Censure motion defeated

May 20, 2008 12:19 am

— By Debby Woodin
dwoodin@joplinglobe.com
City employees who voiced complaints to the city’s human resources director about council member and former Mayor Jon Tupper would have to testify before the City Council for the council to determine what action, if any, to take.
The council, at its meeting Monday night, set a June 23 hearing for Tupper on allegations that he harassed two parks department employees and told them he was trying to oust the parks director, Jerry Calvin.
Tupper, asked after the meeting if he wanted to respond to the allegations, replied, “Nope, you heard everything I had to say in there,” referring to the council chambers.
Before the council discussed what to do about the city employees’ allegations, a motion by Councilman Bill Scearce to place a resolution of censure on the agenda failed.
Scearce had the city attorney write up the resolution contending that Tupper had admitted at a work session last Monday that he sold baseball uniforms to an organization that leased ball fields from the city.
Tupper, when asked at last week’s session by Scearce if he had supplied uniforms, said he had. He then added, “So what?” Tupper said he sold the uniforms after the vote on the lease. Scearce responded that sounded like a “tit for tat” deal.
Scearce on Monday night offered a motion to place the resolution on the agenda.
Tupper told the council that he brought documentation with him to the meeting to show that the customer to which he sold items was a team, not the entire league. He said he sold the team several items on March 27 and sold uniforms on April 10. He said he sold parent T-shirts on April 21.
The vote on the lease was March 17. “On March 17, when this lease came before the council, I had had no contact with these individuals and not sold them anything,” Tupper told the council.
Until about two weeks after the vote, “I had not collected anything, and nobody had paid me for any service,” Tupper said. “Therefore I think this is unfounded, and I’ve been wrongly accused for an entire week.”
Councilman Benjamin Rosenberg seconded Scearce’s motion, saying he thought the council should discuss the issue of whether a conflict exists.
Tupper had said that council members would have to be unemployed or retired if they were not allowed to do business with anyone who had ever come before the council.
Councilman Morris Glaze said he was concerned about the way the accusation arose.
Mayor Gary Shaw said he believes a procedure should be set for how council members should raise allegations against other council members.
Rosenberg said the motion was only to place the resolution on the agenda and that the council should not yet be debating the merits of the case.
The motion to place the resolution on the agenda for official action failed, with Melodee Colbert-Kean, Morris Glaze and Phil Stinnett voting against it, and Tupper abstaining. Rosenberg, Shaw, Scearce, Mike Woolston and Jim West voted in favor of it, but it takes six votes to place an item on the agenda.
Afterward, Stinnett said he did not vote in favor of placing the issue on the agenda because he believed Tupper had “cleared himself.” Shaw said he voted in favor of placing it on the agenda, “but I would have voted it was a non-issue” on the merits.
The mayor then announced a number of city board and commission appointments. After he finished, Rosenberg asked what should be done about a memo the council received from the city attorney regarding allegations by some city employees against Tupper.
“You tell me,” Shaw responded.
“It does make charges,” Rosenberg said, though there was no discussion about what the memo contained.
Tupper asked for City Attorney Brian Head to clarify whether the issue was “an employee matter or a council matter.” Head said he had researched the law on that question and found that it “does not rise to the level of a personnel issue that would be closed” to the public.
Tupper said the complaints have been known to the city staff since March 7 but that he had known about them for only three days. “I would at least like to get the courtesy of time to prepare a defense,” he said.
Rosenberg asked when Tupper would be ready to discuss the allegations. Tupper said he would be prepared to mount his defense in about 30 days, though “from where I sit, I don’t have anything to be sorry about.”
When council members were discussing how to conduct a hearing on the issue, Stinnett said he wanted to see the accusers face-to-face. “I want to have the opportunity to question those individuals,” he said.
Council members received copies of a memo from the human resources director to the city manager with statements taken from the city employees. They evidently also received a memo containing legal advice on the issue of whether the allegations amounted to violations by Tupper.
Tupper told the council that the memo from the human resources director “has only one side of the story.”
The council agreed that some of the documents are closed to the public, saying they involve attorney-client privilege.

Hearing slated

The Joplin City Council agreed to hold a hearing June 23 on the complaints against member Jon Tupper.