City leaders spent a great deal of time criticizing the record keeping and overall operation of the city clerk’s office during Monday’s open board meeting.
From typographical errors within the minutes to vague answers surrounding routine tasks within the clerk’s office, the topic often arose during the Board of Mayor and Aldermen meeting.
Interim City Clerk Mario Edwards acknowledged many areas of concern, but he also said faulty software and other employees were behind some of the tasks not being completed in a timely manner.
The first few minutes of this week’s meeting were spent highlighting several errors surrounding the approval of the Oct. 24 board meeting. Mayor Diane Delaware pointed out over ten errors ranging from misspelled words to absent or incorrect statements intended to be on record.
“Is there something wrong with the software,” asked Ward 4 Alderman Aubry Brent Jr. “Why were all these corrections necessary? We have had two weeks since our last meeting, and the responsible party should have had these minutes corrected by now.”
Silence filled the board room after Brent’s question with no answers provided.
“But we don’t know...” he continued.
“You might want to ask the responsible party,” Delaware replied.
Edwards then replied that another employee within the city clerk’s office was in charge of completing those minutes.
“She got them to us very late,” Edwards said. “And we got them to the attorney (Sarah O’Reilly-Evans) very late.”
O’Reilly-Evans said she thought the minutes were delivered to her “extremely late this time.”
Ward 2 Alderman Dr. Jack Varner said he feels the city should not pay O’Reilly-Evans to proofread the board minutes. He has said in the past those responsibilities fall on the city clerk, who should be handling those operations.
“We are paying the lawyer to proofread the minutes,” Varner said.
“Our ordinance indicates that the city clerk is in fact responsible for the minutes of the meetings of the city of Yazoo City,” Delaware replied.
“We do not need to pay the lawyer to proofread the minutes of this city,” Varner continued.
Ward 3 Alderman Rev. Gregory Robertson said he has noticed typographical errors in the past.
“We have had other minutes that have had typos,” Robertson said. “My question now is are we to note all the typos. I have seem some, but I have chalked it up with being typos.”
Delaware she noted the recent typographical errors in the Oct. 24 board minutes because “there were simply so many.”
“I also noted quite a number of items that were not right,” she said. “It was things incorrect or left out of these meeting minutes. We said we wanted to be consistent in preparing minutes and noting things that should go in them. These items should have been in our minutes.”
And Delaware added that she was not satisfied with the reasons provided in those minutes being delivered so late.
“For reasons, as far as I’m concerned are not legitimate, the minutes were not completed until the Wednesday...two and half weeks after they were supposed to have been submitted,” she added.
Delaware then asked Edwards to read aloud the minutes from the Oct. 31 special call meeting.
“Minutes are supposed to be approved prior to moving into another meeting,” Delaware said. “We will hopefully never had to do this again.”
Edwards covered the Oct. 31 meeting actions including the consideration of the financial closing of the 2015-2016 fiscal year, the possible purchase of a used dump truck with the public works department and the purchase of a 15 passenger van to transport inmates from Madison County to work within with city.
Ward 1 Alderman Ron Johnson questioned why Edwards had to read those minutes, which took several minutes.
“They were not sent to you to be read,” Delaware replied. “Since these minutes were not in your package, the only way we can consider them is if they are read aloud.”
The approval of board minutes took close to 20 minutes to complete during Monday’s board meeting.
Over an hour later, approval of the claims docket took another turn with some board members posing more questions.
“We were supposed to have two claim dockets this time, one to close out last year,” Varner said. “I would like to know why that has not been brought forward.”
Edwards said amendments from Marshall Conico, which have not been delivered.
“Marshall is not our city clerk,” Varner replied.
Varner said there were unpaid bills from last year that had to be brought forward in order to close out the 2015-2016 fiscal year.
Delaware added that those bills had to be done by Oct. 31.
“If not done by Oct. 31...if the bills and obligations for (2015-2016) are not paid, the budget for the next fiscal year (2016-2017) should increase to consider those expenses because those funds remain in the general fund and must be shifted over,” Delaware explained. “That is the amendment that we have asked to come to this board today. It is not here.”
Varner said the bottom line is that some bills remain unpaid from months ago.
“They are not getting paid,” he said. And somebody has got to be responsible. That is as poor as a city can get to let a bill run three months behind.”
Delaware told Edwards the amendments surrounding the obligated funds will be brought to the Nov. 28 meeting.
“We want that list, and we want to amend our budget,” she said.
“We mess up enough accidentally,” Varner added. “We don’t want to purposefully screw it up.”
Edwards later admitted the issues could be related to faulty software.
“It’s a very simple thing,” Delaware said, after pushing Edwards to answer. “I don’t know why were are trying to hide it.”
