Recently Yarrow Bay/Oak Pointe spent money on a favor for the mayor to file a lawsuit against the city of Black Diamond, which she was glad about. Since when does a mayor welcome a lawsuit against her own city? When she thinks it will force the council majority to vote the way the mayor orders them to vote.

The mayor told the press earlier this year that one of our newly-elected council majority “has to go” and invited the lawsuit by having an attorney with no municipal experience say that our city staff can’t work evening hours for city meetings and that the council majority can’t call “special meetings.” The law clearly says they can!

The mayor ordered Council member Pepper removed from a meeting in June after the mayor refused to call on Pepper for the first 90 minutes. The mayor thought if Pepper left, the mayor would be able to break ties and ram votes through if she could just get rid of one of the council majority.

At recent meetings, every time there is a vote called that the mayor wants to prevent, she actually calls a recess and has two police order the room cleared! She ordered me to turn off my camcorder or she would confiscate my tape.

The mayor believes that she’s in control/charge of the council meetings being the city is a strong-mayor city but that doesn’t mean that she’s to dominate and verbally abuse the three majority councilmembers Morgan, Pepper and Weber and allowing council minorities Edelman and Deady to join in the verbal attacks and insult their integrity. The mayor is to “preside” while the three majority council members Morgan, Pepper and Weber do have legal rights to make motions and take votes without being maliciously interrupted or interrogated!

The mayor and two minority council members need to realize the true order of city council meetings and comply, then the city business will actually be accomplished the way the majority council members have tried “legally” to do all year long without malicious interference from the mayor and two minority council members.

The intent of Mayor Benson and two minority council members all year has been to make the three majority council members look bad to cause one of them to resign their seat, then the mayor can go back to having a council that will obey like puppets for Yarrow Bay/Oak Pointe!

Judy Baxley

Black Diamond