A misstep in municipal proceedings had the potential to threaten the city of Cullman and Cullman County Commissions plans to take over ownership of the county’s landfill.
While the majority of the 311 acres owned by Cullman Environmental lies in the unincorporated area of Cullman County, two small key parcels of land — one owned by Cullman Environmental located at the facility’s front gate and another owned by Ima Gean Chappell which intersects the road leading back to the facility’s dumping location — overlap with the town of Dodge City’s borders. According to city of Cullman Mayor Woody Jacobs, this prevented the city’s involvement in purchasing these areas according to State law.
The Dodge City Town Council revealed a pair of ordinances de-annexing the properties which had been presented and approved by the council during a series of executive sessions during its meeting on May 11. The executive sessions were held after the scheduled council meeting in January, February and April.
Town attorney Hugh Harris said he and Mayor Jason Burney had met with Jacobs and County Commission Chairman Jeff Clemons prior to the closed meetings to discuss the need for the ordinances. While he said they had not expressly discussed voting during executive sessions, discretion was encouraged due the fear of an outside for-profit company intercepting the purchase.
“They didn’t mention going into executive session, but they certainly wanted to keep it quiet because there was some dealings with some additional property that they didn’t want the price to go up on,” Harris said in May.
Harris originally defended the council’s authority to take action during a closed session by referencing section 7(a)(3) of the Alabama Open Meetings Act, which allows a governmental body to enter into a closed session to discuss legal options for pending litigation with its attorney. However, the section concludes by stating that “if any deliberation begins among the members of the governmental body regarding what action to take relating to pending or threatened litigation based upon the advice of counsel the executive session shall be concluded and the liberation shall be conducted in the open portion of the meeting or the deliberation shall cease.”
Harris recanted his position by the evening of May 12 and announced a special meeting would take place the following Monday to correct any unintentional wrongdoings.
A failure to take corrective action could have resulted in disrupting the negotiations of what Clemons described as “one of the biggest decisions the city and the county are going to face in my time as chairman.”
If a complaint had been filed by a citizen claiming to be impacted the actions taken during an executive session, any media organization, the Alabama Attorney General or the Cullman County District Attorney, courts would have the authority to invalidate any actions taken during the session.
During the meeting Monday, May 15, the council held a roll call vote on each ordinance. Following the valid adoption of the ordinances, they were re-filed by Harris with the Cullman County Probate Court and given an updated ordinance number.
“We were never trying to do anything wrong,” Harris said. “If we had been trying to keep everything a secret then we wouldn’t have discussed all of it during an open meeting.”