The Bayou La Batre City Council skipped its regular Thursday meeting this week after officials determined that a workshop session normally held beforehand had not been properly advertised to the public, forcing lawmakers to reschedule a special meeting for Friday instead.
According to Councilwoman Annette Johnson, the work session was not posted in a public location with enough advance notice to satisfy requirements under Alabama’s Open Meetings Act. After consulting with the city’s attorney, council members decided the safest course was to postpone rather than risk holding a meeting that could later be challenged as improperly noticed.
A notice taped to a window at city hall indicated that Friday’s session would focus narrowly on bill payments and other pressing business matters, with everything else pushed to the next regularly scheduled meeting. Among the items requiring immediate attention were a payment on the city’s line of credit and the renewal of an insurance policy, both of which city officials said could not wait for the normal meeting cycle.
Mayor Brett Dungan, who arrived at city hall after 5:30 p.m. Thursday, placed responsibility for the delay on the city’s legal counsel, saying the attorney had determined the meeting was not properly noticed and could not proceed as scheduled. He voiced frustration over the disruption, arguing that questions over posting requirements were making it difficult to manage city business efficiently when there is only one venue available for holding public meetings.
The postponed meeting would have marked the first regular council session since a tense May 14 exchange between the mayor and Johnson during a debate over a federal grant application, an incident that led Johnson to file a harassment complaint and resulted in Dungan turning himself in to the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office the following week.
The scheduling dispute adds another layer to an already strained relationship between the mayor and several council members. Dungan has separately filed a lawsuit against four council members, arguing that a vote stripping him of authority to sign contracts and manage the city’s financial accounts was unconstitutional. That legal fight remains unresolved as the two sides continue to navigate day-to-day city business amid the broader conflict.
For a small coastal city that depends on a single meeting space and a tight council calendar to keep basic operations running, even a procedural notice issue has proven capable of disrupting routine business, underscoring how deeply the ongoing tension between the mayor’s office and the council has begun to affect the mechanics of local government in Bayou La Batre.