By Terry Witt-Spotlight Senior Reporter

            Williston City Manager Jackie Gorman unleashed a furious verbal assault Tuesday night on city police and fire leaders, the mayor, and unnamed veteran council members ahead of a special council meeting Wednesday night she thinks could be focused on her.

            Mayor Charles Goodman called for the special meeting without specifically saying what would be discussed and declined repeatedly at the council meeting to discuss the purpose of the meeting or to engage in an argument with the angry city manager demanding to know the reason for the meeting.

            When Goodman refused to answer, Gorman hit back with a biting response.

            “He can’t give a response that vile, that hostile because I’m wondering what my staff has done. It’s not fair to be blind-sided so I’m asking what the meeting is about, and I’ve always asked respectfully and never got a respectful answer. What’s on the agenda tomorrow night, please?”

            “I have no comment,” Goodman responded.

            “Are we having a meeting?” said Council President Debra Jones.

            “We are having a meeting,” Goodman responded.

            Jones asked Kiersten Ballou, legal counsel for the board, if the purpose of the meeting had to be declared publicly.

            Ballou said there was no such requirement. She said the meeting had to be advertised like any other. She asked City Clerk Latricia Wright if it had been advertised like other meetings.

            Wright said it had been advertised properly.

            Gorman said she asked Goodman before the meeting what it was about.

            “You,” she quoted Goodman as saying.

            Gorman claimed in a lengthy written statement that city employees are willing to testify that police and fire officials conspired to do something to provoke an angry response from her or Deputy City Manager/Human Resources Director Deanna Nelson. She claims that Nelson indeed lost her temper with Fire Chief Lamar Stegall one day.

            The rumor circulating in City Hall is that Nelson ripped off her face mask when she became angry with Stegall about a month ago. She reportedly placed her face within inches of his face during the confrontation, resulting in Stegall filing a complaint with the city alleging a hostile work environment. The official complaint hasn’t been made public and some in city government say Gorman and Nelson are sitting on the complaint rather than acting on it.

            Gorman ran afoul of city police and fire officials around Christmastime last year when she and her staff gave away $150 gift certificates from Tractor Supply to every city employee except police, fire, and the Williston airport. She fought public records requests from Spotlight and never disclosed exactly how the decision was made to include certain employees and exclude others.

            Many city employees grumbled privately when Gorman promoted Nelson, the human resources director, to deputy city manager without advertising the position internally as required by the city’s human resource manual. Gorman said Tuesday night, as she has in the past, that she had authority as city manager to promote from within the city. However, her decision not to advertise the position effectively barred other senior city officials from applying for the job.

            Gorman’s allegations Tuesday night that she and Nelson are the target of intimidation and retaliation by senior city officials comes at a time when she is perceived by many in city government and the community to have built an administrative wall around herself and her top administrators to control political power in City Hall, limit the release of public information and stonewall the press and members of the community from obtaining public records.

            There is also the perception that Gorman and her staff were trying to strip Mayor Charles Goodman of his power to veto proposed increases in utility rates by changing the utility rate approval process to one that involves using resolutions instead ordinances to change the rates. Goodman has power under the city charter to veto ordinances, but the charter grants him no authority to veto resolutions.

            The issue came to a head at the meeting when an ordinance that would have changed the utility rate approval process to one involving resolutions instead of ordinances ran into opposition from Councilman Zach Bullock. Bullock said he wasn’t in favor of eliminating the mayor’s ability to veto utility rate ordinances. He felt there needed to be checks and balances in the utility rate process and the mayor’s veto power was one way to ensure accountability.

            Council members eventually agreed to table the ordinance that would have effectively stripped the mayor of his right to veto utility rate hikes and instructed their attorney, Kiersten Ballou, to rewrite the ordinance in a way that preserves the old process of approving utility rate changes using ordinances. Two public hearings are required to gather public input the old way.

            The public’s resistance to Gorman’s iron-fisted management of City Hall manifested in another way at the meeting when residents Albert Fuller and Nancy Vallario introduced themselves as members of a new organization called Citizens for Clarity in Government. Their mission statement said the organization is looking for positive solutions, but they also said they want the city to operate with openness “and not defensiveness.”

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City of Williston Regular Meeting August 16, 2022; Posted August 16, 2022