Written by Tanya Terry
Members of the Flint City Council expressed a strong interest in seeing corrective action be taken against Council President Eric Mays at a March 14 Special Affairs Flint City Council meeting.
Multiple city council members attributed Mays’ behavior as the reason the council meeting that occurred February 28 lost a quorum and therefore had to end before the majority of the agenda items for the meeting were addressed. The council members said they believed Mays spoke with a lack of respect for members of the administration and City Clerk Inez Brown, as well as fellow council members, during the late February meeting. That meeting ended after Mays ordered police to escort two fellow council members out of the meeting and other council members began to leave soon after.
The Special Affairs meeting lasted approximately four hours. During that time, council members talked about why they wanted to remove or censure the council president. Some council members said they wanted an apology, which Mays did not offer.
Unfortunately, agenda items could not be addressed due to the amount of time the council felt needed to be devoted to conversations about Mays.
The vote was 6-0 to censure Mays. Three council members did not vote. The censure was considered a warning from other council members.
Mays has announced he will be running for mayor of Flint and has indicated that although there may be room for improvement, he sees no valid cause for removing him. He said he believed discrimination and politics were the main reasons his fellow council members voted the way they did.
