The following is my opinion based on research I have done. I’m not a lawyer, so I checked with a friend of mine who is. He agrees with my opinion about the city clerk’s demand for $1 million. She apparently thinks she’s entitled to that much money to ease the pain and suffering she suffered because she was prevented from starting a job that was given to her illegally. I may not be a lawyer, but I know what seems to be a scam when I see one.
After I read about the $1,000,000 demand in the Gwinnett Daily Post, I submitted an open records request because I wanted to see for myself what the clerk was demanding. What is seems like is that she wants the taxpayers of Snellville to fork over a million bucks because of her “pain and suffering”. That’s a whole lot of pain and suffering for a job that pays about $50,000 a year. (I don’t know the actual salary but it’s in that ballpark.)
When you look at everything that went on between the date that the mayor illegally appointed Phyllis Richardson as the city clerk, and the date that she started the job, you have to wonder if Richardson took the job so she could file a lawsuit and collect a big payday.
Let’s look at what the demand letter says. And if I’m wrong, I invite any attorney to correct me.
The first thing that jumps out is that the demand mentions different parts of the city charter, but it seems obvious that the lawyer who wrote the demand letter is picking and choosing what he wants to try to make his case. The problem is, as I see it, he either doesn’t understand the sections he mentions or he is ignoring the real meaning.
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Let’s start with the demand letter’s mention of section 3.13 of the charter that says the mayor shall appoint a city clerk who is not a councilmember. Pretty simple right? And so is the next section which is 2-201. It says the mayor and city council shall at the beginning of each year appoint a city clerk who is not a councilmember. That’s pretty simple too. And for me, the discussion should end right there. The city council did not appoint the city clerk the mayor did on her own.
To me that means the mayor’s appointment of the clerk was illegal because she did it before the council knew anything about it. So it also seems that the whole demand for a million bucks is based on an illegal action by the mayor.
When I looked through the city charter (you can too if you go to the city web site or a site called municode.com) there are other sections that I think also make this demand for a million dollars something that should be thrown out.
I’ll state again that I am not an attorney and that I’m just stating my opinion, but it seems that common sense tells you that this demand for a million dollars and threat to file a lawsuit is based on an appointment that was made in violation of the city charter. I think that’s also evidence that this whole thing is a scam. What do you think?
Someone I know was the subject of medical malpractice which resulted in long term brain damage as well as other life long challenges associated with the injury. This person won their lawsuit, out of court, for a similar amount of money.
I fail to see any part of her pain and suffering that was not brought on by herself. Why should she get paid for self inflicted injuries?
It would seem to me that if anyone deserved $1,000,000.00 for pain, suffering and undue stress, it would be Melissa Arnold. I wonder if Ms. Richardson has spent even one second considering the effect she personally has had on Ms. Arnold. I guess the pain, stress and embarrassment she inflicted is irrelevant. As long as she gets her just rewards, nothing else matters. Says a lot about the content of her character, doesn’t it?
I personally still want to know from Kelly Kautz, why she has not terminated Ms. Richardson for poor job performance. She stated that she was removing Ms. Arnold from the position of City Clerk because of mistakes she had made over several years, yet Ms. Richardson has made mistake after mistake from day 1. Then for an employee of the City of Snellville to demand a payment of $1,000,000 to prevent her from filing a lawsuit against the City of Snellville seems like even more grounds for termination. It is obvious that Ms. Richardson’s plan from the very beginning was to file a law suit against the City of Snellville and try to get a single fat paycheck, and in my opinion was assisted in this plan by Mayor Kelly Kautz. The City of Snellville will be so much better off once both of these people are out of city hall. I mean obviously Ms. Richardson is going to file a law suit anyway so why should we keep paying her a salary while she gets everything prepared to do so?
I think the fact that the Mayor attempted to appoint Richardson to a position that was not vacant is also an issue. The mayor did not attempt to fire the previous clerk, she claimed to be assigning her to a new position . I am unaware of any section in the Charter that allows the Mayor sole power to invent new employment positions and appoint people to them .
Simply put, Mrs Richardson was appointed to a position that was not vacant or available and if anyone is on the hook for pain and suffering caused by that error it should be the individual (Mayor Kautz) who made the erroneous appointment.
It is above my pay grade to judge her pain and suffering. But in my opinion, the five council members names should be removed from this lawsuit. They had nothing to do with this situation and are innocent bystanders.