The Rainsville City Council prepped for Freedom Fest on Monday night with their own fireworks show.

There's been tension between Council members Melissa Ledbetter, Joey Graham and Mayor Nick Jones. That tension was on display Monday night when the City Council held it's regularly scheduled meeting and the topic of new hirings and appointments for the City of Rainsville came up.

"The interviewing of the Officer that Chief Centers brought to us, said Graham "My understanding is that that interview did not take place."

"Typically how this works is I'll checkout the applications and we will schedule interviews. Chief Centers has not given me all the applications. I've asked for that twice," said Jones.

"We are down four police officers right now," said Graham. "And it's to the point where it's critical that you bring in people to fill this staff. We can't compel you to hire an officer...but as a citizen of Rainsville I would hope that you would adequately staff the police department for the safety of the whole community."

Jones fired back, "I'm glad we're finally having a conversation about staffing our public safety departments...two part time people staffing the fire department is not kosher. That's not a good thing. The Mayor and council before us made a decision to staff the fire department 24/7...and pay those folks. Which means, we're telling the citizens of Rainsville what we're doing with that tax money is we're gonna have 2 fully trained, full-time professional firefighters...and there hasn't been a whole lot of concern at this table about the understaffing of that department."

Jones finished, "I'm with you, we need more police officers...but, I can only work with however much Chief Centers will meet me there in the middle of the road."

ACT II - Ledbetter makes a motion to appoint Glenn Shedd to City Judge.

"I have no issue with Glenn Shedd," said Jones. "What I have an issue with is the process and how we arrived at the selection. Who were the applicants? How did we arrive at the selection of Glenn Shedd?"

"I called all three applicants and I discussed at great length with each applicant and then Joey had told me that that was Tammy's recommendation," said Ledbetter.

Jones responded, "There's just no process to talk with the applicants or interview or select them? You guys just all...decided?"

"I'm not going to talk about this anymore," exclaimed Ledbetter.

"We just had a discussion about rules in the meeting...and we don't want a bunch of rules. Me and Mr. Holt do...we don't want a bunch, we just want some structure. I'm just asking how we've landed at this selection."

Ledbetter refused to discuss the matter further and stated, "This is who we've selected. I have made my motion, there is a second on the table. I'm going to request that the Mayor Pro-temp please approve the motion and the second on the table so that we can we move on from this meeting and not hear this debate any longer."

"Let the record show that we're ending this debate before all of the issues were flushed out," said Jones." I'm asking a simple question with how we've arrived at this selection with no formal process."

The motion was passed and Shedd is now the new City Judge in Rainsville.

The process seems to have a similar feel to the debacle that was the hiring of a City Clerk at Rainsville in early February.

In that instance, longtime City Clerk Judy Lewis had announced her retirement and assistant City Clerk Debbie Lanier seemed to be the obvious choice. Overwhelming support from the general public, Mayor Jones, and Councilman Brandon Freeman led to speculation that Lanier was the homerun hire.

After weeks debate among the Council, it was agreed that the hiring process and interviews should be conducted publicly.

Fast forward to April 16, when council members hired Kelly Frazier as the City Clerk after holding private interviews without any public oversight.

The public's right to know what business their government officials are conducting is the bedrock of a free society and should not be taken lightly. Citizens should all have the right to know what the people that control their tax dollars and making decisions about the well being and day-to-day activities of their city are doing.

Sunshine laws make meetings, records, votes, deliiberations and other official actions available for public observation, participation and/or inspection. Sunshine laws also require government meetings to be held with sufficient advance notice and at times and places that are convenient and accessible to the public, with exceptions for emergency meetings.

Furthermore, the Alabama Legislature just strengthened the Sunshine Laws with "The Open Meetings Act".

"It is the policy of this state that the deliberative process of governmental bodies shall be open to the public during meetings as defined in Section 36-25A-2 (6)."

"The Open Meetings Act allows nine exceptions when governmental bodies can meet in private, including discussions of litigation with attorneys, good name and character of an employee or preliminary negotiations in an economic development deal."

These are rare exceptions...