Following a 3-3 vote on a Planning Commission appointment Tuesday evening, Columbus City Council decided to table the issue because of confusion over whether city employees can be appointed to the board.
The confusion came after Ward 2 Councilman Joseph Mickens pointed out that one of the applicants, Jermaine Shanklin, is a city employee. Shanklin told The Dispatch he was an employee with the parks and recreation department for six months before switching to the public works department about a month ago.
The other candidate, Jarvis Fenster, is a local businessman who has been the owner of local trucking company Aden’s Express for 10 years and of Columbus-based Factory Direct Home Furnishings for five years, according to his application.
Mickens voted against Shanklin’s appointment, arguing the city has never appointed employees to any board and should not start.
“This is a road I don’t think the council needs to start going down,” he said. “I don’t think we need to start putting our city employees on boards. … We’ve got other people who came up here and wanted to get on a board. For whatever reason, we didn’t vote for it.”
Council members Pierre Beard of Ward 4 and Stephen Jones of Ward 5 voted with Mickens. The other council members voted in favor of Shanklin’s appointment.
The Planning Commission, created by the city’s Code of Ordinances, is a nine-member board that makes recommendations to the council on zoning issues. The appointment Tuesday would have filled a vacancy on the board left by former commissioner Quincy Harris, who resigned in July due to his military assignment to Afghanistan, city documents show. The appointee would finish Harris’ three-year term, which expires in November 2022.
Instead of breaking the tie, Mayor Robert Smith recommended putting off the decision until it is clear whether the city has appointed any employees to any board in the past, or whether the action would violate city policies.
City Attorney Jeff Turnage told The Dispatch after the meeting he is not aware of a written city policy that forbids the appointment of city employees onto city boards, including the Planning Commission. He said he does not think there is any legal issue associated with such appointments.
However, he said he does not recall any appointments of that nature in the city’s history.
One case that comes close, Turnage said, is the appointment of Parks and Recreation Director Greg Lewis to the Columbus Housing Authority (CHA) board, which is funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide housing to low-income families. Lewis was re-appointed to the board in 2018 to serve another five-year term.
Turnage said the CHA board is autonomous and does not receive funding from the city. The nature of Lewis’ appointment, he said, is different.
“I’m 95 percent sure that I got both an ethics (commission) opinion and an Attorney General’s opinion that Greg Lewis’ service does not violate the ethics of the government or any sort of conflict of interest law,” he said.
Multiple council members said Tuesday night they are under the impression City Planner George Irby has been a longtime member on a city board. Irby told The Dispatch he is not sitting on any city board as a voting member but served on the Golden Triangle Airport Authority board for 12 years until he stepped down in 2009. The board consists of five members respectively from the cities of Columbus and Starkville as well as the counties of Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Clay.
That board, Turnage said, is merely an advisory board and is not created by the city’s code of ordinances. It is an “unofficial” board and is not similar to the Planning Commission in question.
Ward 6 Councilman Bill Gavin, who voted for Shanklin’s appointment, told The Dispatch he did not know Shanklin was a city employee when he voted. To be consistent with the city’s tradition, he said, he has changed his mind.
“It changed my decision,” Gavin said. “I always kept that in mind that … (city) employees should not serve on the boards and so forth.”
Beard told The Dispatch he doesn’t know what the policy is, but he voted for Fenster simply because his resume stood out to him.
“We are dealing with a board that has to do with bringing businesses … to Columbus,” he said. “I’m pretty sure (Fenster) knows the legalities of opening businesses and operating businesses.”
FEMA grant for community shelter
The council also unanimously gave Hazard Mitigation Manager Joe Dillon permission to apply for a new round of grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Although it is unclear how much the city could receive from FEMA, the funds, if approved, could help the city build a community shelter on Southside near Mississippi University for Women (MUW) and Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science (MSMS), Dillon said.
The city has already been awarded $65,000 to build 11 shelters at its five fire stations, Dillon said. The shelters, each capable of holding 15 people, will provide a safe roof for first responders so they can then rescue others, he said. The city is now waiting for permission from FEMA, which the agency can grant after ensuring the shelter constructions will not result in water pollution, he said.
The new round of funding, Dillon said, is to provide shelters for public use. The reason he’s prioritizing Southside, he said, is because of the density of the student population from the two campuses.
“You’ve got a lot of houses over there that are rental properties that students use from The W,” he said. “Every part of the town is important to us, but we have to pick one to begin with.”
The council also unanimously voted to re-appoint Dillon as the hazard mitigation manager at $92 per hour with a cap of $10,000 for the year.
The grants will require a 12.5-percent match from the city, Dillon said, with FEMA reimbursing the city for 75 percent of the total cost and Mississippi Emergency Management covering 12.5 percent. His salary as the hazard mitigation manager will also be reimbursed at that rate.
Yue Stella Yu was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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