Memphis City Council bicker over what “Resign” means

I wasn’t at the meeting this afternoon, but I listened to the live stream online and followed VibInc’s live Twittering of the same feed.

I’m sure the CA will have a more complete description up soon (Update: Here it is!), but until then, here’s what happened. These notes are from my listening and the livetweet.

• The pension board has received Herenton’s resignation, but won’t vote on it until their meeting on July 30th. Lowery was a little bent out of shape because it hasn’t been voted on yet.
• Jim Strickland wanted to know whether the question of whether Herenton’s original resignation is enforcable in Tennesse has been answered. The city attorney, Allen Wade says no. Wade is considered on be on Herenton’s “side”.
• There was a small debate over
• Wanda Halbert, known Herenton allay, wanted to know “Why we’re even talking about this”. Lowery said to the effect of “We can talk about whatever we want. We haven’t voted on anything.” (That’s not a direct quote)
• Barbara Swearengen Ware (another Herenton buddy) wants the whole thing dismissed. She considers any action taken by the council today would be premature and they’re in no position to give direction to the election commission.
• Strickland (not a member of the Herenton fan club, and possible candidate to replace him) came after Herenton:  ”Nowhere in the charter does it say Council has to accept conditions of vacancy”. He read the defination of “Resign” from the dictionary.  He made a motion to accept the resignation, effective July 30th.
• After Strickland said his peace, someone (Wade or Collins?) started a brief argument over the defination of “resign”. It started to get dumb in there.
• Collins said they should get the Mayor or his “second” involved with the debate because the 13 of them could argue about it all day, but they wouldn’t know what Willie meant.
• Lowery agreed and asked Strickland if he would withdraw his motion to accept the resignation. Strickland agreed.

This is when it got interesting. Lowery declared that matter closed and that the council would be moving onto the second matter of business, a presentation by the Memphis Chamber of Commerce. Barbara Swearengen Ware didn’t feel like she was quite down and raised her voice, half-shouting “Mister Chairman! Mister Chairman!” several times. Lowery told her again that the matter was closed and they were moving on. She managed to half-yell “Personal Privilage” three or four times before settling down and staying quiet.

Summery: Nothing important happened.