The Clarksdale mayor and board of commissioners entered into the fray involving the Clarksdale Public Utilities board of directors and three of its employees on Monday afternoon.
The board unanimously agreed to direct City Attorney Margarette Meeks to write a letter on behalf of the city to each of the CPU board members and David Hunt, the CPU board attorney, requesting that the five CPU board members appear before the commission at noon on Monday, Aug. 6.
The board action came after Mark Johnson, the CPU general manager who is currently one of three suspended employees, was invited in to Monday’s executive session and allowed to speak to the mayor and board of commissioners.
Commissioner Ken Murphey said the letter was sent to stave off the investigation of Johnson and the other two suspended CPU employees, Steve Reed and Chris Campos. He said the trio have also been invited to the Monday, Aug. 6 meeting at city hall.
“I do feel like Mark Johnson and the others are being treated unfairly,” Murphey said. “When it comes down to it, here’s what needs to happen. I’m tired of the infighting. This is about us, not me. It’s about us putting our hands in the middle of the table and saying, ‘Let’s do this thing. Let’s move forward, all entities working together to make Clarksdale a better place to live.’ I will go down getting that done. It’s all about Clarksdale.”
Murphey said Tuesday morning that the three had not been reinstated.
“I did not feel like we had the authority to reinstate them right now,” Murphey said. “We want to hear both sides of the story and we want to know what’s going on because we do feel like the three CPU employees are being treated unfairly.”
Meeks said CPU is a municipally owned utility and, therefore, falls under the direction of the city. Each city commissioner, as well as the mayor, appoints one member to the CPU board of directors.
“In essence, CPU is a municipal department,” Meeks said.
The board voted unanimously to go into executive session to discuss a personnel issue and potential litigation, but it was the potential litigation involving CPU that it took action on.
The action came during a noon meeting that was a recessed meeting from the Board of Mayor and Commissioners’ regular meeting held Monday, July 23.
The original intent of Monday’s recessed meeting was to open the bids for construction work at the city-owned MAP of Easton Inc. plant on Highway 322.
The city received three bids for the project and unanimously agreed to accept the low bid from DC Services, based in Oxford, for $578,000. The other two bids were $598,742 from Robertson Construction, of Canton, and $719,787 from Cleveland-based Timbo’s Construction.
The $578,000 was higher than the $560,000 the city had budgeted for the project. City Clerk Cathy Clark said they will use contingency funds to make up the difference.
There were three alternate bids submitted for additional work if monies were available, but since the bid price came in higher than budgeted, the additional bids were not considered, Clark said.
At the end of Monday’s meeting, the board of commissioners unanimously agreed to recess until noon, Monday, Aug. 6 in the Main Council Chambers for “the purpose of discussing and considering taking actions on any matters and business as may properly come before the City Board at such recessed meeting.”
Managing editor Josh Troy contributed to this story.
