SGA tables resolution on Joiner

An attempt by the Student Government Association to formally express student discontent over City Councilman Phillip Joiner continuing to serve in his elected office has fizzled out silently over the past two weeks.On Jan. 26, during the SGA meeting, SGA Senator Jay Parker introduced a resolution addressing Mayor Richard Bentley and requesting that Joiner be “strongly considered for removal from his office as City Councilman.” The five-page resolution used Joiner’s violation of his probation and repeated misuse of alcohol, insufficient representation of college students, and his disregard of Georgia College’s stance on responsible and safe alcohol consumption practices to support its argument for the removal of Joiner.

Parker, who worked on Joiner’s campaign, was motivated by the conviction that Joiner is not accurately representing the Georgia College’s student body, especially considering over half of his votes were college students as Joiner himself admitted in an interview with The Colonnade in 2009.

“We as the student community helped put Phillip in office and in doing such we would expect that he would be a representative of who we are and what our student community stands for and he has not done that,” Parker said. “So I personally think it’s a bit of a slap in the face for him to say he wants to be our voice and our representation and then be so patently against what we do and what we stand for to have these repeated alcohol violations.”

According to SGA President Zach Mullins after the resolution was read it was automatically tabled until the next week because of more pressing matters, but was discussed outside of SGA Senate.

“We met outside of Senate and talked a little bit more about the particular issue at hand and we decided that (Parker) wanted to bring this up in a different manner he might get a more positive reaction of what he is looking to accomplish if he were to approach City Council and such on an individual level instead of having SGA take a particular stance on it,” Mullins said.

The resolution, however, is technically still on the table and is still on the Senate’s agenda although it may never be recognized. On Feb. 2 during the SGA meeting Parker announced that a “different approach in terms of student voice and student opinion, an approach that’s a little more personal” would be taken on the issue. He has also recognized that the mayor does not have the power to remove any city council member.

According to Municipal Elections Superintendent, Patti Rushin, for a city council member to be officially recalled a three-step process must be followed: application for a recall petition, completion of the recall petition, and a recall election. An application must contain either the signatures of 100 sponsors or a number of sponsors equal to 10 percent of the number of voters who were registered to vote during the last election and be submitted for verification within 15 days after issuance. The application is then reviewed by the municipal elections superintendent and if found to be sufficient, a recall petition is issued. The recall petition requires signatures equal to 30 percent of the active voters registered and eligible to vote at the last preceding election for the office of the person being recalled.

There are no recorded applications for a recall petition of a city council member this year.

Another concern for any formal stance is the relationship between SGA and the city.

“Student government has spent several years to build good strong relations with the city government, not that we work together a lot,” Parker said. “But if we do ever cross paths, we want there to always be good rapport between what the students are doing and the city is doing. I think what we want to be careful of is that in stepping up and saying something we don’t somehow offend or belittle or demean anybody at the city level.”

For now at least SGA is following the lead of the mayor.

“SGA is trusting the mayor to make the right decisions and is not wiling to take a stance in this particular issue,” Mullins said. “We support Councilman’s Joiner’s efforts to go into a rehabilitation program and we also hope he will make the right decisions for the good of the community as well as himself.”

Posted by Rebecca Burns on Feb 10 2011. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.