DETROIT -- Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has hinted for the first time that he would consider resigning his position in the wake of the text-message scandal, according to City Council member JoAnne Watson.

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Watson, one of Kilpatrick's most ferocious critics, spoke to Local 4's Roger Weber after Detroit City Council voted to begin a process aimed at removing Kilpatrick from office.

Council members voted 5-4 to begin forfeiture of office proceedings against Kilpatrick. On a separate 5-4 vote, they approved asking Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to terminate Kilpatrick's hold on the mayor's office. A third vote -- to censure the mayor -- passed on a 7-2 vote.

In a surprise move afterward, Watson asked that her vote be reconsidered.

Watson revealed to Local 4 that she had been speaking to the mayor and his staff since last weekend and walked away with the impression that he was considering resignation.

That impression was short-lived, however. Watson received a note from the mayor's office during Tuesday's meeting, went up to the mayor's office and walked out saying that she was no longer reconsidering her vote to oust Kilpatrick.

The first two processes are expected to take months as the council submits a formal statement to the governor's office requesting the mayor's removal. The council set June 13 for a public hearing on the issue.

"It is my wish, my prayer actually, it would be my desire that the mayor resign," Watson said.

City Council member Monica Conyers said the mayor had never indicated to her that he would resign.

The relationship between the council and the mayor's office was strained even before revelations earlier this year that he may have misled them to approve an $8.4 million whistle-blowers' settlement.

Council members say they were unaware of a confidentiality agreement that Kilpatrick signed that kept secret references to intimate and sexually explicit text messages between the mayor and former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty.

Excerpts of those messages were published in January by the Detroit Free Press and contradicted testimony Kilpatrick and Beatty gave during the whistle-blowers' trial, when they denied having a romantic relationship.

The Wayne County prosecutor's office charged the two with perjury, misconduct in office and obstruction of justice on March 24, less than a week after the council voted 7-1 on a nonbinding resolution asking Kilpatrick to resign.