By By MARCIA STEFFENS / Dowagiac Daily News
CASSOPOLIS - Tempers flared and formed an almost visible triangle reaching from the village council bench and gavel to the clerk's chair and to the back of the room where the public sometimes didn't wait for its chance to speak.
Monday evening's meeting wasn't a Valentine Day gift to the community.
Instead, Clerk Paula Beauchamp presented paperwork from her attorney, Mark Westrate, showing she was suing the village.
The council approved a resolution that Beauchamp would be sanctioned, though never specifying what that would entail.
The incident occurred at a Jan. 19 special meeting which council member Michelle Andrews called to discuss the contract of the village manager, who had been evaluated at a different meeting back in December, as his contract was due to expire early in 2005.
Beauchamp believes she was doing her duty by refusing to leave the closed session, while President Julia Bell said Village Manager Art Sciorra had the right to request she be kept out, as he was her supervisor.
Instead any discussion at the time dissolved, according to council member Maxine Snipes, who had been asked by Bell to take minutes on Jan. 19.
Now the matter will be settled in court, with the village attorney Frank DeFrancisco facing Dowagiac's Westrate.
The 5 to 2 decisions continued Monday with only Andrews and member Vince Hawkins also voting against other resolutions which would change both the clerk and the treasurer from elected positions to appointments. This was something the council had failed to pass previously with different council members.
Snipes and others on the council, stressed both positions require eduction and training and shouldn't be ones which people vote for relatives or friends.
The community is able to call a referendum, according to the law, if a petition is signed by not less than 10 percent of the registered voters which is filed with the village clerk within 45 days when the council made the ordinance. Should a petition not be filed, then the present clerk and treasurer, Cynthia Ash, would be in office until 2007.
Some residents in the audience would like to see more than those resolutions reversed. Stone Lake Walter Malone is waiting for a second clarity reading from the county on his recall petition, which would see Bell, Snipes, and council members Lou Anne Bates and William Curry removed from the bench,
A few public comments were positive, such as from Patty Dresser of Bittersweet on Broadway. She commended Sciorra and the council for doing "this thankless job," and the positive things she has seen happening.