn’t really get into at the charter review stage because at that point we were looking at what was to be investigated further,” Seaquist said. “The legislature threw a little bit of a wrench in the gears back in 2023.”
Explained
The legislature enacted House Bill 3613 in 2023 which determined that all members of a municipality’s governing body must run for election after it's redistricted. The legislation, as it was written, does not limit that to single-district seats so it would apply to at-large members as well, Seaquist said.
“Anytime you redistrict as a city with single-member districts, you have to, upon apportionment, the whole governing body has to run,” he said.
For a council elected in staggered terms, such as McKinney City Council, the council can adopt a process to determine which members will serve shorter terms, according to Seaquist’s presentation. Seaquist said it leaves a lot of discretion to council members for how they can do that.
“I’ve seen it a couple of ways,” he said. “I’ve seen council members draw straws. I’ve seen an agreement that the highest vote getters would get the longer terms.”
How it works
To change the composition of the city council, the charter has to be amended through an election. The earliest Mckinney City Council can call a charter election is 2026 since a charter election was called in 2024.
The city may have to redistrict anyway after results from the 2030 Census are released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
“The real impact of this is that whether you change your charter or not, when the 2030 census data rolls around in 2031, if you’re out of balance and you have to redistrict, you’re going to have to do this either way,” Seaquist said.
If the state local government code remains unchanged, multiple cities across the state with single-member districts will be affected.
“What is basically forecast by this is a coming storm come 2031,” Seaquist said. “It’s going to be kind of electoral chaos across the state frankly.”
Looking ahead
Seaquist said there’s already been one attempt to “clean this up.” House Bill 5431 was filed during the 89th Legislative Session. It never passed out of committee but would have exempted mayors and at-large from the election that’s required after redistricting.
City Attorney Mark Houser said they think this will be considered again in the legislature.
“They may even look at that bigger problem in 2030 which can be fixed a number of ways too,” he said. “It’s going to affect all the cities that have districts across the state.”
Houser and Seaquist are expected to return to council at a future meeting with different scenarios for adjusting the council composition.
“It’s almost something you have to get in options to look at to work through these things,” he said. “We’re happy to do that because it’s very complicated.”
What they’re saying
Council member Patrick Cloutier said “it seems the responsible answer” is to wait for the next legislative session. He suggested tabling the discussion for a couple of years.
“This thing is such a mess,” he said. “You’d be burning daylight to me coming up with answers that may get solved in two years anyway. I do have an appetite to increase council but I can be defeated by the state legislature and I think I have been.”
Cloutier continued that he doesn’t know how they can redistrict and be “good fiduciaries” of the city’s assets.
“I’ll never forget how important it was for me to have people with great tenures on here when I came on new,” he said. “It seems like we’re jeopardizing that. I don't think that’s in the best interest of the taxpayers.”
Several council members, including Michael Jones and Geré Feltus agreed with Cloutier’s opinion to wait.
“We just had an election and I know the people that just got elected have no desire to even think about having to run again,” Jones said.
Feltus said the city “obviously missed” its window for considering changes.
“Had we talked about this two or three years ago, we could have made some changes before this bit of mess,” she said. “We’re way down the road and I don’t want to make that decision right now without having a full understanding of where we’re going on the state level.”
