Council meets about gunshots
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on January 8, 2016 1:46 PM
Several Goldsboro City Council members and Mayor Chuck Allen held an unlawful private meeting with City Manager Scott Stevens and Police Chief Mike West on Thursday morning to discuss an incident of shots being fired near the home of council member Mark Stevens.
The meetings were held because Mark Stevens telephoned the top officials of the city and fellow council members Wednesday night after he heard several shots fired in his neighborhood that same night.
The meeting was held at 10 a.m. in the mayor's conference room at City Hall, where the council met three at a time in an attempt to circumvent the state's open meetings law. The open meetings law dictates that a quorum is created when a majority of the council meets at the same time -- in Goldsboro's case, four out of seven members -- and must, by law, be open to the public.
But by meeting in turns they effectively created two separate subcommittees by default and still violated the law, said North Carolina Press Association General Counsel Mike Tadych.
"What you have is a meeting that was held in the spirit of avoiding the open meetings law, but meeting three at a time like that is considered meeting in subcommittees," Tadych said. "Either by default or unintentionally what they did was create subcommittees and when they do that they must record minutes, record any votes and record any actions that were taken."
Tadych also provided specific statutes the council violated by holding these meetings, which establish strict guidelines for calling a meeting between elected officials.
"Notice of an emergency meeting must comply with 143-318.12(b)(3)," Tadych said. "In that it (the meeting) was the next morning, I'm concerned that the issue really constituted an emergency. Rather, the meeting should have been noticed under 143-318.12(b)(1), which requires 48 hours notice. That said, it's unclear whether any notice took place."
Allen and Scott Stevens said the press was not invited into the two separate meetings, stating that they were "private" since only three council members were meeting at a time.
Allen said they were meeting three at a time in order to prevent creating a quorum, which requires 48 hours notice if a meeting is held and a quorum is created.
"The fact that they then decided to separate into threes and have a back-and-forth meeting to avoid a quorum did not change the fact that they met," Tadych said. "In my view, the two groups constituted de facto, or purposeful, subcommittees of the council created at the direction of the mayor and thus, each were official meetings of a public body, which required compliance with minutes and openness."
The first meeting, held at 10 a.m., consisted of District 3 council member Mark Stevens, District 4 council member Bevan Foster, Allen, Scott Stevens and West.
The second meeting was held near 11 a.m., with Foster and Allen leaving the conference room while having District 1 council member Antonio Williams and District 6 council member Gene Aycock taking their places.
West, Mark Stevens and Scott Stevens remained in the second meeting.
District 2 council member Bill Broadaway and District 5 council member David Ham were not in attendance at either meeting. District 3 county commissioner John Bell and District 2 county commissioner Ed Cromartie attended the first of the two meetings.
Allen said he was not aware that the state's open meetings laws prevented the City Council from meeting in this fashion.
"I don't know one way or the other, because to me we would not intentionally break any law. If we did, we did that unknowingly," Allen said. "In the first meeting, it was myself, council member Stevens and council member Foster. In the second meeting, it was council member Stevens, council member Williams and council member Aycock. I left the room because we were trying to keep from creating that quorum. Did they talk about the same thing? Absolutely, I'm sure they did. There were two council members who didn't even come because of that reason, because we didn't want a quorum. It's always been my understanding we can meet any time we want to without creating a quorum and not break any laws. But if I'm wrong, then I'm wrong."
"We had that meeting because council member Stevens had called me that morning and wanted to meet, and unknown to me he had called every other council member and asked them to come, too," Allen said.
Stevens, who is visually impaired, was in his home with his family on the 100 block of North Herman Street when he heard several shots fired just before 10 p.m. on Wednesday night. He phoned the police, who came to his location and took an incident report.
When officers arrived on the scene, no damage could be found to the outside of Stevens' home at the time of the incident. But officers did recover five shell casings on Lionel Street, which is one block away.
West said after investigators walked the property during the day on Thursday, no signs of damage to Mark Stevens' home were found.
But, due to this incident occurring on the heels of an incident last week where two cars chased each other through the same neighborhood while firing gunshots, Scott Stevens said the police force would be amping up patrols in the area.
Additionally, the Goldsboro Police Department mobile command center will be moved to the neighborhood, and the Wayne County Sheriff's Office will be called in to help the GPD with regular patrols.
"What we really have come to is -- and we've done it with other issues in other places so at this point we are doing what we would do with any part of our community that was having this issue -- is just trying to increase our presence there," Scott Stevens said. "We happen to own the vacant lot pretty close to them there with the Boy Scout hut. We intend to move the (GPD) mobile command center there, we intend to have increased patrols in the area -- we'll probably reach out to the Sheriff's Department to help just on the normal routine calls so that more of our officers can be focused on the neighborhood and not be called out for the normal service calls that go on."
The city has taken similar action in other neighborhoods in the city when there was an uptick in violence in the area. But, these actions seem to push the crime into other areas of the city.
"It tends to be effective for that neighborhood," Scott Stevens said. "It might just move it to another neighborhood, that's the unfortunate part of chasing it around, but it does seem to have an impact and make it better."