An emergency meeting of what was left of the Marineland Town Commission on Wednesday degenerated into a 40-minute verbal brawl involving the mayor, two attorneys, and members of the public as accusations of lies, improprieties, corruption and possible charter violations marred the legally dubious appointment of a commissioner.
The emergency meeting was called on Tuesday following the death over the weekend of Mayor Gary Inks. Acting Mayor Dewey Dew unilaterally appointed Jessica Finch commissioner, against the town attorney’s advice, even though both the meeting’s quorum and Dews’s authority to make the appointment were in question.
The three-member commission (the charter calls for six members) already had a vacancy since the forced resignation of Angela TenBroeck in February after her landlord, Atlanta developer Jim Jacoby, evicted her from her rental trailer in Marineland. That left Inks and Dew on the commission. Neither seemed in a hurry to fill the vacancy. Neither brought it up at meetings of the commission since February.
It’s not clear who called the Wednesday meeting. Town Clerk Deedee Welch so far has not complied with repeated requests for public records involving Dew’s communications on the matter and other documents. The intent of the meeting was clearer. Dew wanted to appoint Finch, a new resident in town and a former mayor of Welaka, a town of 700 people south of Palatka.
Before the emergency meeting, Dennis Bayer, the city attorney since the late 1990s but for a few years’ hiatus, had told Dew he did not think that Dew as mayor had the authority to single-handedly appoint a commissioner. Dew disagreed. He drafted his own personal attorney, Rick Rumrell, to counter Bayer–and brought Rumrell to the meeting.
Bayer issued a memo to outline his position, suggesting that the town seek an attorney general’s opinion on the appointment, just as it has on several matters in its history. The opinion would be issued within a week or two. The memo should have been part of the meeting’s documentation and back-up materials. It was not. Bayer requested that it be read into the record. It was not. FlaglerLive has repeatedly requested as a public record. The clerk is still suppressing it. (Bayer provided the memo to FlaglerLive Thursday afternoon.)
Dew had been the vice mayor. His automatic elevation to mayor with Inks’s death was not in question: the charter is clear about that.
At the beginning of Wednesday’s meeting, Dew referred to Rumrell and declared that “according to the town charter, again, since I am the sole commissioner left, I am the acting mayor, so this gives me the power to be able to appoint, to be able to–for a vacant seat. With that being said, I’d like to be able to swear-in myself as the new mayor, and then I would like to select and nominate Jessica Finch to be the new commissioner and vice mayor.”
He had not asked for Bayer’s opinion or opened the floor to public comment, or to other nominations. He had not discussed the possibility of taking applications for an appointment, as local cities routinely do when they have a vacancy.
Bayer was attending the meeting by zoom. He had tried unsuccessfully to delay the meeting to a later date, as he had to represent a client in Daytona Beach on Wednesday. “As town attorney, are you going to allow me to render my opinion or are you just going to listen to your private attorney?” Bayer asked.
Rumrell was among the audience of a dozen people. By overriding the town attorney, Dew was doing something that’s never been done before in local government, with one exception: in 2014, during contentious Flagler County Canvassing Board meetings, then-Elections Supervisor Kimberle Weeks brought in one, then two private attorneys to override County Attorney Al Hadeed, who was the legal representative of the Canvassing Board. Her maneuvers failed. Weeks the following year was indicted on a dozen felonies as a result of lawless conduct on and off the job and was eventually found guilty on seven of them (later reduced to four).
“I don’t think you have the legal authority” to appoint Finch, Bayer told Dew. “As I’ve requested several times this week, we need to get the opinion of the attorney general or some outside legal authority to render a decision upon this matter. I don’t see the need to rush the decision.”
Rumrell cut him off, repeatedly asking Dew to let him “respond” to Bayer. “I was not finished,” Bayer told Rumrell. “Go ahead. Interrupt me. Proceed.”
“I think that what you wrote was just absolutely incorrect,” Rumrell said, accusing Bayer of fabricating claims in his memo and misinterpreting the charter. “This is a legal issue. It does not require the Attorney General, it does not require a city attorney to be challenging the mayor on any of these matters.”
The disagreement hinges on the meaning of one paragraph, and particularly one word: “officer,” which is not defined in the charter. Nor does the charter address the situation the town faced after the death of Inks–how to convene a commission meeting without a quorum, and how to appoint a new commissioner without a majority.
The town operates on a mayor-commissioner form of government, giving the mayor administrative duties. The charter states: “The Mayor-Commissioner shall have the power to appoint persons to perform temporarily, the duties of any disabled or suspended officer or employee of the Town of Marineland.”
It’s open to interpretation. In the context of the charter, and as the term is generally defined in corporate and organizational charts, the term “officer” appears to mean such individuals as the town clerk or the town finance director. Rumrell and Dew interpret it as including commissioners. Bayer doesn’t agree, saying the charter is not clear on that.
Dew, remarkably, accused Bayer of wanting to “get rid of the town charter”–a mischaracterization, Bayer said, to no avail. “I believe you’re acting in ill intentions, and you’re not acting in the best interest of the town,” Dew told the town attorney. “We believe you’re acting not in the best interest of the town, and we do not appreciate it. I understand that you have your opinion, but we have went through this time and time again with you the last several days and explained how we are following the charter and what the charter says. So with that being said, we’re going to move forward.”
When he was allowed to speak later, Bayer summarized his memo: “There is nothing in the charter that allows the mayor acting without a quorum, to appoint a new commissioner,” he said. “The language that’s referenced on pages 11 and 12 [of the charter] says that the mayor can remove an officer employee without a city commissioner for a number of reasons. And then it says that the mayor can temporarily, temporarily appoint an officer, an employee. That doesn’t mean you can appoint a commissioner to fill that position that’s been vacated by a commissioner.”
Bayer said Rumrell accused him of having “blood on my hands” if he persisted, a statement Rumrell denied, though, in fact, Rumrell had used the very words: “It is my legal position that any failure to have the Town move forward would be blood on the hands of anyone placing a vice-mayor proceeding today for a Thursday meeting,” Rumrell had written Bayer, somewhat incoherently, in a May 20 email. There were accusations that the Finch appointment was part of a design to give Jacoby, the developer, an advantage in town (Jacoby, on zoom, stayed silent, as he usually does when he regularly attends the meetings on zoom), and on it went. The meeting was often incoherent, ugly and disturbing.
A few members of the public who spoke were incensed at the mayor’s manner and conduct of the meeting. “O y’all are allowed to swear in whoever you want without any public comment,” Jordan Adams said on zoom, one of several critical interjections during a meeting that Dew, not yet used to his role, chaired more imperiously than judiciously. He told Jordan that there would be a public comment period later, as indeed there was.
Dew proceeded with appointing Finch, who countered a claim by Adams that Finch was not a resident, a claim Finch walked back, but not without noting Finch’s recent arrival as suggestive of a plan weeks in the work to appoint her.
“When Mr. Dew asked me if I would consider it–I don’t know who the other residents are that are legal residents–I didn’t want to do it,” Finch said. “I just jumped out of a frying pan into a fire, and I can tell you, it’s a fire. You all don’t make me feel the least bit welcome, but I’m not here for that. I am here because this town has to have someone else to operate, and that’s the whole reason I’m here. It’s not because I want to take power. I understand it’s temporary. That’s fine.”
It was on those terms, in that atmosphere, that she was sworn-in.
Additional public comments did not dissipate the pall. Dew then moved on to other parts of the agenda as if it were any other commission meeting. But that was improper, too, an emergency meeting having to be constrained to the single matter justifying the emergency. Bayer, as town attorney, had to intervene to make the point, and the meeting was adjourned.
See the Bayer memo and other documents:
bayer-memo
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