The newly appointed Birmingham Water Works Board's (BWWB) first meeting got off to a rocky and heated start Wednesday night as members clashed over the former board's decision to sell their assets to the City of Birmingham.
The first order of business was to elect board officers. However, the members voted to table that until a later meeting, when they would hopefully know more about each other.
"We don't know each other," board member Sheila Tyson told 1819 News. "We don't know anything about each other."
Tyson complained that she hadn't received a copy of the agenda until shortly before the meeting and had no time to study the line items.
"It's like you're trying to ram something down our throat," she said at the meeting.
The item she objected to the most was the motion to invalidate the sale of the board's assets to Birmingham. Tyson took issue with the law signed by Gov. Kay Ivey to reorganize the board and other officials' interpretation that it automatically disbanded the old board and invalidated the sale.
She said during the meeting that the law was "written wrong" and unfair to Jefferson County. She later told 1819 News that she agreed with the board's lawyer Mark Parnell, who she said did not believe the law voided the sale.
"I live in the city of Birmingham. I was put in this seat by the city council of Birmingham. I'm here to represent them, and I believe in what they are doing," she said after the meeting. "...I believe that Birmingham has a right to sue, and I believe that they have a cause to sue. The assets belong to Birmingham."
The board voted 5-2 to invalidate the sale. Jarvis Patton Sr., appointed to the BWWB by Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin, joined Tyson in dissenting.
State Rep. David Standridge (R-Hayden), who was picked by the Shelby and Blount County commissions, said the vote was to send a message of support to Ivey and the new law.
"I think that the majority of the board felt like the law that was passed, it took effect immediately, so the action was not valid," Standridge told 1819 News. "We just thought it was important to make a statement that the new board feels like that was an invalid action. The ones that objected did not agree, but it passed."
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