There is still a glimmer of hope that July 6 will not be the last day on the job for Indianola Police Chief Edrick Hall. Hall submitted a letter of resignation that was accepted by the city aldermen at their June meeting that indicated Friday would be his last day. But after emerging from a closed executive session on Monday, three of the five city policymakers voted to extend Hall’s resignation date from July 6 to July 10.
Aldermen Ruben Woods and Sam Brock were not present at the meeting.
Alderman Marvin Elder was originally against discussing the matter during the special call meeting.
“I don’t think we should go into executive session on this. I think we need to carry it over until Monday night’s regular board meeting,” he said.
Mayor Steve Rosenthal explained that there had been some changes since the previous meeting and that they were time sensitive.
Elder responded, “It might be time sensitive, but I think it’s only fair for the other board members, only fair for the individual names that’s listed on here that we hold this to our regularly scheduled meeting, which will be Monday night.”
After the vote, Rosenthal explained that the extension was necessary because he is still working to get Hall to stay but must wait until the regular meeting on July 9 to see if all of the officials can come to an agreement. Rosenthal said they don’t want the chief’s departure to become effective before a final decision was rendered.
In other actions, the aldermen in attendance voted to approve the docket and electronic transfers from its June 21 regular meeting, so it looks as if the remainder of the city’s vendors will finally get paid after a self-inflicted error that prevented the municipality’s service providers from receiving their due remittance before former Interim City Clerk Charlotte Kilgore completed her last day in office.
The law requires that the city clerk’s signature must be affixed to vendor payments. Her last day in office was June 22. Vendors have had to wait nearly an additional two weeks until arrangements could be made to pay their invoices.
On Monday, the officials also formally voted to remove Kilgore’s names from the city checks. The name of Shumekia Harvey, the mayor’s secretary, will now replace Kilgore’s on the bank documents.
