McComb selectmen Tuesday night amended several city ordinances, including one that reduces Mayor Zach Patterson’s power and authority over city employees and department heads.
But Patterson told the selectmen after their vote that he has no intention of following the changes.
“Gentlemen, you recognize that it’s (the amendments) improper and illegal, and will have no effect of law as long as I am the mayor,” Patterson said. “Gentlemen, we’ll see how it changes business tomorrow. I submit to you that it will not.”
Patterson claimed the amendments were illegal.
The amendment removing the mayor’s powers was one of five presented by Selectman E.C. Nobles. The other amendments involved board meetings, suspension, removal and vacancies of city officers, hiring of a city administrator, defining his duties, and defining the city attorney’s duties.
The board voted 4-2 on all the amendments at one time. Danny Esch, Wade Lamb, Bobby Maddox and E.C. Nobles voted for the changes. Melvin Joe Johnson and Robert Earl Smith opposed.
Smith said later that he voted against the amendments because he believes they are illegal.
The board discussed the amendments near the close of a heated meeting in which Patterson criticized the city’s Civil Service Commission and had commission chairman Don Lazarus and Jackson attorney Dennis Horn, some selectmen in court cases, removed from the board room.
The incidents involving Lazarus and Horn preceded the amendments’ discussion.
The mayor had Lazarus removed after he spoke to defend Civil Service Commission attorney Ashley Atkinson against allegations of wrongdoing by Patterson. The mayor had Horn escorted out of the board room when he attempted to speak up for the selectmen after Patterson made similar allegations against unnamed selectmen.
Although Patterson ordered police officers to arrest the men if they did not leave, neither man was arrested. Officers escorted the men out of City Hall.
Nobles introduced the ordinance changes because he said the city needs to move forward and hire a city administrator, city attorney and a permanent city clerk.
“We are at a critical time in McComb,” he said. “We have to have a budget implemented and ratified by September. We need to have a city administrator. We also need a city attorney.
“It is impossible to go about the day-to-day operations as per the city of McComb without having these people — as far as the city administration — and having a city clerk in place to run the city efficiently,” Nobles said.
He added that the board has waited for Patterson to hire a city administrator and attorney, but nothing has happened.
“The board has to take control back over again until we can get someone (a city administrator) in on an interim basis until we can get someone in permanently,” Nobles said.
He said the amendments would clarify the regulations already in the city charter, adding that the ordinances to be amended were previously approved by earlier boards.
Patterson said Nobles’ comments about the ordinance were wrong, adding that what he proposed was an attempt to change the charter.
“It changes the core of our charter,” he said. “It changes the duties of the mayor, and handing those duties over to the city administrator. It talks about meetings and when (you can) and when you cannot have a meeting.
“It’s stripping your mayor of all power and authority in the City of McComb; it’s changing (the charter) fundamentally.”
Patterson handed out copies of the Mississippi Code section on cities and a 1982 state Attorney General’s opinion involving hiring a city administrator to support his claim that Nobles’ amendments were illegal.
He told the selectmen that if they had problems or concerns involving the city, they should come to him.
“If there is something that’s wanting, missing in the city, tell me what it is and come on in and help me fix it,” he told Nobles.
Nobles said the board has tried to talk with Patterson about the city administrator and the city attorney, “And you will not move.”
Nobles said the city was at a standstill, and until that changed, he wanted the amendments approved.
