BY JOHN RAMSEY and BRYN EDDY
jramsey@postandcourier.com
MAYESVILLE - The simmering dysfunction in Mayesville ramped up this week with conflicting messages about town meetings, a ruckus in municipal offices that left the town clerk injured enough to visit a doctor and the mayor stumping for a crowd from atop a bench in a crowded hallway.
Mayor Chris Brown had called for a town council meeting on Jan. 23 followed by a meeting of the nonprofit board linked to economic development in Mayesville. But the town council canceled the first meeting, irked by Brown's last-minute additions to the agenda.
Brown also discovered documents showing the town council and mayor were removed from the board of the development nonprofit before he took office. That squelched his plan for the second meeting. The nonprofit remains in the control of the husband of the former mayor, with whom Brown has been locked in a struggle for power since the November elections.
Brown tried to push ahead with the town council meeting. But when people from this tiny Sumter County town began arriving at the town hall and Mary McLeod Bethune Learning Center on Tuesday evening, Brown was the only elected official on hand, flanked by sheriff's deputies. Brown's keys only get him into the hallway of the building, not the meeting room, so he held an impromptu gathering in the hallway. But without the town council present, all Brown could do was talk.
"I would like to welcome all of you here," Brown said. "Many of you are wondering what is going on."
It's a question Brown has repeatedly found himself asking since taking office in November.
One resident who showed up, Leeroy Wells, asked Brown another question he's been struggling to answer.
"How can it be possible that the last administration is running your administration?"
Brown has had trouble finding allies among leadership. Two council members walked out of Brown's first town meeting, and he's feuded with former mayor Jereleen Miller and her husband Ed about the nonprofit and access to the town office building.
His chief supporter is a town councilman who can't vote on town business because the governor suspended him from office for allegedly making threats against the former mayor.
Tempers flare
Taurice Collins, Mayesville's town clerk and treasurer, said she strained a muscle Tuesday while trying to keep former Town Councilman Kell Compton from starting a fight with her husband, who accompanies her to the office because another town employee has been accused of sexually harassing her on multiple occasions. Collins said she doesn't feel safe at work.
Collins told The Post and Courier on Jan. 25 that Compton came to the office Tuesday morning aggressively requesting a copy of the agenda for the canceled meeting. Sumter County deputies were then called about a fight between Compton and Collins' husband, Samuel. Deputies reported that both men wanted to press charges, but the incident remains under investigation.
Compton disputed Taurice Collins' version of the incident, saying it was "nothing more than a shouting match" and no blows were exchanged. He said he is embarrassed about the episode.
Collins said she was just trying to keep the peace on Tuesday, an attitude she wishes the new mayor shared.
"He came in with force. No peace," Collins said.
She says Brown is constantly looking for reasons to reprimand her in an attempt to remove her from the job. Brown has made no secret of his displeasure of Collins' job performance, accusing her on Tuesday of repeatedly defying his orders.
Brown sees a situation where he's being hamstrung and undermined by Collins and the past administration. They, however, view the new mayor as an interloper hurling accusations and trying to run roughshod over the town council. Both sides have sent competing accusations to state law enforcement, regulatory boards and the local sheriff's office, with little effect.
Struggle for control
The previous mayor, Jereleen Miller, oversaw the million-dollar renovation of a downtown building used for town offices, a town museum and a handful of affordable apartments.
Her husband, Ed, is leader of the nonprofit the town created as part of the funding process for the renovation. The town gave the deed for the building to the nonprofit, so Miller controls the keys and deed to the building. Ed Miller has been reluctant to meet with Brown or grant him full access to the building.
Brown has raised questions about the ethics surrounding Miller's appointment to the nonprofit board. He has also questioned Jereleen Miller's move to push through a vote on an incomplete audit for two years of the town's finances in her final meeting as mayor.
While the town council and mayor were designated members of the nonprofit board when it was established, Brown discovered this week that the board's makeup had been changed several months before he took office. The mayor and town council are no longer a part of it.
Brown's discovery came after he filed paperwork with the state earlier this month trying to place the nonprofit's registration in his name.
Of the new board members, Brown said he only knows that one of them lives in Mayesville. And when locals gathered in the hallway and foyer of the learning center Tuesday, Brown listed aloud the names of the new board members and asked if anyone knew them. No one responded.
Ed Miller said Wednesday that new board members were chosen for their potential to help raise money.
"All of the millions of dollars that we raised didn't come from those living in Mayesville," Miller said in a text message. "We are outside the box thinkers."
Brown is working to cut off the building's municipal funding because Mayesville taxpayers pay the utilities for it, plans he vowed to continue pursuing during his solo meeting Tuesday.
Meanwhile, he hopes to renovate the town's abandoned old town hall building, which is overrun with black mold. He pitched the idea in the hallway meeting.
After Brown finished his remarks, two councilwomen arrived and then left after a brief argument with Brown.
Since winning the mayor's race by 27 votes in November, Brown has repeatedly found himself bumping against the limits of a mayor's power. He can't do anything without convincing a majority of the town council to vote alongside him. Even a move to renovate the old town hall would require the council to vote for it.
"I would love them to be on board," he told The Sumter Item, later noting that he's still working on talking through their differences.
For now, they can't even agree on when to meet, where to meet and what to discuss.
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