Three Fayetteville City Council members say Mayor Mitch Colvin and his allies postponed Monday’s council meeting until Nov. 10 to prevent a politically fraught topic—contractors’ abandonment of six construction projects—from being discussed less than 24 hours before Election Day.
The three council members also question whether the vote to postpone the meeting was conducted legally.
The council is to discuss at the postponed meeting whether the city should ask the office of State Auditor Dave Boliek to conduct an audit of the projects. They are:
- The unbuilt apartment tower on the Hay Street parking deck.
- The unfinished Fire Station 4.
- The Rosehill Road sidewalk project.
- The Mable C. Smith Community Center.
- The Mazarick Park Tennis Center building.
- And new tennis courts at Mazarick Park.
In Tuesday’s election, voters will decide whether Colvin will retain his seat or be unseated by Mayor Pro Tem Kathy Jensen. All nine city council seats are also on the ballots.
The council voted 5-4 on Oct. 27 to postpone Monday’s meeting to Nov. 10.
Council members Deno Hondros, Mario Benevente and Lynne Greene allege the meeting postponement was designed to shield Colvin from public scrutiny and potential backlash over the city’s handling of the projects.
Jensen joined Hondros, Benavente and Greene in voting against the postponement. Colvin and Council members Derrick Thompson, D.J. Haire, Brenda McNair, and Malik Davis voted for the delay. Council member Courtney Banks-McLaughlin was absent.
Benavente lost his bid for mayor in the Oct. 7 primary against Colvin, Jensen, and seven other candidates. He told CityView he believes Thompson made the motion to postpone the meeting on behalf of Colvin.
“Mitch will run roughshod on everyone and everything if no one stops him,” Benavente said. He said the legal procedure for holding the vote was “100% ignored.” During the campaign, Benavente also criticized Colvin for accepting a donation from the owner of Apex Contracting Group—the company that walked away from four city projects totaling more than $7.9 million in contracts.
Colvin told CityView that he did nothing wrong. “They’re kicking, screaming and pouting,” he said. “You all are making a news story, which is pretty shameful. I’m not going to participate in that.”
Thompson on Friday would not say why he wanted to postpone the meeting. He said he does not comment to the news media.
“We have the majority of the votes; that should be the end of the story. You can’t pull strings when there’s no strings to be pulled,” he said.
The postponed meeting is what the city council calls a “work session,” where the council and city staff discuss matters in depth.
Hondros on Oct. 24 submitted the request for the audit of the six projects along with Greene and Davis. He said he was “taken aback” by Thompson’s motion to postpone Monday’s meeting.
“We’ve always had the work session the day before the election,” Hondros said. “We’ve never moved it.” Hondros said when he previously tried to raise off-agenda items in dinner meetings, he was shut down—typically by Colvin, with the city attorney’s backing.
Hondros said he had previously spoken with Colvin and Thompson about his request to discuss an audit during the work session. While both expressed general support for the audit itself, Hondros said they objected to the timing—citing its proximity to Election Day.
“Am I busy the day before election day? Yeah, absolutely,” Hondros said. “Most recently the council had a work session the day before the primary election. So why is this Monday any different?”
Greene, who also opposed the postponement, said she confronted Colvin afterward. “I called it BS,” she said. “He told me the timing of our request was BS. That told me he knew exactly what I meant.”
Hondros and his co-signers emphasized that the audit request was about restoring public trust. “There’s a distrust in government,” he said. “This would have been an independent, third-party audit—the highest auditor in the state. I thought that would have been unanimous.”
Was the vote illegal?
The decision to postpone was made at a city council dinner meeting on Oct. 27, held in an upstairs room of City Hall before members gather in the council chamber to conduct votes. Known as a “discussion meeting,” it serves as a behind-the-scenes briefing where council members ask staff questions about items on the agenda, council members said.
While members of the public are allowed to attend the dinner meetings, they rarely do. The meeting room is inaccessible without a staff pass and not livestreamed or video recorded.
Benevente said he immediately objected to Thompson’s motion to delay Monday’s meeting. He said the vote should instead occur publicly at the regular 6:30 p.m. session in the City Council chamber, and that the meeting agenda needed to be amended to add the topic.
City Attorney Lachelle Pulliam advised the vote could proceed, according to five city council members who spoke to CityView.
Benavente said he contacted Kristina M. Wilson, a public law expert at the University of North Carolina School of Government, for advice—and later shared their email exchange with CityView.
“If the motion you describe was not on the agenda for the dinner meeting, technically a board member should’ve motioned to amend the agenda before proceeding straight to this motion,” she wrote in an email to Benavente that included the city attorney and city manager.
A review of minutes show that no other votes have been recorded in such meetings since January, aside from motions to enter closed sessions.
Jensen, who is challenging Colvin for mayor in Tuesday’s election, said she voted no because the council “has never rescheduled a meeting before elections.” She, too, questioned whether the vote was valid. “It has always been my understanding that we have to make it official at the meeting downstairs,” she said.
Government reporter Rachel Heimann Mercader can be reached at rheimann@cityviewnc.com.
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