COLONY, Ala. – Colony Mayor Donnis Leeth, after an explosive end to Tuesday evening’s town council meeting in which he announced his resignation, contacted The Tribune Wednesday to say with a laugh, “I’m back on my job. I’ve come out of resignment and I’m back on my job as mayor of the Colony.”
Leeth’s abrupt resignation followed a series of heated exchanges before, during and after the town council meeting Tuesday evening, culminating in his announcing, “I resign.”
According to the mayor and other sources in Colony, support for Leeth has been strong through Wednesday morning.
Leeth said he returned to Town Hall Wednesday morning to help with food distribution, and “I walked around to every car. They said, ‘You can’t go nowhere, man, we need you down there. Ain’t nobody gonna do what you do.’”
Leeth added, “I couldn’t leave the people like that down there and the surrounding areas. I’m supposed to have been for four years and I know what I’m going to do, and I hope I get (re-)elected. I’m going to do more and more, all I can do for people in the surrounding areas in the Colony and out of the Colony.”
What happened?
Tuesday evening’s first confrontation, mild in comparison to the others, came during the work session after council members Ethel Alexander and Samuel Ashford both said that they wanted to hear both mayoral candidates share their respective visions for Colony’s future. Leeth’s challenger, Councilman Curtis Johnson, for the third time in as many meetings, refused to discuss any platform items, saying instead that he would take out a paid advertisement in a local paper to present his plan.
Leeth, who has on several occasions talked about his platform, laid out five items for the council:
- Secure a Jack’s fast food restaurant for the Colony area
- Seek a $250,000 grant from the Alabama Department of Transportation to repair and upgrade roads in the town, including Colony Road and others
- Include access to hot lunches in next year’s summer children’s feeding program
- Arrange another out-of-town trip as part of next year’s children’s summer enrichment program
- Plan ways to check on community seniors more, and plan more senior activities including a trip
Meeting schedule challenged
Following Leeth’s platform statement and the conclusion of discussion, the mayor called for the regular meeting to start, approximately five minutes before the official 6 p.m. start time. Johnson objected, stating that the council had adopted a 6 p.m. start time in November 2016 and must stick to the policy.
Colony did establish the official meeting time after the council was seated in 2016, but has since the fall of 2019 operated on a less strict schedule with the work session at 5 p.m. and the regular meeting following immediately afterward. The change has been noted in Tribune coverage of council meetings since November 2019. Tuesday evening was the first time that any council member has challenged the modified schedule.
Leeth invited Johnson to call state government officials in Montgomery to ask about the rules of procedure and, raising his voice for the first time, told the councilman, “Don’t come to the table, telling me what to do about no early meeting.”
Leeth went ahead and began the meeting a few minutes early, with already more people in the audience than usual. As 6 p.m. arrived, so did more people, some of whom would later level complaints against the mayor during the public comment portion of the meeting.
Who will sign checks?
After the council took care of its only agenda items, approval of council members to be seated without a vote (no council seats are contested in the upcoming election) and approval of election officials named at the last meeting, Leeth recommended that the council appoint Alexander as an approved check signer for the Town in the absence of Councilman Melvin Hammond, who heads the finance committee but is battling ongoing health issues, as Colony’s checks require two signatures. Johnson objected, saying that he and Leeth were both authorized signers and the Town should wait until after the election to take up the matter.
Leeth countered that Johnson does not show up when needed to sign checks. When Johnson pointed out that he had just signed some checks at the beginning of the work session, Leeth told him that those checks had “been here all week, all last week,” and that the Town’s ability to pay its bills on time was being hindered.
After Johnson agreed that he would come to town hall more often to see about checks, he made a motion to table the matter until a later meeting. He and Ashford voted to table; Leeth and Alexander voted against.
In the public comment portion of the meeting, three of the visitors, town election officials Gwendolyn Purifoy, Margaret Dimbo and Earline Johnson, began their own exchange with Leeth. Purifoy complained that the election officials, who have regularly worked elections in the past, had not been notified of their appointment until they heard that their names were listed in the newspaper, and that the mayor and council should have written letters asking them to serve. Leeth said that he was unaware of the need for a letter, and that he would send out letters Wednesday.
Purifoy replied, “I’m just saying, you know, common courtesy: somebody should have asked us, you know, about doing this.”
Road rage
Purifoy continued, complaining next about Leeth’s campaign promise to seek funds for work on Colony Road, saying that the Town should not pay for repairs to Colony Road, since it is a county road. Leeth countered that the road falls within the town limits and is the Town’s responsibility.
Said Purifoy, “I don’t know who changed it, but the 20 years I served as clerk, the County took care of it,” adding later, “The town never paid one penny for it.”
Colony Road falls partly within and partly outside the town limits of Colony. The Tribune reached out to the Cullman County Road Department Wednesday, and a representative there said that the County does maintain the portions that are outside the town limits.
Leeth admitted that the County had performed minor repairs and even some repaving many years ago, but argued that the County had never done the amount of resurfacing he wants to see done through the federal grant. He said that he would get a letter from the County about the status of the road, and that he would invite Cullman County Commissioner Garry Marchman to come and address the matter personally.
“I might get all three of them to come down here,” added Leeth.
Earline Johnson, a former Colony mayor, picked up the debate, arguing that the County maintained the road while she was in office. After Leeth referred to Johnson’s claims about large-scale maintenance as “crap,” Dimbo joined in, asking for everyone to treat each other with respect. After further discussion, Johnson specified that County maintenance involved repairs to spots on the road that became washed out.
Things did not settle down, and a claim by Purifoy that a second road inside the town limits is also a county road, and that the Town is having to pay for work on those roads because Leeth chose to take them over, did not sit well with the mayor.
With the argument becoming more heated, Leeth abruptly swung his gavel and announced, “Meeting adjourned.”
The confrontation did not cease, though, and just became louder. After a visitor identified only as Gerald remarked, “Mr. Mayor, you’re way too defensive to be a leader right now,” Leeth responded, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to resign right now.”
After repeating his intention to resign, Leeth stormed out of town hall.
What now? Is he gone? Can he just come right back?
The Tribune reached out Tuesday night to officials with expertise in municipal government, to determine the legal aspects of Leeth’s announced resignation. According to what they shared:
- Leeth’s resignation, being declared after the meeting was adjourned, has no legal validity. The typical method of resignation involves the submission of a letter of resignation during a council meeting.
- Leeth’s resignation is not valid until and unless the council votes to accept it at a regular or special-called meeting. With the council already short one seat and Hammond out for health issues, Leeth’s absence means that the council might not be able to establish a quorum to hold such a vote.
- Even if his resignation were to be voted on and accepted, Leeth’s name will remain on the Aug. 25 Municipal Election ballot, and he could conceivably be re-elected anyway.
All of that means that Leeth is still mayor of Colony, that he can pick up where he left off in his duties Tuesday night, and that his status as a 2020 candidate is unaffected.
Colony’s next scheduled town council meeting starts with a work session at 5 p.m. Aug. 25, Election Day, at Town Hall.
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