Responding to an open records request filed by Henderson County Now, the City of Athens today released an email which city officials claim shows that the Athens Municipal Water Authority (AMWA) hoped to file a motion this week to stop the election.
AMWA General Manager Wylie Pirkle and AMWA attorney Martin Bennett told Henderson County Now that the water authority never planned to file the motion.
The email in question is from Bennett to city officials and is dated Saturday, April 26. That email is a simple request for documents from the city.
Included with the email, however, are emails from Friday, April 25, between Bennett and Sherry Brown, a paralegal with Messer Rockefeller & Fort, a law firm out of Frisco. Those emails discuss which records Bennett should request from the city, and also includes the following sentence:
“Andy would like to have these by the end of the day on Monday in order to file the emergency motion to stop the election on Tuesday.”
After Monday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Jerry Don Vaught issued a press release saying the email shows “AMWA is attempting to take this important decision out of the hands of the electorate.”
Pirkle said the wording of the email was unfortunate, but said the AMWA board never voted to file the motion to stop the election. He said the board just directed attorneys to do due diligence to collect the documents.
“Our decision was that we got (the issue) on the ballot and we want the voters to decide,” he said.
Bennett agreed with Pirkle and said attorneys were never directed to file the motion.
“We have been specifically directed not to file the motion,” he said.
Bennett said the AMWA board approved just one action following an executive session Thursday, and that was to drop the $4 million demand from the lawsuit.
For more background on this issue, click here.