Atlantic Beach mayor cancels council meeting

Mayor Retha Pierce cancelled Tuesday night's town council meeting because the town's attorney was not present.

By: Aisha Khan | SCNow
Published: April 22, 2009

Atlantic Beach town council met Tuesday night but it didn’t last for long.

It didn't take long for Mayor Retha Pierce to cancel the scheduled town meeting, because a town attorney was not present.

Donnell Thompson and Charlene Taylor didn’t show up for the executive session because they said to Pierce that the town’s attorney Steve Benjamin did not appear.

Pierce said that because the attorney Benjamin wasn’t at the closed door session at 6 pm she saw no reason to have a town meeting with out his presence at 7pm.

That decision made Thompson and Taylor walk out of the town hall.

Taylor said that what Pierce did was unfair.

"She made it all look like it was our fault that we cancelled the meeting. We didn't cancel the meeting the meeting was cancelled because we didn't have an attorney and so Mister Thompson told her that was not what we were there for all she needed to do was open the meeting and start and she refuse to do that she wanted to put on the record what she was talking about."

Among the items council was supposed to discuss Tuesday was the Memorial Day weekend biker rally and next week's council runoff election.

Pierce says the next council meeting is on May 4.