“I’m kind of appalled that you actually wanna be a department head over the supervisors,” City of Blue Ridge Mayor Donna Whitener said after council members voted to assign each member to a specific city department during a special called meeting Tuesday, May 19.
“You do have actually folks that are on committees that really haven’t even done anything with their committees lately,” Whitener said explaining why she was appalled.
Fitts retaliated by accusing Whitener of not posting weekly reports of meetings.
Councilwoman Rhonda Haight accused Whitener of telling the department heads not to contact council members.
Councilwoman Robbie Cornelius attempted to clear up the accusation by calling on Planning, Zoning and Project Manager Jeff Stewart, Finance Director Alicia Stewart and Utility Director Rebecca Harkins and asking if Whitener ever told them not to contact the council.
Jeff Stewart denied the claim.
Alicia Stewart said, “I’m not technically a department head, but I don’t think I’ve specifically been told.”
After asking Harkins whether or not she’d been asked to not contact the council, Councilman Mike Panter spoke up before she could answer saying, “I don’t think you can put employees on the spot like that.”
Fitts agreed saying, “Yeah, you’re way out of line.”
Alicia Stewart agreed that the interrogation was not appropriate, to which Fitts apologized on behalf of Cornelius.
Cornelius blamed Fitts saying he “started it.”
“Each council has been over a department,” Fitts said. “Last council, apparently the mayor took those away, and whether or not the authority was there I don’t know, and I don’t care at this point.
“We want to be back over departments, and we have went to the mayor and tried to do this numerous times. We’ve asked by email, we’ve asked to have meetings with her. She’s refused to sit down and talk to us. She’s refused to talk to us on the phone. Councilwoman Haight and I have tried up until just a couple weeks ago, and two months ago after the meeting, outside, we tried to say that we wanted to have the authority back over to each council member because I can know everything about my department and that one department. I can’t know everything about every department in here, and it is a zoo let me tell ya.
“We were told by the mayor, two meetings ago, as she yelled in my face with her finger pointing at me, that over her dead body would this happen, but it’s in the best interest of the city, and all of us council members are in agreement of it.”
Cornelius opposed saying, “I’m opposed for this whole mess. It’s embarrassing that we are acting like this, or y’all are acting like this.”
Haight will oversee the Street Department; Panter will oversee Park and Recreation; Cornelius will oversee Finance and Human Resources; Councilman Harold Herndon, with the help of Fitts, will oversee the Police Department; Fitts will over see the Water and Sewer Department.
Department heads are to report directly to the council member in charge.