Andrea Gordy

VARNELL, Ga. — Varnell City Council member Andrea Gordy has not been a resident of the city for some time and should not have been able to vote to abolish the police department, say two Dalton attorneys who say they are representing “citizens of Varnell.”

“To be a council member of the city of Varnell, you have to be a resident inside the city limits,” said Marcus Morris on Thursday. “You have to have voted in city elections in Varnell. I can say with almost absolute certainty that she is not a resident of the city of Varnell.”

Based on what?

Morris said Gordy and her fiance sent out a wedding reception invitation that said they planned to be wed at their residence in Rocky Face.

“She gets mail at that (Rocky Face) address. Her vehicle is parked there at 4 in the morning,” he said.

“We believe she is not a resident of Varnell,” said his law partner Jeffrey Dean. “She lives in Rocky Face.”

Dean and Morris said they could not release the identities of their clients at this time.

City Council member Jan Pourquoi said he had been told that former city manager Ralph Morgan had retained the attorneys.

“No comment,” said Morgan Thursday when asked about that claim.

When the issue of Gordy’s residence has been raised by members of the public, both City Manager Mike Brown and Mayor Anthony Hulsey have said her residency status has been addressed by the council and no action has been taken against her.

“The mayor and the council have asked me about this issue, and they have been satisfied with my answers,” Gordy said. “Yes, I plan to get married, and yes, my fiance lives in Rocky Face, and I do visit him. But I live in Varnell. If my fiance lived in Alabama and I went to visit him there, that would not make me a resident of Alabama.”

Gordy said efforts to follow her and take photos of her at her fiance’s home are an attempt to “bully” her.

Dean says they are prepared to ask a Whitfield County Superior Court judge to rule on whether Gordy is in fact a resident of Varnell.

If she is not, Morris said, she should not have been allowed to vote last week when she joined council members David Owens and Pourquoi in a 3-1 vote to abolish the police department. Council member Ashlee Godfrey cast the dissenting vote while Hulsey typically votes only in the event of a tie. Hulsey later vetoed that vote.

If Gordy had not voted that day, the council would still have had a 2-1 vote to abolish the police department.

“That is correct. That was why the situation with Gordy is only part of our complaint,” said Dean. “If the council had advertised the meeting and conducted the meeting in accordance with the city charter and state law and all the rules they were supposed to, and have a 2-1 vote to abolish the police department, that would be a very different situation.”

Prior to the meeting, no agenda was posted at City Hall, and the agenda provided after the meeting by Brown — which he said was the one given to the council members — did not list any business other than an executive session, the subject of which was not listed. Under Georgia’s open meetings law, an agenda should be publicly posted and can be changed to include new business if a government body votes in open session to do so.

There was no motion to discuss new business before Pourquoi made his motion to dissolve the department.

Dean says the complaint they are drafting will also ask the court to determine whether the meeting in which the council voted met all the requirements of the Georgia open meetings law.

Owens said the agenda he saw said the council members would be discussing personnel and he believes the vote would be covered by that.

The council is scheduled to meet on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Varnell gym. Gordy, Owens and Pourquoi now say they will vote at that meeting to put a non-binding referendum on the Nov. 7 ballot on whether to abolish the police department and they say they will abide by the voters’ decision.