By Derek Spellman
dspellman@joplinglobe.com
NEOSHO, Mo. — A member of the Neosho City Council has renewed her call to fire the city manager amid a contentious debate about whether she should be charged for copies of certain city records.
Councilwoman Heather Bowers had formally moved to fire City Manager Jan Blase in September, alleging there were discrepancies between what city officials told her last year or possibly in 2007 about whether Blase was receiving a car allowance. That motion died for lack of a second.
Bowers on Tuesday night suggested that the city fire Blase and use his salary to help provide additional city staff, including in the city clerk’s office, which has been gathering materials she has requested. She did not raise that suggestion as a formal motion during the council meeting, although that didn’t mean she wasn’t serious, she said.
“I am absolutely serious,” she told the Globe on Wednesday.
‘Destroy me professionally’
Meanwhile, both Blase and Bowers acknowledged that they have tape-recorded each other during one-on-one meetings in Blase’s office in the past few months.
Blase on Wednesday said he recorded one conversation just after Bowers’ effort to fire him in September, alleging that she has mounted a personal effort “to destroy me professionally.” He said — and Bowers confirmed to the Globe — that he taped the session openly with Bowers’ knowledge beforehand.
Bowers said that in recent months, she has spoken to Blase in his office more than the two times he cited, and that she has tape-recorded two of those conversations. She said she started recording them after Blase recorded the first meeting.
Blase has characterized Bowers’ criticism and accusations as increasingly personal.
“I think that has been obvious from the very beginning,” he said.
Bowers denies that the criticisms are personal. She said they pertain to Blase’s performance, which she criticized even before she was elected to the council in April. Those criticisms have included his management of contracts, including the work on the senior center last year and some of the work downtown. She also criticized the approval of code changes and the decision to close several railroad crossings.
Documents
Some of the tension spilled into Tuesday night’s discussion about whether Bowers should be charged for copies of city records, some going back 10 years. The council had previously instructed City Clerk Audrey Covey to bring requests for fee waivers to the council at her discretion.
Bowers has requested copies of documents that include several years worth of contracts between the city and the Neosho Area Chamber of Commerce; contracts between the city and its consultant for a recent mold removal project at City Hall; and documents pertaining to any contracts and payments between the city and Darrell Gross, of Gross and Associates, a consulting firm based in Springfield that is helping with the creation of a proposed Transportation Development District.
The cost of the copies themselves is about $14.
“My concern is the quality of the people they are hiring and the cost of the contracts,” Bowers said Wednesday, referring to the city’s use of consultants.
Gross’ work with the city goes back 10 years, dating to consulting work on the city’s tax increment financing district that was created in 1999, and including other TIF projects since, according to documents provided in the City Council packet.
Bowers said that past is pertinent to the present, contending that the record of what the city agrees to pay in contracts versus what is ultimately paid is germane when the city continues to enlist a consultant. She also said the recent contracts reference that past work.
She had questioned the Chamber of Commerce’s contract with the city earlier this year as the council weighed a budget that called for layoffs and pay reductions for city employees.
She said she objects to paying for copies of such documents not just on financial grounds but on principle, arguing that her request relates to her duties as a council member. She alleged that the city is making it difficult for her to obtain that information, likening it to “censorship.”
But other members of the City Council said a line must be drawn somewhere. They countered that the request for payment is not about barring access to records but about whether Bowers would continually be granted waivers for fees that ordinarily would be charged to the public.
Bowers said her information requests pertain to issues the city still faces. She also said part of the problem is that she has sought some of the information for several months without a response.
Councilman Richard Davidson said some of Bowers’ questions — about whether the city pays some bills for the Chamber of Commerce, for example — should be able to be answered with a “simple yes or no.”
But Davidson also said it is not the job of the current council to research policy decisions made by a previous council five or six years ago.
“Tomorrow will come, but I can’t fix yesterday,” he said Tuesday night.
Over Bowers’ objections, the council on Tuesday night agreed not to waive the fees for the copies of documents pertaining to the past transactions with Darrell Gross. Bowers then had to leave the meeting, and Mayor Jeff Werneke said he tabled a decision about the fees for the other documents pending the next council meeting when she would be present.
Statute
Missouri statute 610.026 states: “Documents may be furnished without charge or at a reduced charge when the public governmental body determines that waiver or reduction of the fee is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the public governmental body and is not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester.”
