City Council member Denise Lee resigned this morning from her 2012-13 Council committees because incoming President Bill Bishop has not agreed to appoint more blacks into Council leadership.
Council member Reggie Brown said Tuesday he had prepared a letter as well. Lee said today that black Council members Warren Jones and Kimberly Daniels also were planning to prepare letters to resign their committee appointments.
“There is no reason he could not adhere to the request that was made and that is to appoint at least one African-American to chair a committee and to replace two on rules and finance,” she said, referring to the Council Rules and Finance committees.
Lee said the Council’s five black members make up a quarter of the 19-member body and that the request for more representation “is not asking too much.”
She said she would continue attending the committee meetings but not as committee members.
Lee did not say Johnny Gaffney planned to resign.
The five standing Council committees each have seven members, including chairs.
For 2012-13, Bishop appointed Jones to the Rules Committee; Daniels to the Transportation, Energy and Utilities Committee; Brown and Daniels to the Recreation, Community Development, Public Health and Safety Committee; and Jones and Lee to the Land Use and Zoning Committee.
Bishop appointed black Council member Johnny Gaffney as vice chair of the Recreation, Community Development, Public Health and Safety Committee and also to serve on the Finance Committee.
All of Bishop’s chair appointments are white.
Bishop said early this morning he had not yet seen any resignation letters.
He said he did not intend to change any of his Council chair appointments, but he said he would decide next week whether to create another standing committee by splitting Recreation and Community Development and Public Health and Safety, which had been combined previously, into two bodies.
He said current President Stephen Joost combined the two committees for efficiency.
“I elected to continue that. If there is a feeling that by splitting those back up is of value, I don’t have any problem doing that,” he said.
Bishop said he would look at the workload of the committee to see if splitting it would be valuable.
“If that makes sense, that is a possibility. That opens up another committee,” he said.
Bishop said he has no intention of expanding the finance or rules committees.
Bishop said race was not a motivating factor in any of his committee appointments.
Bishop said that since Consolidation in 1968, Council presidents have made committee appointments of their choosing.
“I chose based on the people I thought would do the best jobs in the coming year,” he said. “Every Council president chooses for their own reason. That is my prerogative to choose committee chairs,” he said.
He said it was his responsibility as Council president to make sure all the committees had enough members to conduct business. He said he hoped that the members considering resigning would change their minds “and elect to participate in committee work.”
Bishop said another concern is resolving the overall issue.
“I don’t want to go into a year with four people constantly upset. That doesn’t help the city,” he said.
“That is the next thing I need to resolve. How I do that, I don’t know,” he said.
Lee said she wanted a response before the first meeting of the new Council year in mid-July.
Lee said the only circumstance in which she would consider withdrawing her resignation would be if Bishop adheres to the requests.
Daniels, Gaffney, Jones, Lee and Brown met with Bishop on Tuesday. Council member Don Redman also attended.
At the end of the hourlong meeting, Bishop was preparing to leave for another appointment when Lee asked for an answer to the group’s two demands.
“If you are asking me exactly what I am going to do today, I am not going to give you an answer. I don’t have an answer. I will give you an answer and I will do it in plenty of time before the next Council session starts in the next two weeks,” said Bishop.
“That’s not acceptable. Because what you are saying to us is that you are going to become Council president and we have to accept what you have placed on the table,” said Lee.
Brown also was disappointed with the lack of answers from Bishop.
“I came here today with the expectation of change. I didn’t come here to talk about 20 days from now. I came here to talk about change today.
“There’s no way I am going to participate in a non-inclusive leadership program,” said Brown.
He prepared a resignation letter from the committees he was appointed to and plans to submit the letter to Bishop.
“During a very difficult budget year when you have a change in administration with a number of appointments coming up when blacks make up over 30 percent of the population, over 25 percent of the City Council, not to have a least one black chairperson, and you have to go back to 1990 when there wasn’t a black Council member chairing a standing committee. It’s not about quotas. It’s simply about representation, about inclusion in the process,” said Jones.
Jones mentioned quotas while referring to a statement made by Bishop after the first special meeting last week of the black Council members.
Bishop stated that when he made the appointments to the committees, he looked for the most qualified people to lead them and he didn’t “run a quota system” in making the appointments.
“That is a comment that was made from emotion, and as (Lee) pointed out, this is an emotional business. Emotion is not something that needs to enter into the discussion. It was a poor choice of words and I regret saying that,” said Bishop, responding to Lee’s request to clarify his statement.
“That came out of comments that were relayed to me from the meeting that there was a racial overtone in the meeting discussion. It was a reaction to the understanding that I had,” said Bishop.
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