Sparks fly at City Council meeting

Tensions between Libby City Council members Gary Neff and Allen Olsen and City Attorney Richard A. Payne and Mayor Doug Roll came to a head during the City Council meeting Monday night. The heated moments came during discussion of the council’s agenda and the mayor’s decisions to exclude requested items from the council’s agenda.

Neff and Olsen have both openly criticized the mayor’s performance with regard to the preparation of the council’s agenda. Olsen sent an email to Payne Dec. 1, asking for a clarification of the city charter and Montana code with relation to the mayor’s responsibility to arrange the agenda.

“Mr. Payne, on Nov. 2 you stated that you had read the state law, Libby municipal code, city charter and the City Council rules,” Olsen wrote. “You also said that the mayor prepares and arranges the agenda at the request of a single council person. I have read the council rules and the city charter and they both say the mayor arranges, but no where have I found the word prepares, so can you point me to the specific law that says prepares, in either the State Law or Libby’s Municipal Code. Since four council people are asking to have a meeting to discuss the attorney contract, before our Dec. 7 meeting, and as of 4:30 on Dec. 1, all of the requests have gone ignored by the mayor, we are asking for a legal advice from the city attorney’s law firm, to confirm the laws you have mentioned.”

Payne responded in an email dated Dec. 3, citing a previous ruling and accusing Olsen of wasting city time and resources. 

“For clarification I have attached my Nov. 2 response to your original inquiry,” Payne wrote. “In that response I shared my understanding that you had sought and received an opinion from a prior City Attorney on the topic of who may place items on the council agenda and asked you to let me know if that was not the case. By your silence on that issue I must assume my understanding is correct. So it appears by your most recent email below you are simply ‘shopping’ for a legal opinion on the topic more to your liking. While that is a waste of city resources, what I find more troubling is your attempt to mislead other council members on what is a very simple and straightforward issue. I will provide a more formal written opinion when time allows, but the plain wording of the City Council Rules of Procedure provide as follows:

Part II, Section 1 of the Libby City Council Rules of Procedures states: ‘The presiding officer of the council shall be the Mayor who shall: a. Preside at all city council meetings. b. Arrange the meeting agenda...

“Part V, Section 1 adds, “The presiding officer and/or Clerk of the Council shall prepare the council agenda . . .”

“Therefore, under the rules the City of Libby has adopted, it is the Mayor who ‘arranges’ and ‘prepares’ the agenda for City Council meetings. The city rules could not be more clear. The alternative you seem to suggest, that any single Council member may place items on the agenda, would allow a single member to add hundreds of agenda items to every meeting, effectively ‘filibustering’ the Council into inaction.” 

Olsen and Neff argued that it is the mayor’s prerogative to arrange the agenda items, as requested by council members, not the mayor’s right to unilaterally determine which items should be placed on the agenda.

Olsen pressed Payne to explain his email in the public forum, which Payne declined to do, reiterating the promise made in his email to issue a formal legal opinion on the matter “when time allows.”

Following the exchange, Olsen made a motion for the city to fire Payne as City Attorney. The motion went without a second and died.

After the discussion regarding agenda items, three new items of business were considered by the council. The body voted unanimously to approve the new contract with the city employees’ union. Under the new contract, the union employees are to receive a 1.6 percent pay increase for this fiscal year and the same increase next year. Union representative Kenny Rayome, Jr. said the union initially requested a three percent raise for the current fiscal year, with an inflation-based cost of living increase next year. Instead, there will be a total of 3.2 percent during the two-year term of the new contract.

“The union is 100 percent satisfied with the new union contract,” Rayome said. “We asked for three percent and got 1.6 percent this year and 1.6 percent next year. We are happy with the way the process was handled in the end.”

The council also unanimously approved the appointment of Audray McCollum as City Clerk/Treasurer, to replace Glena Hook who retired in October.

The final item on the agenda for new business was the consideration of a code of conduct for elected and appointed city officials. Roll placed the item on the agenda in response to the request of Neff and Olsen, who wrote a code of conduct into the proposed contract for the City Attorney. Roll said the idea was based upon a similar code adopted by the City of Kalispell, and he felt it was important that all city officials, not just the attorney, be held to ethical standards. Roll requested an ad-hoc committee of the council be formed to draft and present a code of conduct, but the idea failed when no council members stepped up to be a part of the suggested committee.