I went to a Kings Mountain Emergency City Council meeting; I sent the city an invoice for my gas mileage and my time.

By Chuck Thompson | Opinion (Not the Sunday Column)

OPINION – I’ve covered about a dozen different counties and a plethora of city and town councils in my career, but Thursday night was the first time I left any governing body public meeting so angry that I sent them a bill for my mileage and my time.

They don’t have to pay it, it’s only a request, but I sent them one. (see photo below)

I can promise you that the city has probably spent $48 on a lot of dumber and more pointless things. Anyone seen the bathroom at the park or the walking track? No? Yeah, nobody else uses that bathroom either. The walking track? Yeah, nobody goes there either. Honestly, I doubt most people even know where the track is. But it’s nice that it is/ was being remodeled and will look nice and be there, if people choose to use it. There's nothing wrong with that; I honestly hope it gets used often.

Remember last fall when they discussed buying more hanging plants to put out on the sidewalks to bring more tourists to the downtown area? Yeah, hanging plants… that’ll do it…

The more you read, the less ridiculous my $48 reimbursement sounds.

Thursday, it was announced (or at least that’s when I found out like most of the public) that there was a special emergency meeting planned. Rumors abound said that a city council member was getting censured.

That’s still up for debate. If you were there, you understand why I say that’s “still up for debate.”

What choice did I have but to got to the meeting when they refused to livestream it and basically accomplished nothing that couldn’t have been a public zoom call?

And, the mayor was late, so we sat there in silence … in an awkward curiosity of “why this meeting was called and what will happen.” At 6:01 nothing... We all sat there in almost silence, to the sounds of tapping pens and the quiet clearing of throats until 6:05 and he walks in; didn’t bother saying “thank you for waiting” or “sorry I’m late folks” we just went straight into a meeting that accomplished basically nothing … a meeting that could have been added during the regular public meeting, last month or this month; and I honestly felt like I knew less when I left than when I arrived. 

City of Kings Mountain Attorney Clayward “Mickey” Corry explained, in very fine detail, the process of censuring someone. He stated that this was a “historic event” for Kings Mountain because it had never been done before, he needed to review the process.

Corry explained that a verbal accusation would not suffice and that he wanted all allegations written down and turned in by any or all council members by mid-next week.

This explanation of the process went on for a majority of the roughly hour-long meeting, as he educated the council that outside council was needed in help with this matter, that even the person they wished to censure – which was never named, not once – would have a vote on the issue.

He explained that while no censure could happen tonight, they could vote on moving forward with the process of censuring someone – again, no names named – and then that vote would open the proceedings to hold another meeting where discussion could be had on the allegations made against this unknown / unnamed person for whatever purposes are deemed reasonable for censureship, but no reasons were publicly stated.

So, after about half an hour of explaining this process, and answering questions, ranging from who can vote and who else can be censured if this begins, the council decided to take a vote on the opening of the censure of a completely unnamed individual with no reasons given to the public of why a censure would be voted on, only that it if they each felt in their opinion that is was based on ethical reasons, however, no “charges" were stated and yet the city council voted 5-2 to move forward with censure against an unnamed person without any reasons given to vote to move forward on this censure.

Imagine a grand jury deciding to open a trial case on a person without any charges but they all vote to begin a trial, with no person named and no charges. That’s how it felt to me.

The public was never officially nor unofficially made aware of who this person might be because no names were mentioned, not even after the vote to begin the censure process. So, Kings Mountain city council decided to move forward against a person not named for reasons not given to the public, during an emergency public meeting, which passed 5-2 (Heather Lemmond and Scott Neisler being the two no votes).

My request to be reimbursed $48 seems fair to me... It’s the taxpayers of Kings Mountain that will pay this bill / reimbursement, if the city actually pays it, but don’t get mad at me – I didn’t hold a meeting about an unnamed person to be censured for unstated reasons and refuse to stream it live online, so people had to show up, just to go home after nothing really happened – which for me was a two hour round trip from when I left my house until I got back home (a 30 minute drive each way).

The City of Kings Mountain obviously can afford it. How much do they pay the attorney and other staff for being there, at this 'special emergency meeting'? How much did it cost to turn the lights on for that meeting?

But let me be fair; they did accomplish the fact that they will now move forward with the possibility of censuring (an elected city council member) on accusations given at a later date, on a person named at a later time... and while we are mostly all aware this has to be done in public, it's not worth a hill of beans if they have to censor the censure because the public is required to be there. It's an insult to the voters and the residents.

At least they have that going for them.

After that meeting was over, I realized how much I value all of our school board members and wanted to give them each a hug. Compared to this, I honestly enjoy our school board meetings.

While this is an opinion piece, this event is an actual developing news story, which will be covered at a later date – possibly by a yet-to-be-announced newspaper, or maybe an online news outlet, who knows, on an unknown date about an unknown person facing unknown accusations - but hey, it’ll be public information, so don’t say these elected officials are not transparent because they are as clear as mud. They’re doing their best.

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Chuck Thompson is a reporter and columnist for The Shelby Independent.