Everyone was there, waiting for it. A lot of frustration; a lot of pent-up ire.

But it didn’t happen. So they took it out on the messenger.

At 10 a.m. Tuesday, the start time for a special public meeting announced last week by outgoing Cullman County Associate Commissioner Wayne Willingham, county attorney Dan Willingham walked into a room filled with more than 30 onlookers and announced that the meeting was a no-go.

“There will not be a meeting this morning,” attorney Willingham announced, “because to have one would be superfluous anyway… There were a couple of things that were on the agenda for today that will be placed on the agenda for Tuesday.”

Tuesday, Oct. 26  marks the last regularly-scheduled commission meeting for associate commissioners Willingham and Doug Williams. Any of the contested measures that the two have passed — and seen blocked by a circuit judge’s temporary restraining order — will see whatever input they can leverage on that day.

As far back as April of this year, if not longer, the pair of associate commissioners has formed the requisite quorum of the three-member county commission on many water department-related issues that the commission chairman, James Graves, has been unable to defeat.

Lying just beyond the view of those in attendance at Tuesday’s non-meeting were the two associate commissioners, along with chairman Graves. Though present in the commission offices, the three did not enter the meeting room for the duration of the nearly two-hour session that ensued. Graves milled around in the lobby just outside his office. The associate commissioners were never seen.

Left with no meeting to witness — one that had been publicized and even fought over for its purported intent to ratify and reaffirm a number of commission actions taken under controversial circumstances earlier this month — the agitated crowd wasn’t about to leave without its pound of flesh. The brunt of their questions fell to county attorney Willingham, who remained on his feet in front of the crowd for the next hour and a half.

Using the occasion as an opportunity for questioning the two associate commissioners’ motives in having announced the meeting in the first place, audience members — initially led by local attorney Steve Griffith — let the questions and accusations fly.

Like many of the court proceedings, hearings and public comment sessions that have followed since the commission’s April 27 creation of the South Cumberland Cooperative District (SCCD) and the Governmental Utility Services Corporation of Cullman County (GUSC), the informal venting session that unfolded meandered through arguments about why the two water utilities were created; the mounting legal costs associated with defending their legitimacy before the courts; the county’s tenuous role in remaining a regional player in the development of a new water source; and even the history of the county’s relationship with the City of Cullman in maintaining the area’s existing water supply through its many partnerships with the network’s rural water systems.

As the session wound down, one audience member — Tommy Warhurst — aimed a question at SCCD board member Ron Stone that perhaps best represented the frustrated tone hanging over the room.

Hearing Senator Zeb Little reaffirm his pledge to introduce legislation that would put a constitutional amendment before county voters to dissolve the two water utilities, audience member Tommy Warhurst posited:

“Just to recap what I’ve heard here this morning — there are two boards that are gonna be done away with. There are three ways to do it: they can turn it back over themselves; the court can rule; or we can have a constitutional amendment to put the property back in the hands of the county. So the only decision that’s out here on the table now is how much more county money are they gonna waste before we get to that final outcome? That’s the only question out there.”

Stone, already weary from a full morning of defending his views on the SCCD and the water debate in general, said simply that he did not feel that defending the utilities’ existence in court — a multifaceted endeavor involving at least three separate cases — was a waste of money.

While the gathering itself resolved nothing Tuesday, it perhaps offered a precursory glimpse at the emotional tone many longtime observers expect from the current commission lineup’s final meeting on Oct. 26. That meeting will see consideration of the items that would have been discussed had the commission chosen to go forward with Tuesday’s meeting, as well as mundane business.

The biggest battle may come over the budget for the 2011 fiscal year. The budget, along with other measures the commission passed without Graves’ participation at the Oct. 7 meeting, is the subject of a lawsuit all four candidates for the two available associate commissioners’ seats have filed against the body.

Also to be discussed on Oct. 26 is the county’s possible role in backing a $500,000 defendants’ surety bond so that the defendants in an earlier lawsuit against the commission, the SCCD and the GUSC can continue to wage an appeal of a circuit court injunction against the two utilities before the Supreme Court of Alabama.

Other items passed at the Oct. 7 meeting — a contract extension for SCCD / water department manager David Bussman; payment of outstanding and future legal fees to the Birmingham law firm representing the defendants on the lawsuit appeal before the Supreme Court; a proposed water purchase contract between the county and the embattled SCCD — remain under a temporary restraining order extended Monday by Circuit Judge Don Hardeman.

None of those measures can take effect until the candidates’ lawsuit has progressed further in the discovery and investigation of the documentation underlying each of those measures.