Jackson Free Press

On Monday, the Jackson City Council voted down an ordinance renaming the Northside public library in honor of the late Jackson Advocate publisher Charles Tisdale, and voted for the city payroll despite Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. not providing some payroll information.

The council voted down the library ordinance with a 4-to-3 vote, with council members Chokwe Lumumba, Jeff Weill, Margaret Barrett-Simon and Tony Yarber voting against the measure and Kenneth Stokes, Charles Tillman and Council President Frank Bluntson voting in favor.

Monica Joiner, an attorney employed by the city, informed the council that the council may have violated the city's legal process used to rename a public building, namely the requirement that the city publish an advertisement for a public hearing 15 days in advance of the hearing. The advertisement is required to allow property owners within 150 feet of the disputed public building to attend and voice their opinions on the name change.

"A request for a public hearing was requested on May 20, 2008, however, there is no record that this particular item was actually published before a public hearing was held," Joiner said, and advised the council against approving the ordinance.

Stokes, the Ward 3 councilman who now runs the planning committee—which held the ordinance for more than a year—said he remembered attending the hearing and wanted the vote to go on regardless.

"It's a bad day for Jackson, Mississippi, that this has happened," Stokes said.

Yarber advised the council to hold the vote on the assurance that the issue could be properly addressed after all requirements were met.

"Tisdale is probably one of the most brilliant minds. Even when I read his columns, now I have to read them again because I didn't follow them the first time," Yarber said. "I think we should do due diligence at this time, and if the documentation is in I see no problem with holding the vote again. If the procedures have not been followed, then let's follow them and bring it back the right way. That way nobody can come back and usurp what we've done after we've followed the letter of the law."

Bluntson questioned why this issue had not been argued at the committee meeting.

"Why would you vote something out of the committee meeting if you hadn't followed all the rules?" Bluntson asked. "These things should have been asked at the committee meeting, and now here we are ready to vote," he added.

Barrett-Simon could not answer, but said she would take city counsel's advisement to heart.

"We know that there is no proof that there has been any publication, so I don't know why this is a cloudy legal question," Barrett-Simon said. "To me it's apparent that the requirements have not been met for the renaming of something as important as a library."

Weill, who represents Ward 1, where the disputed library is located, added that legal requirements also demanded that the city notify council members affected by the name change, and that the zoning administration provide tax maps and other documents.

Regardless, Bluntson and Stokes pushed for the vote and watched it fail.

In a following matter, Johnson did not comply to council requests to provide a weekly list of employees and their salaries before the council's payroll vote. He informed the council during Monday's work session that he had no intention of providing the information, arguing that compiling the data was "onerous."

He stuck to his guns Tuesday, saying the council was stepping into the powers and duties of the mayor's office.

"We will provide that information as we make budget reports to the council, but we have people spending hours putting these reports together providing 400 names and salaries to the council every week, and every other week we provide 1,900 names. We don't think that's an appropriate use of administrative time, and that's why we've decided not to do it," Johnson said.

Barrett-Simon suggested that the council and mayor's office needed a "comfort level" with one another after the council spent four years contending with the administration of former Mayor Frank Melton. Former Ward 2 Councilman Marshand Crisler expressed fears at that time that the council was approving the pay of alleged felons on the city payroll, which Crisler said represented a legal liability for council members who approved it.

Barrett-Simon told Johnson that "there are a lot of numbered examples, before you came back," of issues that made the council nervous.

Johnson replied that he wanted to allay the council's fears through a different means.

"It would be helpful to me to understand why the report is needed. Is it because you're trying to figure out who's being paid or if someone is being paid illegally? Somebody needs to tell me what the problem is so that I can work out how to resolve it rather than expending this energy," Johnson said.

The council approved the city payroll with a 6-to-1 vote.

Previous Comments

ID

150828

Comment

I'm at a loss to understand why providing a name of city employees would take hours to compile. Doesn't Jackson have a central payroll office that can simply print a list of employees on the payroll? Curious council members should investigate how exactly the list is produced. If it's as simple as a keystroke, there's no reason the mayor's office should withhold the information.

Author

Brent Cox

Date

2009-08-13T07:05:30-06:00

ID

150829

Comment

As for the library, the Council ultimately voted to reconsider the name change in the future *after* all open meetings requirements had been met. I was impressed by the council members who said they wanted the library renamed, but voted 'no' in the interest of complying with open meetings laws. How refreshing is that?

Author

Brent Cox

Date

2009-08-13T07:10:43-06:00