Council members feel they are left out of the decision making
Councilman Roger Adkinson said there seems to be a disconnect in town hall with members of the town council being left in the dark saying the council members need to be informed when things happen in the town.
“At this point I am going to ask, is it possible for our mayor pro tem (Jim Johnson) be notified of things going on here at city hall, in the police department and other areas?” Adkinson said during a workshop Monday afternoon. “Things need to be shared with him especially if the mayor is out of town. We don’t need to be uninformed.”
Adkinson also said the council has been talking about updating the employee handbook for months and he wanted to know the status.
Town Clerk Carrie Moore said she has been making changes all along to the current handbook by comparing the current one to cities the size of Flomaton.
“If ya’ll want to have a handbook workshop that would be great,” Moore said.
Mayor Dewey Bondurant, Jr., said the town needed to get its accounting first and then turn toward the handbook.
Adkinson said before the Hurricane Park deal got started he didn’t come to town hall often.
“It just seems to be a disconnect between the council, the clerk’s office and the mayor’s office,” Adkinson said. “It seems like our roles have been reversed. It sounds like decisions are being made somewhere other than here where the council should be making decisions.”
“I hate to hear outside this building that ‘we’ decided not to spend money or to spend money,” Adkinson said. “It’s a council decision and it doesn’t look good. We need to readdress the roles of the clerk, mayor and council.
Councilwoman Kay Wagner also asked who the ‘we’ are that are making decisions the council knows nothing about.
“I appreciate what you do but feel left out,” Wagner said. “Let us back in the fold. We’re here for the town. We want to be included and we’ve been excluded for a while.”
Councilman Johnson said he felt some good came out of the workshop and reminded people that the decisions the council makes today will affect people down the road.
