This story was updated at 6:30 p.m. to include new comments from the mayor as well as other council members and residents.

Shortly after another contentious council vote involving plans for Garland's new dog and skate park, a frustrated Mayor Douglas Athas announced Tuesday night that he will resign.

The City Council voted 6-3 to demolish a former National Guard armory building at Central Park, a necessary step in the city's plan to build a skate park that was approved in a 2004 bond election on the site.

Athas, who wanted to save the armory, said the site was selected without opportunity for input from neighbors or the city's parks board.

"This deeply saddens me. I don't feel like we followed the processes. I'm announcing that I will be resigning as mayor in the very near future," Athas said after voting against the $120,000 demolition, along with council members Jerry Nickerson and Robert John Smith.

In an interview Wednesday, Athas gave more of his thoughts on the matter.

"We have checks and balances in our system. Professionals on staff make recommendations, we have peer review and then it comes to council for final decisions," he said. "When you skip that, when a council comes up with its own ideas and suddenly starts doing it without professionals, without peer reviews, then you have a system that's broken and extremely dangerous."

'Heartfelt sadness'

The city's mayor since 2013, Athas said he wants to ensure his resignation would not cause a special election. He said he will likely serve into 2018 and a new mayor will be on the ballot for the May general election. Athas would have otherwise served until May 2019 but is not eligible for re-election because of term limits.

"Some of this is for personal reasons. Some of it is for professional reasons. Some of it's just heartfelt sadness for how this process has been handled and not followed the processes that we've used for years and decades," he told the council.

More than two hours of testimony preceded Tuesday's vote, some from neighbors who said they heard about the plans only days before.

A Texas Air National Guard armory building in the background in Garland will be demolished to build a skate park on the site. Shortly after Garland's City Council voted 6-3 to proceed with those plans Tuesday, Mayor Douglas Athas announced he would soon resign. (Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer)

An hour after the meeting, near midnight, Athas posted on Facebook that, "Personal agendas have bloomed on the council to the point that the citizens and staff suffer from poor governance and I can't morally be a part of it."

Council member Rich Aubin has often been at odds with Athas over several issues, including the decision about the armory.

"The mayor has said that resigning his office is best for the city and I agree," Aubin said Wednesday. "The only personal agenda I have is to serve the folks in District 5 by listening to their concerns and issues, communicating those to council and city staff and representing them on council."

'No premonition'

Council member B.J. Williams was at an event with the mayor earlier Tuesday and had no indication that Athas might step down.

"I heard the announcement when everybody else did. I had no premonition," Williams said.

Williams and Aubin had asked for the staff to provide a timeline of the discussions that led to Central Park as a planned site for a dog park and skate park. That presentation led to more than an hour of debate in Monday's council work session.

"We had almost 50 meetings on dog parks," Aubin said. "It's 13 years ago that we approved the skate park and we don't have a skate park. At what point do you say we just gotta make a decision and move forward."

Williams said many hours of council discussion over several months led him to pause for a full minute before voting with the majority on Tuesday night to demolish the armory to make room for the skate park.

"It was a very significant decision, and I wanted to deliberately take that time to process not just the information from last night, but from the starting point," Williams said Wednesday.

Andrea Ridout, a Garland resident and historic renovations expert who testified Tuesday to save the armory, believes it'll take more than $120,000 to tear down the Cold War-era military building.

"It's a real shame," Ridout said in an interview Wednesday. "It has a tremendous value. Why didn't we take some time to find out some other uses before we tear this thing to the ground? I'm in construction and can tell you there's no way they're going to get that done at that price."