Things Get Heated at August 9 Village Council Meeting

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By DANAE KING

Record Herald Writer

Courtesy of the Weekly Record Herald, Printed on August 12, 2011

 

WEST MILTON – The council meeting became heated Tuesday night as Municipal Manager Tony Howard was accused of purposely  withholding information about a proposed charter change from the council.

 

The charter change would be for the procedure of the removal of the village manager.  As it reads now, section 5.02 says the council needs majority plus one vote to remove the  manager. Vice Mayor Dan Shelton wanted it changed to a majority vote, and wondered if that could be done as an ordinance.  Law Director Charles Sell said he would look into the request and report back to council.

 

On July 25, Sell sent Howard a memo that declared the issue had to be decided by ballot, not by ordinance.

 

“The primary problem is that the ordinance attempts to amend the Charter by itself. As stated above, council can only propose such an amendment to be placed on the ballot,” reads the memo.

 

The next day was the council workshop. Sell was absent and Howard did not tell the council the news of the need for a charter change to go to the ballot.

 

At the council meeting on Tuesday, Sell stated he gave instructions to Howard to give the information to council.   Howard said he didn’t know it was his responsibility to pass Sell’s information on to the council.
“There was a misunderstanding between me and the attorney,” Howard said the next day. “[The attorney] sent me a detailed memo telling me why the proposed ordinance was out of order, his understanding was that I was to make copies of that memo and distribute it to council members.  My understanding was that the council members were to get a copy of the memo … I just didn’t think I was supposed to distribute the memo, I thought that the attorney was going to do it.”

 

Shelton disagreed.

 

“The information was kept from us,” he said in a phone interview Thursday, “He knew what he was doing.”

 

Even though the memo was distributed at the council meeting on August 9, it was too late.  The deadline to put issues on the November ballot was August 10.  The space of one day was not enough time for the proper procedure to get a proposal on the ballot to change the charter..

 

“He’s deprived the voters to have something there they can make the decision on,” said Shelton.

 

Howard denied being instructed by Sell to tell the council.

 

“The attorney is adamant that he gave me those specific directions and I was rather adamant that I didn’t get those directions,” Howard said.

 

Directly after the scene about council being misinformed about the status of the charter amendment, council took a vote to ask Howard to resign.

 

The vote was four to two, with members Deb Miller and Jason Tinnerman voting against it.

“The reason that I voted no was because I said that we obviously have a problem.  We obviously need to fix this problem, but I don’t think a knee-jerk reaction is the best way to fix this problem. I think we need to take a little bit of time and really think about this and talk about
this and decide what’s the best way to fix this problem,” Deb Miller said later.

There was no further action taken on voting for Howard’s resignation and Howard declined comment about it.

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