Newton excoriates previous board members

A defiant Mayor Jerome Newton kicked off the new year in Mount Olive by launching, at the onset of the Town Board’s Jan. 5 meeting, into a lengthy defense of his record — and, in the process, attacking former commissioners, questioning the motives of the town’s deceased former town manager, and inferring the current town attorney was part of a conspiracy to “keep me from succeeding.”

And while he did take a brief moment to remind town residents that in the new year, they had “an opportunity to make a difference,” his tone was, mostly, a dark one.

He said that in a perfect world, a mayor “should be able to produce the right energy to bring the council together to accomplish the mission,” but excoriated the former board for what he characterized as “underhandedness,” “shadiness,” and sabotage.”

“Certain commissioners decided they did not want the mayor to succeed. Therefore, they wanted the mayor to fail,” Newton said. “They set up roadblocks. Their intent was to ensure the mayor did not get a second term.”

And that, he claimed, was evident within hours of his election in 2023.

“As soon as I won the election a commissioner said to me, ‘You don’t have my support. We don’t trust you. We don’t respect you,’” Newton said.

And in his view, their behavior for the two years that followed proved it was more than just talk.

Newton claimed the board’s majority “met behind closed doors to strategize” against him and even resorted to threatening staff to ensure they did not aid him in “fixing” Mount Olive.

“The town manager told department heads and staff not to communicate with me,” the mayor said. “The former town manager was threatened and told not to support me.”

But that former manager, the late Jammie Royall, is no longer alive to defend himself.

And members of the board’s majority Newton seemed to be implicating in wrongdoing were not present Monday either.

Only Carroll Turner, Mount Olive’s longtime attorney, was subjected to an in-person tongue-lashing.

“The town attorney hid things from me,” Newton said. “The town attorney was also directed to keep things from me — and he did. All to keep me from succeeding.”

Turner, when asked by Wayne Week Tuesday whether he had any interest in responding, took the high road, saying only that he had served the town “for many, many years” because “I love Mount Olive.”

Newton disagrees.

In his view, none of those he took to task cared about the town.

If they did, they would have wanted to be a part of setting the embattled municipality on a new course.

“They should have been concerned about the problems facing this town. And some of them were part of the problem. People want to know why we didn’t succeed. They want to put the blame on the mayor. But the mayor can only do what he can do if he has five commissioners,” Newton said. “The mayor does not have absolute power … and without the support of the board, not much can be accomplished. So, what you have today in Mount Olive is because no success was supposed to take place during my tenure as mayor. What we could have fixed, we did not because it would have appeared the mayor would get the credit. It was their intent to make me look incompetent so I would not be re-elected.”

The mayor’s diatribe was not the only thing that unfolded at what ended up being a consequential first meeting of the year for the newly elected board.

FORENSIC AUDIT

More than five months after Newton wrote a letter to State Auditor Dave Boliek — a note requesting that the North Carolina Office of the State Auditor return to Mount Olive to complete a “forensic audit” of Town Hall operations — Commissioner Delreese Simmons said it was time for the board to take matters into its own hands.

So, he asked that a measure authorizing Interim Town Manager Glenn Holland to seek recommendations for a private company to complete the task be added to the meeting agenda.

It was.

And despite reservations expressed by Turner, who told the board that the price tag for a deep dive into years of the town’s financial records could reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, commissioners backed the move.

HOUSING AUHTORITY, AT LAST, HAS A BOARD

Back in September, a battle between Newton and Mount Olive Housing Authority Board Vice Chairman Brent Heath went public after the mayor seemingly violated North Carolina General Statute by removing Heath from his position without due process.

What Newton did not know was removing Heath would start a chain reaction that would, by the board’s Sept. 16 meeting, leave it with only one member — that the others would resign in a show of solidarity.

According to Turner, the lack of a board was problematic for a number of reasons, including the fact that in order to pay its bills, checks from the Housing Authority required two signatures.

One of those signatures must, he said, be either that of the board’s chair or vice chair, and after the Sept. 16 meeting, the organization had neither.

It is unclear how, since that time, the Housing Authority has been able to function, but Newton has had the authority to appoint new board members for the last three months.

Monday, at last, he swore in four residents.

Pernell Bricky, Ed Fennell, Donna Price, and Sadio Sykes will serve five-year terms.

TABLED

Two items that are likely to generate debate were tabled because board members, and Newton, did not have an appetite for a meeting that ran too long.

In fact, the mayor said, at the end of the Monday session, that his goal was to ensure board meetings lasted no more than an hour.

The “non action memo” items that were held over to the next session include:

• The board is poised to discuss potentially naming Town Hall after former Town Manager Jammie Royall.

Royall was fired by the board Jan. 13 — a move that set off accusations of racism and was lampooned by Newton, who protested the fact that he was unable to attend the meeting at which the decision to terminate Royall was made by then-commissioners Barbara Kornegay, Danny Keel, and Tommy Brown.

And Simmons, who is now Mount Olive’s Mayor Pro Tem, criticized the move, too, claiming “a certain commissioner” wants to “run this town” and that Royall was fired because he wasn’t going to be “the boy they wanted.”

The former manager died later that year.

• The board is poised to discuss amending the town charter to four-year non-staggered terms for elected officials.

Currently, elections are held for commissioner seats and mayor every two years.

MORATORIUM MEETINGS

She gave a presentation Monday for the benefit of newly elected members of the board, but Jan. 12, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Project Manager Caroline Bari will host two “informational” meetings at Town Hall to detail, for local residents, issues related to the moratorium.

Those sessions are scheduled for 10 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.