Former Bronson Councilman Turned Down Weak Settlement Offer

By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

Former Bronson Town Councilman Berlon Weeks said Friday he turned down an offer from the town to settle his lawsuit because it was miserably inadequate to make amends for what was done to him.

Weeks is suing the town for illegally removing him from office. He said the town offered to pay his legal fees at the beginning of the lawsuit and told him he could run again for office, but wouldn’t restore him to his former position.

“They were required to have one hour of Sunshine Law training and that would be it after all they did to me and all they took from me,” Weeks said. “I’m sorry, they’ve done more to me than that.”

Weeks said he has given his deposition in the lawsuit. Mayor Robert Partin, who cast the deciding vote to remove him from office, watched the entire deposition as the city’s representative.

He said the town’s legal team has managed to prevent him from deposing any of the council members who voted to oust him from office or staff members who were part of the effort to remove him.

Weeks threatened to resign from his seat on the council on Sept 15, 2020, but the council interpreted his threat to resign as an actual verbal resignation and voted to remove him from office a week later on Sept. 23.

Weeks said he hadn’t resigned and that wasn’t his intent. The council refused to let him participate as a council member when the vote was taken to remove him. Nothing that happened that day seemed to follow the town charter or any prescribed rules. It just happened.

“There is no such thing as an unconditional verbal resignation. Everyone knows that,” he said in an interview.

Town Attorney Steven Warm, who was initially named as a defendant in the civil suit, wasn’t physically present on the day of the council meeting when the vote was taken to remove Weeks and Warm couldn’t seem to keep track of what was going on in the meeting by remote connection. He had missed almost a year of meetings due to the COVID outbreak. He made no effort to ask Weeks if he really intended to resign even though he could hear everything that was being said by the council.

By contrast, when Councilman Aaron Edmondson resigned or appeared to resign at a board meeting on May 17, 2021, Warm was physically present at the meeting and stopped him before he could walk out of the meeting. He asked Edmondson if he was resigning.

“You know what happened to Mr. Weeks. We don’t want a rerun of that,” Warm said. “Were you saying tonight that you resigned?

“No, I didn’t say that,” Edmondson replied.

Equal treatment under the law?

It appears Edmondson was treated differently than Weeks in connection with similar circumstances.