On Monday, February 2nd 2026, Sunnyvale Town Council met and quickly entered Executive Session at 7:19PM after taking public comments. That session lasted an unusually long time, ending 43 minutes later at 8:02PM. Per the Mayor, “as a result of the executive session, no actions need[ed] to be taken” (18 minute mark).
I had a family commitment and couldn’t attend Town Council that night, and in some ways I’m glad I did–having to sit and wait 43 minutes with no clear idea when Council resume would be hard to justify to myself. But watching the video afterward, I didn’t initially think much of it because the recording skips right over that period.
In hindsight the timing of the Executive Session is interesting because the very next morning, the Town announced that Fire Chief Kayea was now separated from the Town. The video recording of Town Council doesn’t show who entered the Executive Session with Council members, but I know that Chief Kayea was noted present at the Town Council meeting that night (as is typical).
The Executive Session part of the agenda reads:
K. Executive Session
Section 551.071 – Consultation with Attorney
To seek the advice of the Town’s attorney about pending or contemplated litigation; or a
settlement offer; or on a matter in which the duty of the attorney to the governmental
body under the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct of the State Bar of
Texas clearly conflicts with this Chapter.
Pending Personnel Investigation
That item “Pending Personnel Investigation” is the only item for the whole 43-minute session. I didn’t see anyone else fired the next day, so they probably talked about Chief Kayea.
I don’t know what the investigation related to. Per item (a)(2) of the Texas Local Government Code for police and firefighters, “’Investigation’ means an administrative investigation, conducted by the municipality, of alleged misconduct by a fire fighter or police officer that could result in punitive action against that person.” So basically anything negative. But without speculating, we can maybe still infer some things? What I do think this means is the departure likely wasn’t for health reasons. It also seems hard to believe that this was a voluntary departure. However, the term is still so broad it could include almost anything, from performance concerns all the way to misconduct or worse.
It’s good the Town Council took the matter seriously and spent so long discussing their decision. Nobody deserves a free pass on misconduct, and if that was the reason for separation from the Town then I hope the truth will eventually come out in some kind of public legal action. Yet it would be surprising to me if it turns out to be misconduct. At public events I’ve asked town staff about the Chief and I’d been told she was still doing her job and they verified she was showing up in-person to Town staff meetings, which would indicate she was not suspended during this investigation (if the investigation centered around misconduct, I would have expected her to be suspended). It would also be odd for the Town to conduct a 360 performance assessment (only hearsay at this point, I need to confirm) if there was a misconduct issue.
In trying to figure out what the Town was investigating, I did some of my own research into Tami Kayea’s career, and it did impress me how frequently she was praised and commended back in Dallas. When a sniper killed 5 police officers in July 2016, injured 9 others (and wounded 2 civilians), Tami Kayea was the one to establish a fire-rescue command post and take control of the emergency response. When a tornado touched down in Dallas in November 2019, she was involved in directing the emergency response. Tami was also serving both as faculty and on the advisory board for the First Responder Behavioral Health Institute, and she’s been cited as an expert resource for her experience managing large events during high heat in Texas.
Structure fires are a small but dangerous part of the larger work our Fire Department does. Sunnyvale doesn’t publish the statistics, but going off of our neighbor city Mesquite, fires are about 2% of total incidents on a typical month. It makes me a little sad that we are losing Kayea’s expertise in EMS, disaster response, and handling events in the heat (like SunnyFest). I hope at some point, we get an explanation from Town management on why this separation was necessary.
The Fire Department still needs support, regardless who leads it
Our firefighters are very hardworking, very dedicated and professional individuals, and I am disappointed that for whatever reason, this had to happen in their department. The Town has built them a station, but there is still a ways to go before we are fully funding all the things they say they need to do their jobs safely, and I don’t question at all their commitment to the mission of public safety.
In particular, it will take a lot of advocacy and money to bring the department up to NFPA1 1710–the rather ambitious-seeming staffing and response time standards recommended by firefighter unions for career fire departments like Sunnyvale (as opposed to volunteer/combination fire departments, which have a more flexible standard NFPA 1720). Sunnyvale, TX has a population density of about 477 people per square mile per Wikipedia. We seem to be currently somewhere around the NFPA 1720 standards for volunteer fire-fighting single-family homes for a rural area, but career fire fighters aim for a higher standard.
I have no idea how we are going to fund NFPA 1710 improvements when we can’t seem to get our designers to give us a plan for Jobson Park that’s within our budget. When NFPA 1710 was created years ago, many municipal governments vocally opposed it, claiming it was unrealistic for what smaller towns could afford. Maybe the new chief will be able to teach us how similar-sized towns got to NFPA 1710 without breaking the bank?
As Don Henley said, “the more I know, the less I understand.”
Our town management, staff, and town council deserve the benefit of the doubt that they acted in good faith to address a challenging situation. It remains unfortunate that our first female fire chief is leaving after barely two years, though, because our town still has a certain reputation within North Texas, which is absolutely not the Sunnyvale I know. There is certainly a knotted history with the Mayhews and other parties who are intertwined land development in our town, and how we ended up with our only Section 8 housing at Riverstone Trails2. Regardless, when I tell people I live in Sunnyvale most don’t know it exists, and those that do know about Sunnyvale know it for either 1) our excellent schools, or 2) the Dews vs Sunnyvale case.
Perhaps Chief Kayea’s quote when we hired her two years ago (about being a woman firefighter) applies to our town given its history: “You have to be twice as good just to be considered average, and you can either get upset about it, or you can spend your energy being twice as good.”
- National Fire Protection Association ↩︎
- This was also the site of a recent murder, and the trial & sentencing finished just last week. ↩︎
