Councillors who yesterday voted against sitting under the stewardship of acting Town Clerk Carol Sooba, walked out of the meeting, resulting in it coming to an abrupt end as there was no longer a quorum.
A no-confidence motion was on Monday last moved and carried to have Sooba removed from the post of Town Clerk acting. In the light of this, Councillor Ranwell Jordan requested that Sooba identify someone else to carry on the meeting. “We cannot sit under the Town Clerk acting, having had a no-confidence motion expressed on her,” Jordan posited.
While Councillor Gwendolyn McGowan seconded this request, Councillor Gladstone George asked that since it was a reconvened meeting from Monday, the council should allow Sooba to perform the duties and at the same time allow the Local Government and Regional Development Minister an opportunity to respond to the motion which was passed. “I’d ask that this meeting be allowed to be completed,” he stated.
Councillor Eon Andrews agreed with this, adding that the minister must be given time to respond but in the event of him not doing so, then the council should take the necessary action. According to Andrews, the course of action Jordan has asked the council to partake in is premature.
Councillor Anthony Boyce also made representation to have the meeting continue with Sooba as acting Town Clerk.
Chairing the meeting was Deputy Mayor Patricia Chase-Green who then asked for a vote on the matter, which saw five persons voting for the meeting to be continued under Sooba and four against. As the results were summed up, Jordan and McGowan, along with Councillor Monica Thomas, who moved the motion for the removal of Sooba on Monday, got up from their seats and left.
Sooba attempted to advise the council at this point but was told by Chase-Green that there was no quorum for that, further stating that she would have to consult Mayor Hamilton Green. Sooba, who before the start of the meeting constantly reminded the officers that they should have been out in the city monitoring the flood, advised the workers to return to the much work yet to be completed.
Subsequent to the meeting, Sooba told media operatives that the councillors who moved the motion against her ought to be educated in the area before taking such action since it was not possible to remove her from the post in the process they have used. “I don’t know under what law these councillors moved the motion against me because the power to appoint someone to act rests with the minister of local government and to remove persons rests with the minister of local government as well… Obviously the councillors who moved that motion need to be so advised,” she stated.
Andrews also told this newspaper that he believed the meeting should have been allowed to continue so as to be informed whether the letter had been sent to the minister, informing him of council’s decision to have Sooba removed.
Stabroek News understands that all of council’s correspondence must be done by the Town Clerk and as a result, she herself would have had to write to the minister informing him of the motion against her. Up to Wednesday, this newspaper was informed, the letter had not yet been sent.
