On the eve of the anniversary of the Ferguson grand jury decision, political warfare broke out in the neighboring municipality of Jennings, the other city where Darren Wilson once wore a badge and gun.
By the end of a stormy city council meeting on Tuesday, November 23, the council had started an impeachment process against the mayor, a contractor hired by the mayor had been shown the door and relieved of his city hall keys by the police captain, and the mayor had vowed to pay the contractor with city funds anyway and to defend her elected position.
The stage for the meeting was set by a citizen action to recall Mayor Yolonda Fountain Henderson, which led council members to plan an impeachment process. In turn, the mayor made a series of defensive moves before the council meeting. She recorded a robo call asking residents to decline to sign the recall petition, she tried to rule that no new item (such as her impeachment) could be added to the council agenda, and she moved to suspend two council members, Rodney Epps and Carol Epps, a husband and wife, who favor her impeachment.
Council member Rodney Epps, who moved to initiate the impeachment process, said it was due to “incompetence and creating a hostile work environment.”
The “hostile work environment” allegation relates to two ongoing situations that came up at the meeting.
A resident pointed out that the first thing the newly elected mayor did was file suit against just about everyone in city government, including herself, for previously passing legislation that locked city staff into fixed positions and prevented the new mayor from hiring her own people with known “loyalty and competence,” according to the March 18 filing on her behalf by attorney Elbert Walton.
However, she issued a city contract to a consulting company owned by Tony Weaver, her former colleague (along with Walton) at the Northeast Ambulance and Fire Protection District. Since this agreement was made without council approval, the city attorney advised that the contract was void.
Weaver attended the November 23 meeting and sat with other city employees and contractors, including Police Captain Jeff Fuesting, at the staff table. Council member Rodney Epps moved for Weaver to be relieved of his keys and escorted from the building, and with council majority support, Fuesting rose, walked to the other end of the staff table, and did just that.
The mayor, at that point, said that Weaver would be paid anyway. City attorney Mary Jamis Kresyman read the law that the mayor would violate if she paid Weaver with city money, along with the sentencing guidelines, which include up to one year in jail.
If the mayor controlled the board majority, then Rodney Epps and Carol Epps, the two council members for Ward Four, would have been shown the door instead of Weaver. She moved to suspend them pending an investigation into whether they misrepresented their terms of employment in an application for health coverage through the city.
That matter was handled in executive session early in the meeting – favorably to the accused council members, who remained on the council for Rodney Epps to lead all of the actions against the mayor that ensued. The mayor said she would now take her allegations “to the authorities.”
Unlike the crisis in Ferguson, the police department was not made an issue at the meeting. Jennings disbanded its police department and contracted with St. Louis County Police in March 2011, following a corruption scandal (and other complaints similar to those that would surface in Ferguson in 2014).
The mayor favors reconsidering the police contract with the county. Given that her suit attempts to give her control over hiring all city department heads, her political opponents expect that she also aims to reconstitute a municipal police force run by “individuals and appointees of her choice,” in the language of her March 18 filing.
But at the November 23 meeting, the only police business was that Captain Fuesting graduated his first Team Leadership Academy class. This initiative was hailed as being “very well received by youth and families” in the Department of Justice report on the St. Louis County Police Department – a rare moment of praise from the DOJ in North County.
The mayor personally shook the hand of every youth as the group was awarded with certificates by the police captain.
