Some members of the Summerfield Town Council have called a special meeting for Tuesday, Feb. 4 to discuss the matter that has been dominating the town’s news since mid-January, when former NC Auditor Beth Wood, who had been hired by the town, presented a report at the Council meeting at which she said she had found evidence of financial mismanagement of staff pay, the deletion of a great deal of data from the town’s computer system, and a myriad of other misdeeds such as part-time employees getting full-time benefits and at least one town staff member who allegedly used town property to further his private business.

Wood’s presentation, which implicated, without naming, former town staff such as former Town Manager Scott Whitaker and former Finance Director Dee Hall, hit like a bomb exploding at the Summerfield Council Meeting and the Town Council voted unanimously to seek firms to launch a full-scale investigation of the alleged wrongdoing.

Not long after that, some wind fell out of the sails of the effect of Wood’s report.

 Whitaker, Hall and Bill Stone, the town’s former long-term IT administrator, all came out with strong public rebuttals and Stone had a highly detailed, lengthy and technical defense which explained that the massive data deletion was the removal of redundant backups rather than an attempt to mask wrongdoing.

Also, days after the meeting, the current and past mayor of the town jumped to the defense of the implicated former town staff and others spoke up as well about their good characters.

In addition, one Town Council Member, John Doggett, said after the meeting that, given what he knows now, he likely wouldn’t have voted for the investigation.

Summerfield Mayor Tim Sessoms, who sits on the Council but can only vote in case of a tie, has been a defender of town staff and said this week that he believes this proposed investigation was unnecessary.

He, like Whitaker and Hall, has been highly critical of the fact that the town hired Wood and let her make all of these allegations in a public meeting that the media had been forewarned of, but never even bothered to speak to the accused to get what they say are simple answers to all the allegations.

When the February meeting was first called, some political observers in Summerfield thought that perhaps that special meeting was to call off the investigation’ however, according to Summerfield Town Council Member Janelle Robinson, that’s not the case at all.

“Oh, we are moving ahead with the investigation,” she told the Rhino Times in no uncertain terms on Thursday, Jan. 30.

She said that several firms had sent in proposals and the Council would look at those and decide.

Sessoms, the mayor, said he wasn’t even told about the coming February meeting ahead of time.  In fact, he learned of the special called meeting when the Rhino Times asked him about it.  He had just arrived back from a business trip to New York and he said no one had bothered to text him or had even contacted him to see if he was free that afternoon – and he does have a conflict.

“They always do this,” the mayor said. “They keep me out of the loop.”

Sessoms later texted Doggett, who told Sessoms that no one had told him about the meeting either.

Sessoms added, of the majority of the board, “They call all the shots.”

Sessoms and former Summerfield Mayor BJ Barnes have said they feel the current Town Council is essentially trying to get back at former town staff since, after staff didn’t like the way Whitaker was shown the door with no severance pay last year after 12 years of service, the entire town staff resigned at the same time leaving Summerfield in dire straits.

Sessoms said the Town Council managers going after Whitaker, Hall and others were being really disingenuous at the mid-January meeting when Wood dropped her plethora of allegations.

“They said, oh we’re just following the recommendation of Dana Luther [former interim town manager] and Twig [current town manager]. but that’s not the case.”

Sessoms said the town council members had an agenda of their own.

“They were giddy about it,” Sessoms said.  “They were giddy about trying to ruin someone’s careers.”

He called the mid-January meeting a “Tuesday night lynching” and said that, in the end, he has no doubt that the names of those accused will be cleared.

The mayor also said it was very rich that Town Council Member Lynne DeVaney said a prayer before a Town Council meeting about working together and moving forward when she was a lead player in these kinds of ridiculous antics.

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