DODGE CITY — The town of Dodge City has moved to correct actions taken during a series of executive sessions.

During a special called meeting on Monday, May 15, town officials looked to clear the way for the city of Cullman and the Cullman County Commission to take ownership of the county’s landfill.

With only a few months remaining before Cullman Environmental’s contract to provide a dumping site for the city and county’s waste departments is set to expire, in September, County Commission Chair Jeff Clemons said he and Cullman City Mayor Woody Jacobs were approached by owner Bill St. John, who expressed interest in selling the site.

Clemons said regional growth has been placing a strain on waste management departments across North Alabama in recent years and representatives from Marion and Walker counties have contacted him and requested to use Cullman’s landfill as a supplemental dumping site.

“This is probably one of the biggest decisions the city and the county are going to have to face in my time as chairman, because this is a big task,” Clemons told The Times Monday afternoon. “Our county is growing every day. Right now we have about 90,000 residents living in Cullman County and you have to provide a service. So, you’re going to have to look at every option you’ve got, and right now we don’t have many in Cullman.”

While the majority of the site’s overall 311-acre footprint lies in the unincorporated area of Cullman County, the Dodge City border reached into the property to surround two small parcels of land — one owned by Cullman Environmental located at the facility’s front gate and another owned by Ima Gean Chappell, whose property intersected the road leading back to the facility’s dumping location. On Tuesday, May 16, Jacobs told The Times that a state law prohibited the city’s involvement in purchasing these areas while they were located within another municipality, and a meeting had been arranged earlier in the year between himself, Clemons and Dodge City officials, mayor Jason Burney and attorney Hugh Harris.

Clemons said with negotiations only just beginning, and the fear of having an outside for-profit company attempting to intercept the deal, Dodge City was asked to use discretion when de-annexing the properties.

“I can’t remember exactly what was said in that, but I think we did say to keep it kind of close a little bit because when met with them, we didn’t really have many details. We really couldn’t get any of this started really until we met with them because they would have to de-annex until we could really think about purchasing that landfill,” Clemons said. “… We do know one thing, if a private entity comes in and purchases that landfill, I think our citizens will be in jeopardy, because what they’ll probably end up doing is taking outside trash and have that landfill filled up within in a matter of years. We don’t really need that, we need it to service the citizens of Cullman County.”

Following Monday evening’s meeting, Harris confirmed the meeting’s emphasis on discretion.

“They didn’t mention going into executive session, but they certainly wanted to keep it quiet because there was some dealings with some additional property that they didn’t want the price to go up on,” Harris said. What followed was a series of three executive sessions held after the scheduled council meetings in January, February and April where the council was presented with, and approved, two ordinances.

According to the minutes recorded during these closed sessions, the first ordinance to de-annex the two pieces of properties was first presented and approved in January with a second reading taking place the following month. Cullman County Probate Court records state the ordinance was approved and adopted on Feb. 9. The second ordinance, to recognize that the facility still falls within Dodge City’s police jurisdiction despite no longer being in the town’s limits, was approved in April.

With both documents approved by Cullman County Probate Judge Tammy Brown on May 5, Harris divulged the nature of these closed meeting during last week’s open council meeting on May 11.

“It’s public knowledge now since we filed them with probate court,” Harris said, “The reason we had to be secretive about it — because they were negotiating to buy some additional land to extend the lifespan of the landfill — the reason we wanted to make sure the city got it, is so an outside entity didn’t buy it and bring in all sorts of waste and everything that we didn’t really want in the landfill,” Harris said.

In a follow up phone call with The Times on May 12, Harris defended his view that the council had the authority to take action during a closed session by referencing section 7(a)(3) of the Alabama Open Meetings Act, which allows a governmental body to enter into a closed session to discuss legal options for pending litigation with their attorney. However, the section concludes by stating “… if any deliberation begins among the members of the governmental body regarding what action to take relating to pending or threatened litigation based upon the advice of counsel the executive session shall be concluded and the liberation shall be conducted in the open portion of the meeting or the deliberation shall cease.”

Maintaining this position could have resulted in disrupting the ongoing negotiations if a complaint was filed by a citizen claiming to be impacted by the actions taken during an executive session, any media organization, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall or Cullman County District Attorney Champ Crocker. The courts would then have the authority to invalidate any of the actions taken, given that the complaint was filed within 21 days and it was found the council intentionally violated the OMA — meaning the properties would remain within the town limits.

By the evening of May 12, Harris had recanted his previous statement and informed The Times that a special meeting was being planned for Monday, May 15, to correct any unintentional wrongdoings. Town Clerk Vicki Ogletree said by Saturday afternoon she had posted public notices for the meeting at Heritage Pharmacy, S&S Foods and the Petro Travel Center in the town. Alabama’s Open Meeting Act requires that the public be given notice of government meetings and that the meetings have minutes.

During the meeting Monday, May 15, the council held a roll call vote on each ordinance and approved the minutes from each executive session, making them available for public inspection. Harris said he plans to re-file the ordinances — which will receive an updated ordinance number — with the Cullman County Probate Court as soon as the property owners are able to re-sign the needed consent paperwork.

“We were never trying to do anything wrong,” Harris said. “If we had been trying to keep everything a secret then we wouldn’t have discussed all of it during an open meeting last week.”

Jacobs said negotiations to acquire the landfill had not reached a point where he was able to provide any details, but said a meeting with St. John was planned for Wednesday, May 17.