Derailed Palmer city meeting, infighting signals ongoing controversy over former manager’s exit

What you need to know:

• Tuesday’s Palmer City Council meeting ended after just four minutes when a vote to approve the agenda failed, marking the latest in a series of council disputes following the forced resignation of former City Manager Stephen Jellie.
• The disputes include an unusual council order issued late last month to remove a public document from a published meeting packet, as well as a series of meetings focused on discussions of Jellie’s past actions. Palmer Mayor Steve is facing criticism and a recall effort over his handling of Jellie’s severance agreement.
• Jellie resigned Oct. 9 during a closed council session. He received a $75,000 severance package, marking his third resignation in two years.

PALMER – A Palmer City Council meeting ended abruptly just minutes after it began Tuesday when the council failed to approve an agenda, marking the first time in recent memory that a meeting was shut down for that reason. The incident is the latest in a series of procedural disputes sparked by the resignation of former City Manager Stephen Jellie.

Tuesday's meeting lasted just four minutes. By law, council meeting agendas must be approved by four members before the meeting can proceed. Tuesday's agenda received a 3-2 vote, with two members absent and council members Victoria Hudson and Joshua Tudor voting "no."

Hudson and Tudor opposed the agenda because it included a discussion of an ongoing investigation into Jellie's actions, which they wanted to cancel and then later reschedule for a meeting with all members present. A motion to remove the item from the agenda but continue with the rest of the meeting was defeated 3-2, with Hudson and Tudor voting for removal.

Several city officials and former council members said they could not recall a previous instance in which a Palmer council meeting ended due to a rejected agenda.

Tuesday's agenda also included two local special license actions, a public hearing on a state grant agreement and approval of health insurance for city employees. Those items have not been rescheduled yet.

Jellie resigned during a three-hour closed session with the council on Oct. 9. He received $75,000 in severance. His departure followed controversy over rumored cuts to the city's public safety budget and a warning from the city attorney that Palmer faced an "imminent threat" of lawsuits due to Jellie's personnel practices. It was his third such resignation from a city in less than two years, with previous payouts totaling $200,000.

Tuesday's meeting was the fourth since Jellie's departure, all of which have been marked by disagreement over his tenure and questions from some council members about Palmer City Mayor Steve Carrington's actions in the days before Jellie’s resignation.

During a special meeting on Oct. 29, the council voted unanimously to remove from the city's website and an official meeting packet 10 pages of information submitted by Jellie as public records.

Some council members said including the information in the packet was inappropriate. City officials and experts said it was the first known instance of such an order to remove a public record

A regular council meeting on Oct. 22, which included hearings on the city's proposed $15 million budget for 2025, focused largely on a planned investigation into Jellie's actions and an attempt by Carrington to limit topics the public could address during the meeting.

Carrington said the infighting at the meetings feels like a war.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to say it before, but it sure feels like a civil war on the council,” Carrington said in an interview after Tuesday’s meeting.

Some council members and residents have also questioned Carrington's handling of a severance agreement prepared by an attorney he hired without council approval before the closed session in which Jellie resigned. The council later approved the agreement unanimously.

The issue is now part of an ongoing recall effort against Carrington. A special council meeting scheduled for Thursday will include a discussion of the process through which the severance agreement was created.

Carrington said he worked with an attorney on the agreement before the Oct. 9 meeting because he anticipated the council would ask Jellie to resign and wanted to streamline the process.

Palmer isn't the first city to experience internal government problems following Jellie's departure. Both Ogdensburg, New York, where Jellie worked as city manager from 2020 to 2022, and Teton County, Wyoming, where he worked as fire chief from late 2022 until early this year, endured long-term battles, residents and officials there said in interviews.

In Ogdensburg, a lawsuit between a firefighter union and the city over staff cuts ordered by Jellie was settled late last year. In Wyoming, Teton County Administrator Alyssa Watkins resigned in March, in part because of continued questions over her decision to hire Jellie, residents there said.

Jellie was given a $50,000 buyout payment following his resignation from Ogdensburg; he received $150,000 in severance from Teton County. 

-- Contact Amy Bushatz at abushatz@matsusentinel.com

An earlier version of this article included a statement from Carrington that he should have waited to take action on a severance agreement. That quote was incorrectly linked in the story to the production of the agreement, and the story was updated to remove that quote. The story was also updated to clarify that Jellie's payment from Ogdensburg was a buyout.