Review of June 7, 2011 Board Meeting

I know you’ve been waiting . . . so here’s my review of last night’s board meeting. There was a full crowd at last night’s meeting and there were several individuals on the agenda to address the board. Before the meeting started, the board was informed that Mayor Holder wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t at the meeting. (Side note: I’m praying that Mayor Holder is feeling better and that all is well.) The first thing I noticed was the dirty board room. You mean to tell me that we have people sitting at city hall hours upon hours day after day and they can’t use a vacuum cleaner. Interesting. When the meeting was opened, they went into citizen’s comments, but they forgot to get a motion and a second on hearing citizen comments. Don’t fret. After all the citizen comments were made, they made a motion and seconded the motion to hear from the citizens. This should give you some indication how the rest of the night went.
Roy King addressed the board about the fact that impersonating a police officer is showing up on his driver’s license. Chief Fortenberry made the correction that it does not show on the driver’s license; it’s on the criminal history. Lindsey Carter said that he would draft a letter for Roy King to present to the judge to have the incident removed from his criminal history. While we’re on the subject of Roy King, in his interview with me and the report that was in the Hattiesburg American, he stated that Officer Franklin was the arresting officer. Last night, Franklin showed fire chief, Jerry Walters, the arrest report, and Officer Franklin is not the arresting officer.
Somehow, the water bill adjustments have made their way back onto the agenda. I guess the clerks have made all the unauthorized adjustments they can make before they get caught. Of course, the adjustments are the result of a computer error or software issue with BBI. But if memory serves me correctly, I remember that all water bill adjustment errors were blamed on Betty Speights. I find it quite interesting that office veterans are using the gremlin theory to explain the error. Stephanie did make a point to say that it’s minor since there were only a few errors out of 800. Well, that was the same thing I said when Betty was allegedly making those errors during her training as a deputy clerk, but now it’s no biggie because Sue and Stephanie are making those errors. Interesting.
There are some other issues that happened at last night’s board meeting, but I will post that information later. But the meeting ended with an executive session. Apparently, Kent Crider aka The Notorious P.I.G is still on his crusade to fire Chief Fortenberry. In an unexpected display of ethics, Lindsey Carter, city attorney, informed the board that they didn’t have grounds to terminate the employment of Chief Fortenberry. I don’t know what’s gotten into Lindsey, but he might be in jeopardy of having his pay checks voided since he’s not doing what the board wants him to do. I thought lightning didn’t strike twice, but in one night, Lindsey went against the board (followed the law) two different times. First, when Rebecca wanted the City of Lumberton to reimburse Roy King the $150.00 he paid to a bond company and again when Kent Crider wanted to have Chief Fortenberry fired.