Whitesboro Police Chief Alex Coss was publicly reprimanded by members of the City Council Tuesday night for remarks he made at a previous council meeting. Coss previously addressed the council in the public comments section of the Aug. 6 council meeting, calling for unity among city council and city staff workers.
“City staff need to work as a team,” Coss had said. “I look around and I see division. I see it on a daily basis. It affects morale, it affects focus and -- bottom line -- it affects our productivity. Instead of working together, you have too many people working against each other.”
Coss’s address didn’t sit well with the majority of the council. Alderman Ronnie Fielder called it, “an embarrassment for our council.”
At the request of some council members, City Administrator Julie Arrington and Mayor Dave Blaylock met with Coss privately to reprimand him for his approach to airing his concerns. But then his name appeared on the Tuesday’s agenda to be discussed in Executive Session. When an employee is listed on Executive Session, it’s commonly for disciplinary purposes and is typically held behind closed doors.
Coss requested council address him in open session before the meeting’s standing room only crowd, a right afforded by state law to certain municipal employees.
Alderman Su Welch began the conversation by asking, “My main question is why? If you had concerns, you did not come to some of us and discuss what your concerns were?”
Coss said he worried that if he talked to one of the council members at a time, they would discuss it among themselves in a walking quorum. A walking quorum is when more than two council members meet outside of a scheduled meeting to discuss city business and is a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act, punishable by a fine of between $100-$500, one to six months in jail, or both.
Coss said he had spoken to the mayor and requested to speak to the council about his concerns. He said the mayor suggested he speak to the council during the citizens presentation portion of the meeting.
Alderman Mike Pack said he didn’t understand why the chief wouldn’t discuss anything with them before he, “threw them under the bus.”
“Is there a reason you did that? That you said what you said in giving your little spiel? Did somebody put you up to that?” Pack said.
“I follow a practice of leadership that is referred to as ‘leadership by walking around.’ Basically that’s a layman way of saying that, as a leader, you walk around and you talk to employees,” Coss said. “I don’t just do that with the Police Department employees. I consider myself one of the leaders and representatives of City staff, so I do that with all City staff. I do that on a daily basis -- I walk around and I just have casual conversations with all the employees.
“I do it in a way that people open up to me and talk to me and I had seen a pattern that had been going on for a really long time. I felt that it had gotten to a point where I needed to speak up and ask for your help. If you look at the words that I said [at the Aug. 6 meeting], there were things like ‘respectfully request,’ ‘I need your help’ and ‘this is something that would really help us and ultimately would improve the performance that we do to the city.’ In other words, the service that we do to the city,” Coss said. “I felt that I wanted to do it and asked the mayor for the ability to do it and I did it.”
Coss clarified that he did not give a copy of his speech to the mayor beforehand. He simply contacted the mayor in writing to let him know he wanted to speak to the Council on behalf of City staff being able to work as a team. He said he was requesting the assistance of the council.
Mayor Pro-Tem Carla Woolsey said she sees it as if he is breaking the chain of command by not going directly to the council before publicly addressing them and doing so without them having any knowledge of it beforehand. She doesn’t agree with his “walking around leadership.”
“That [department] is on that side and this [department] is this side. The Fire Department doesn’t come over here and bother with the police. We all have an issue with you just coming in and addressing us and us not knowing anything about it,” Woolsey said.
She said she understands his concern, but being “totally blindsided” was inappropriate. Fielder said any concerns need to be addressed to them first before going public.
“I think it was an embarrassment for our council what you did, especially to wind up on the front page [of the newspaper],” Fielder said.
Woolsey read from Coss’s job description: personal and professional integrity and ethics at the highest order. She thinks he could have contacted Arrington to email the entire Council about any of his concerns.
One council member disagreed with the criticism.
“I just want to say that I appreciate you coming in here and speaking,” Alderman Stacey Miles said. “I probably will get looked at ugly, but I appreciate it. I appreciate you taking the time to come in here and say ‘hey, we need to self-check’. Myself, as a coach, that’s what I do by nature. I appreciate the teamwork and the rally because I, too, feel a little division. I understand that you cannot speak to one of us or all of us without it being a walking quorum. I just feel like ‘citizens to be heard’ was probably your only option to address what you felt and sometimes I know it’s not easy to hear it. It was a self-check for me. I’m sure it was for everybody else…I do appreciate you coming in here and putting the speech together. I feel like you did an excellent job. I don’t feel like you bashed anyone.”
Miles said, according to law, the only way the Police Chief could address the council is to do it during the ‘citizens to be heard’ portion of a City Council meeting. She said he is a citizen and Police Chief as well and it can be a hard place to be.
“I appreciate you knowing the law, I appreciate you educating us and teaching us and also leading us. I know that it’s not easy,” Miles said.
Coss responded to each council member’s remarks. He said as he sat listening to the meeting, he thought about how much of an opposition he wanted to make, but ultimately he decided to take the creative criticism.
“But since my integrity has been questioned I feel I’d like to make a small retort,” Coss said.
He said the City Administrator, the mayor and the City Attorney all know about his concerns.
“They talked to you in open forum, they talked to you in executive session, and it hasn’t changed anything. In fact, the first thing you did was put the City Attorney on executive session to get rid of them,” Coss said. “So, I could either stand by and watch this continue, which I wasn’t comfortable with. I could notify the District Attorney’s office or the Attorney General, but I didn’t feel comfortable about that. I could file a grievance and put it through the chain of command, but instead I asked for your help.”
Coss said following the meeting on Aug. 6, when he addressed the council publicly, it was discussed in executive session that he would be counseled and verbally reprimanded for speaking publicly. He said he has already been counseled and reprimanded. He said at that point, the issue was resolved.
Coss said this executive session, on Aug. 20, stems from a story that was written in the newspaper, which he had nothing to do with.
“While it’s become clear that you’re privy to reprimand me on a daily basis, I would ask that at some point we just decide what the ultimate punishment is; and I’m good with either of that,” Coss said.
As Woolsey jumped in to say that he is not being punished, Coss rebutted by saying it has been explained to him not to do it again. Woolsey said what they would talk about in executive session would be that the council was not happy about the way the Police Chief handled things. She said it’s not as if he was being punished, they just wanted to be able to talk this out.
“I would appreciate the opportunity to speak with anybody one-on-one or as a group, anytime in the future with disagreements or concerns. But if it’s a question of my honesty, integrity or some of the other things that you mentioned, those are going to be a little bit more heated conversations,” Coss said.
Coss talked about the last 24 years of his life and, before that, three previous years with the military.
“I’ve spent my entire adult life in uniform. So when it comes to honesty and integrity I am, in my opinion, beyond reproach, and I challenge anybody to find fault in my dedication to service. I do apologize, for what it’s worth, if you were embarrassed when I asked you for help,” Coss said. “I was told to go about it a different way. Today, I’ve been told to go about it a different way. So, message received."
The council was quiet before Woolsey commented.
“Apology accepted, and I’m sorry it came to this. And that you had to have this discussion. I appreciate it. I hope that we can work for the better. I think all of us just want what’s best for this community, that’s why we’re here. That’s why some of us have lived here for a long time. I do look forward to working and trying to be more cohesive,” Woolsey said.
Moving forward, the City Attorney, Courtney Goodman-Morris, has resigned from the City of Whitesboro. She will no longer hold the title of City Attorney but will remain as the Prosecutor unless the new attorney (as yet to be hired) will provide their own prosecutor.
City Secretary Teresa Nino will be reaching out to law firms the council has selected to set up dates and times for interviews. The City is eager to hire on as quickly as possible.
Read more about the attorney’s resignation and the rest of Tuesday’s City Council meeting in next week’s edition of the Whitesboro News-Record.