Auditor's Report and A-Hole Alert

Last night's special called meeting lasted about 3 hours, but the fallout from what happened will have a lasting effect on the City of Lumberton. Paige Johnson reported on her finding and went over what she kept referring to as a single audit. The board approved the Audit and the next step will be to have the noticed put in the newspapers and copies of the auditor's report should be available to the public. What happened next was clearly set the tone for the rest of the meeting. Our city clerk, Stephanie Mullings leaned over and started whispering into Bobby Gibson's ear. He gave her the green light, and she asked Paige Johnson if she could explain to the public that the allegations against the city clerk were not true. Stephanie said that she wanted Paige's response recorded for the minutes because of all the talk that she (Stephanie) did not know how to do her job and that she was stealing money from the city. Paige said that she was not aware of the allegations, but she neither confirmed nor denied the allegations. I know the minutes will read differently, but Paige went on to say the following: " an audit does not looks at everything; we gather enough information so we can provide a good report." One would think that when a city pays $31,000 for an audit, (a process that took seven weeks to complete) the auditor would look at everything.

Before going into executive session, the board managed to conduct a brief budget workshop. The board decided to increase the budget of the LVFD from $12,000/year to $18,000/year. Afterwards, the board went into executive session. At 8:08 p.m., Timothy Johnson exited the meeting. Bobby Gibson went out to the parking lot to talk with Johnson and when Gibson returned, he informed the citizens that Johnson had a family emergency and he would return to the meeting. I went outside for a few minutes and Alderman Rogers was leaving and I asked him was the meeting over, and he said they are still in executive session. When the board members were coming out executive session, I noticed that our city clerk, Stephanie Mullings had a big smile on her face and she said "We finally did it!" I didn't know if she was saying this to Hobson or Olen since they were all sitting together, but when Bobby Gibson began to inform the public about the actions that were taken in executive session, I realized that she was talking to Hobson. Gibson stated that they voted to accept a letter of resignation from Sharese Pearson; they voted to move Officer Burt McKinney from full-time to part-time; the following part-time officers were terminated: Josh McNash, Andrew Phillip and Rick Guy; they voted to terminate the following full-time officers at the recommendation of Dennis Hobson: Captain Franklin and Officer C. Fortenberry; and they voted to promote Dennis Hobson to the position of Captain.

Timothy Johnson never returned from his "family emergency" but when the ish hits the fan, and I'm certain it will; he will be able to truthfully say to the voters of his district that he didn't vote to terminate any officers and he didn't vote to promote Hobson to the position of captain. Stephanie made sure that Bobby Gibson informed the public that Alderman Rogers voted before leaving executive session, but I don't know when the actions taken in executive session will go into effect because they couldn't vote to close executive session because Alderman Rogers left and there was no longer a quorum. WTBS: I thought voting in execution session was a violation of the open meetings law???