The Luther Town Board met in a Special Meeting Monday evening, the third attempt to conduct it’s regular November business, before its time for December business next week. You’ll recall there were the incidents of the “adrupt adjournment” and the “quorum, no quorum” previously.
Four of the five town trustees attended, enough elected officials to conduct business. As to the lingering issue of hiring a new town attorney, bids from five attorneys were unsealed. The trustees voted to consider hiring an attorney at a future meeting, and proceeded with this meeting, without an attorney hired to represent them or the town.
The next agenda item dealt with the issue of the board elected position of mayor.
Acting Mayor Lea Ann Jackson recommended tabling that issue as well, until a town attorney could help sort it out. It was during the October meeting within an agenda item for “new business,” that Jackson moved to oust then Mayor Birlene Langley from the position. The vote carried.
However, Monday night, Trustee Ron Henry said he disagreed with tabling the issue, “We are a democracy and majority rules. I think it should go forward (with Jackson as mayor). That’s my feeling on it.”
Jackson said her thought was to try to bring some decorum to the body.
“I think we’ve had some divisiveness that’s have kept us from being effective. In the end, it’s all about getting the town to move forward,” said Jackson. “As long as people have questions about who is the mayor, was it done correctly, it just kinds of keeps things stirred up. I feel like we can move better as a unit” with a town attorney weighing in on the issue.
At the end of the discussion, Langley said the issue needs to be handled correctly.
“It doesn’t matter to me. The only thing the mayor does that anybody else doesn’t do is read the agenda and if the news wants to come out for any reason, they want to talk to the mayor,” said Langley.
The issue was tabled.
Henry presented on another agenda item regarding the town gas pump, alleging some have helped themselves to the fuel.
“For a number of years we’ve had a lot of corruption in this little town. People taking gas, and all of this kind of nonsense.”
Jackson commented that with expenditures of $2,500 in fuel just this month, the issue should be addressed.
Fire Chief Jason Miller agreed to investigate a better security system to fuel town vehicles including police cars and fire trucks.
Other issues on the agenda included paying the bills, presenting a proposed budget, concerns Trustee Henry has over his personal safety at meetings and paying $700 for the town’s Christmas decorations.
Regarding the budget, a public meeting on the budget is tentatively scheduled 30 minutes prior to the December 8, 2015, meeting.
The Town Council’s actions in relation to removing Ms. Langley were incorrect. The attorney stated in the November meeting that after reviewing the law in relation to the vote in October that the actions taken were incorrect and were in fact illegal.
And so they fired him, other town councils in Luther have done this exact thing in the past. This is what OML-(The Oklahoma Municipal League) means when they advise sitting Board members to follow the council of their attorney. Ms. Langley should hire an attorney and sue the sitting Board members that conspired to do this. If for no other reason than to force them to follow the law and do what is required to legally govern the town. It is imperative that we as citizens, follow the law, if we stop doing so then society breaks down and we are left with anarchy. The towns people were given a good observation of that in the October Board meeting. In my opinion, the current town council has some very serious problems, quite honestly it is almost unbelievable;
Allegations of election fraud, abuse of power, over spending, incompetence, past Board members stealing from the town and endangering the public, Board members stealing gas, past employees stealing town funds, the list goes on and on. The sitting Board has an obligation to the citizens of this town to follow the law and govern both honesty and correctly. If they are not doing so then we as citizens need to unite and determine the best course of action to have them removed from office.
I want a like button for this ^^^