KRUM — The City Council voted 3-0 Friday to appoint former council member Christine Rodriguez to fill one of the seats left vacant after two council members abruptly stepped down this week.

Christine Rodriguez

Rodriguez replaces Stephanie Thompson, who resigned along with council member Matt Kilgore in protest of the council’s vote Monday to fire the public works director. The council plans to meet Monday to formally accept Kilgore’s resignation and appoint his replacement.

The terms will expire in May.

Rodriguez served four years on the council but lost her seat last year to Thompson. Rodriguez said Mayor Terri Wilson asked her to apply for the seat this week, based on a council member’s recommendation.

Rodriguez said she did not know which council member suggested her. She was one of three people to apply for the seat, along with Louis Briggs and Sabrina Hooten.

Rodriguez, 50, who works as the city of Corinth’s financial services manager, said she hoped her appointment would lead to a less divisive era for the council. She previously served with council members Doyle Fletcher and Joe Beall.

“We were always interested in working for the citizens and doing things that were good for the city of Krum,” Rodriguez said. “And that would be my continued hope, that we will make good decisions for the city and for the citizens.”

Briggs, 35, a former Krum police officer who works as a consultant to natural gas drillers, criticized the appointment. He said Rodriguez was a “big supporter” of Wilson during Wilson’s successful re-election campaign last month.

“I can add two and two and get to four,” said Briggs, who ran unsuccessfully for Beall’s seat last month. “It is what it is: small-town politics.”

Hooten, 34, an accountant, did not attend the meeting and did not immediately return a call for comment.

Wilson, through a city employee, declined to comment.

Kilgore and Thompson resigned Tuesday, a day after the council voted 3-2 to fire Public Works Director Robert Faulkner.

Kilgore and Thompson, who voted against the firing, said they could no longer serve under Wilson’s leadership.

Faulkner said he believed his firing was part of a Wilson-led effort to purge the city of people who worked under former Mayor Larry Lamonica, whom Wilson unseated in 2007. Faulkner was suspended last month after engaging in an argument with the city secretary, but he said no one officially told him the reason for his suspension or firing.

Kilgore and Thompson had questioned the plan to fill their seats with council appointees, saying they thought the city had to call a special election. State law requires a special election when two vacancies occur on the governing body of a general-law city such as Krum.

The city is relying on a 2003 attorney general’s opinion that allows cities to bypass a special election by filling one vacant seat before formally accepting the second resignation, City Secretary Karen Blakey has said.

Resignations take effect within eight days unless the council accepts them sooner.

Calling a special election would have left the seats vacant until November, meaning the council would have lacked members during budget planning this summer, officials said.

The meeting Friday started more than an hour late, forcing council members Beall, Fletcher and Judy Kindiger to make small talk as they waited for Wilson, Blakey and City Attorney Lance Vanzant to emerge from behind a closed door.

Wilson later told council members that she delayed the meeting to see if Thompson and Kilgore would show up. They did not attend the meeting.

Reached by phone, Thompson said she was disappointed in the council’s choice of Rodriguez.

“Once again, I don’t think they’re acting in the best interest of the city of Krum,” Thompson said.

LOWELL BROWN can be reached at 940-566-6882. His e-mail address is lmbrown@dentonrc.com .