The Alexander City Council has formed a special committee to investigate a grievance complaint submitted by a former city employee. The job of the committee is to determine if the grievance is legitimate.
During a special meeting, held Thursday, February 15, prior to the council going into executive session, City Attorney Chris Madison explained the grievance process based on the city's current employee manual. According to Madison the next step is to determine, "If there is a grievanceable issue."
Madison said the first step is to decide who will investigate the grievance. The two choices are to either have someone outside the council to investigate the complaint, or appoint council members to a subcommittee.
"So the first issue that council you will have to decide is whether you want to appoint someone, an individual, to be the fact finder," Madison said. "Alternatively, I believe that you can form a subcommittee of yourselves to do the fact finding and issue a report."
At no time during the meeting was the specifics of the grievance discussed. However, Madison did say the mayor (Chrystal Herrmann) cannot investigate the grievance, which is one of the options, because, "As you're aware, the mayor is implicated in the grievance."
Madison also eliminated himself investigating the grievance.
"I cannot do it," he said. "And the reason being is that if this were to result in litigation down the road, I can't be directly involved in the grievance process and then also defend the city if there's a lawsuit on the back of the case."
To clarify what the council is being asked to do at the special meeting Council Member Joy Gray said, "So just to recap, so there's no confusion because there's always confusion. We are not here to determine whether or not the grievance is valid, whether or not the termination is valid. All we're doing today is deciding do we want three council members to investigate this? Or, do we want an individual from outside of the city government to investigate this? That's all we're doing today. Or, you could have one council member decide also."
"There is a lawfully lodged grievance under our policy," Madison said. "And the only decision you have to make tonight is ... who is going to be on this committee to then go in and look at the facts of the grievance?"
After coming out of an executive session a motion was approved to appoint council members Joy Gray, Juanita Wilson and Angela Griffin to the committee. According to Madison the committee has 20 days, weekends included, to present a report to the council. The council then has five days to take action.
During several points in his presentation Madison noted that the employee manual has several issues that will require rewriting.
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I have never seen a city so unorganized and full animosity. Every meeting I attend has some kind of drama and poor or distasteful comments toward one another.
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