A very pregnant mayor Chelsea Dickey spent Tuesday night arguing with council members who continued to press her to pay a $260 bill they said she had incurred for going to a Main Street organization conference earlier this year.
The council had instructed her at its July meeting to pay the bill, but she has not done so, and at last month’s meeting, council member Bonnie Whitaker asked that the issue be included on the council’s November agenda.
Dickey, who stood during a few portions of the meeting, apparently shifting to become more comfortable after nine months of pregnancy, noted afterwards that Tuesday was her due date for delivery of her second child, but she endured the three-and-half-hour meeting without going into labor.
Meanwhile, council members who had been irritated since July with her failure to pay the bill ultimately voted, 3-2, to garnish her council pay in order to cover the bill. Dickey and councilman Jim Young voted against; Whitaker, councilman Bobby Chin, and mayor pro tem Ricky Hall voted in favor.
Dickey kept insisting that she wanted the council to have a consistent policy about such issues and continually raised the example of councilman Chin, who she said had signed up for a conference costing $400, but never attended and wasn’t required to pay back the money that the city spent for his registration.
Much of the discussion Tuesday revolved around the order in which to handle the issues. Most council members wanted a resolution of the council’s previous July action requiring Dickey to pay for the conference – though some appeared to agree that a long-term policy would be appropriate – before dealing with a broader issue of adopting a formal policy.
The Main Street program provides “downtown strategic economic development planning and project-specific technical assistance to communities in the Main Street program” across the state, by its own description.
The Main Street program touts itself as building “local capacity for downtown revitalization, small business development, and rehabilitation of historic properties.”
Chin, in particular, has stressed that Graham’s downtown is already thriving and doesn’t need what he says would be an expensive Main Street membership and other associated costs.
In July and again this week, Chin and Whitaker alternately stressed that the city council had explicitly withdrawn all city funding and participation in the Main Street program and had vetoed accepting a $1,500 donation from Graham businesswoman Jane Albright to fund Dickey’s attendance at the meeting; as a consequence, Dickey was responsible for paying her own way at the conference, they concluded.
A long background of previous emails between Dickey, city manager Megan Garner, and assistant city manager Aaron Holland included in the council’s materials pointed to the fact that if the council didn’t authorize the trip, Dickey was told she would be required to reimburse the city.
In March, the council had voted, 3-2, with Dickey and Young opposed, to reject a donation of $1,500 that had been designated for Dickey’s cost to attend the conference.
“What we made clear,” Whitaker said in July and repeated this week, “was we didn’t think accepting donations for council travel was a good precedent to set. The mayor was made fully aware there was no funding for her to attend the conference.”
In July, Whitaker had initiated a mandatory recusal, adopted 4-1 with all council members other than Dickey voting for it, requiring the mayor to abstain from participating in the discussion about the $260 invoice.
After this week’s discussion on the issue resumed, Whitaker and Young both questioned whether it was a conflict of interest for Dickey to be participating in the discussion.
For her part, Dickey repeatedly stressed that she wanted a consistent, written policy that would apply to all council members.
The almost 30-minute discussion clearly exasperated some members of the council who considered that the matter had been settled in July.
“This whole [agenda] item is a waste of time,” said Young.
At one point, Dickey sought guidance from city attorney Bob Ward, who had talked with the League of Municipalities. Ward said the League would not provide any guidance in writing.
As for his own legal opinion, Ward wanted the council to go into closed session so that he could state it, but council members noted that would not be legal under the state’s Open Meetings Law.
Ultimately, the council voted unanimously to allow Ward to state his legal opinion on the controversy.
Ward said that in his role, he is the attorney to the council as a whole, and could not participate in giving advice on one council member versus another.
He suggested that “outside counsel” would need to be hired in such a case.
The council did ultimately vote, 4-1 (with Chin opposed), for Dickey’s motion to ask the staff to bring back a policy proposal for the future.
