The tension between city leaders was brought to the table this week with Mayor Diane Delaware apologizing for the city council’s recent conduct.
The Board of Mayor and Aldermen has made headlines over the last month with public arguments, parking lot confrontations and heated disagreements.
“Clearly, I sit here at this meeting and it’s on tape and listen to a lot of information that goes back and forth about me on a regular basis,” Delaware said. “And I take that with a smile, and I always say... ‘thank you very much.’”
Delaware, the only female on the city council, said she has worked with men all her life.
“I have spent my life working with men,” she said. “I worked at Xerox Corporation. My responsibility was, during those early 70s, was to understand that I was an oddity in the workplace at that time. I worked in something called the bullpen. In the bullpen, there had never been any cows. Just bulls.”
Delaware said she had to learn to work with men and also get those men to work with and for her. She added that over three decades, she worked all around the country and world.
“And nothing like this has ever happened,” she said, scanning over the board. “I am in an odd situation, and I have to find the skills necessary for the new environment that I work.”
However, Delaware said she is not accustomed to the recent interactions among city leaders.
“We can disagree,” she said. “We can scream. We can holler. We can do a lot of things with each other, and that happens in this meeting often. But what we cannot do is threaten each other.”
Delaware released a statement to The Yazoo Herald last week surrounding a recent confrontation with Alderman Aubry Brent Jr. in the parking lot of the police department. The altercation required a police officer to stand between the two city leaders.
Delaware said Brent “threatened” her, and she would not accept such behavior.
However, Brent said Delaware initiated the confrontation following a board meeting where he didn’t vote to her liking.
“I can accept any name you call me,” she said. “It has been happening since the day I took office. The first meeting (Alderman Dr. Jack) Varner asked me leave a meeting so that they could take a vote without me. I thought I was supposed to do that. And I actually stepped out of the room. This has been happening from the start.”
Delaware said she wants the board to do well, adding that they owe the citizens to do the job they were elected to do.
“I am just a worker bee,” Delaware said. “I believe in doing my job, all day, everyday. But I won’t accept violence or aggressiveness. I am hoping there are some men out there who are going to come and protect me if somebody tries to jump on me.”
Brent said he had planned to comment on the matter surrounding the confrontation between he and Delaware.
“But I chose to take the high road like Mrs. Hillary Clinton,” Brent said. “I going to try to go high while others go low. With any board you have, whenever you have all the individuals around that board rubber-stamping everything, not questioning and not disagreeing, then you don’t have much of a board. A true board will have differences of opinion.”
Brent said he would like to move forward while making the best decisions for the city.
