Merlene P. Wall: The City Clerk With No Brain, No Heart and No Courage

She’s not in Westwego, Louisiana anymore and this is not Kansas. In case you haven’t heard, I won the frivolous case that Merlene Wall filed against me, making a claim that I was stalking her in an attempt to have me banned from city hall, prohibited from blogging and when she realized she was losing, she had her attorney ask that I be incarcerated to stop me from blogging. In the words of Miss Celie from The Color Purple, “the jail you planned for me is the one you’re going to rot in.” I guess she thought she was able to manipulate a judge since she was able to manipulate a gullible, uninformed group of elected officials. This case was going on for almost a year and she had the full support of most of the board members (former Mayor Ben Winston, Hugh James “Jay the Thief” McGraw, Tommy Dukes and Cora Rogers) but when we finally had the trial, they abandoned her on the frontlines like Uriah. But her trusty side-kick, friend and neighbor, Melissa, was there in the end, especially since she was given back her job as deputy clerk.

I think I misspoke earlier when I said I won my case. I don’t think that’s true but freedom of speech won but Merlene definitely lost. I keep thinking about all the time/resources that were used to monitor my blog, to print out copies of my blog and to save information regarding my blog in an attempt to take away my rights and possibly my freedom. Imagine if that time was spent dealing with the budgetary issues facing Lumberton. If Merlene would have spent a fraction of the time she devoted to my blog to learning her duties and responsibilities as a city clerk, the City of Lumberton may not be in such dire straits. There were elected officials that whole-heartedly supported her because they needed my blog shut down so the truth about their underhanded deeds would not be revealed to the public.

I’m still amazed that right before the trial, the board re-hired Melissa Nightengale. I later learned that she was needed to testify on behalf of her friend/neighbor. I guess Melissa was the replacement for Jay McGraw since he stopped coming to court after news of his shoplifting habits hit the news. Keep in mind that Melissa was allegedly terminated because she confronted Jay McGraw about allegedly stealing from one of the cash registers at city hall. Somehow, Merlene was able to convince the board that she was needed but she was able to convince the board that they needed security cameras more than police officers. It’s no secret that the board went along with Merlene because they wanted my blog shut down as well because they know I will eventually get to the truth.

While the board was concerned about my blog and my opinions, they never bothered to address the budget that was never amended in 2014. I hope they don’t think that matter is going to vanish. As you can see, I am finally getting responses from the Mississippi Ethics Commission and they will eventually address the other complaints. The board was so team Merlene that they didn’t bother finding out why the City of Lumberton had a lien on their sales taxes. For the past two years, the board voted to pay the bills but for some reason, the City of Lumberton defaulted on the MDEQ loan. It has been reported that former mayor, Ben Winston, voided the loan payment checks but his reluctance to adhere to the orders of the board was never reported to the board members. I guess that was one of those you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours deal between Ben and Merlene. But if the board members never address this egregious malfeasance of the city clerk, it could jeopardize their bonds. It’s going to be interesting to see what actions they will take to address this matter. I have so much more to say about the miserably incompetent city clerk, Merlene Wall, but I will have to address those matters in future blog posts because this post is longer than expected. Please stay tuned because you ain’t seen nothing yet. There’s more to come.