Troy City Council: Stalemate - No quorum, no business

For the second consecutive meeting, the Troy City Council has failed to meet for lack of quorum.

An April 3 Work Meeting could not be held for lack of a quorum. For that gathering, Council members Fran McCully and Phil Fisher were not in attendance, which left two members — Crystal Denton and Joe Arts — and Mayor Don Banning one person shy of accomplishing the mandatory minimum to conduct city business. For that meeting, Fisher was called into duty at his work at Troy Mine. McCully sent an e-mail that said she would not attend. No reason was given in the e-mail for her absence.

Then for the last scheduled regular meeting of April 18 — just last week — the City Council could not convene, again, for lack of a quorum.

This time, no message from Fisher, but there was an advisory from McCully who said she might not be in attendance because her husband had a out of town doctor’s appointment. The message said she might not be back. However, it was reported that she was in town at the prescribed time of the meeting.

A call to McCully for an explanation was not returned.

The repeated absences of City Council members has prompted The Western News to seek a tally of City Council attendance at those meetings. Here is an assessment of the members and their attendance at the called 17 meetings since Jan. 1:

• Mayor Don Banning: Two absences, 88 percent.

• Joe Arts: No absences, 100 percent.

• Crystal Denton: One absence, 94 percent.

• Fran McCully: Four absences, 76 percent.

• Phil Fisher: Three absences, 82 percent.

It should be noted, all the absences have come since early February, when McCully filed a lawsuit seeking a recall of Banning. The City Council has had 13 scheduled regular, special and work meetings since the filing of that lawsuit. Both have missed all but one meeting since Feb. 14 concerning the non-renewal contract of City Attorney Charles Evans.

“Basically, we’re at a standstill,” Banning said. “We’re not getting the city’s business done,” said Banning who accounted his two missed meetings to hospitalization. “This is petty. They need to put this behind them and get down to doing what’s right, what the people of Troy have elected them to do.”

“I understand the one meeting Crystal Denton missed is because she had the flu,” Banning said.

In the meantime, the Troy Municipal Court is without a city attorney and cases brought to the court by virtue of Troy’s Police Department are not being prosecuted. Some of these cases are on the cusp of being dismissed because the City Council cannot achieve a quorum to vote on hiring a city attorney.

McCully has filed the lawsuit seeking a recall of Banning’s election as mayor.

Last Monday, April 16, Banning filed a motion for a stay of judgment in the case until the case could be heard by the Montana State Supreme Court. If granted, the stay would delay the election, which is scheduled for May 24.