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Marion County Council restores Lewis Perkins to Community Action board after appointment confusion
Summary
Council members voted to reinstate Lewis Perkins to the PD Community Action board after questions about a December 2024 appointment of Yolanda Williams Richardson; county attorney advised council on reconsideration rules for ministerial appointments.
Marion County Council on an unspecified February meeting day restored Lewis Perkins to the PD Community Action board after members said they were confused by a December 2024 appointment of Yolanda Williams Richardson.
Council members discussed whether Richardson’s December appointment had been intended to replace Perkins, whose term the meeting record shows expired Dec. 31, 2024. The county attorney told the council that ministerial appointments can be revisited if members later learn information they did not have when they voted and recommended that the council take a separate action to terminate an earlier appointment before filling the seat.
The dispute began when a council member raised that Richardson had been added to the PD Community Action board. Council members said Perkins had served on that board since February 2016 and had attended most meetings. The county attorney said, “for you to reconsider any sort of action that you take, it needs to come on in the next meeting, to reconsider,” and explained that for ministerial matters the council retained discretion to change a prior action if there was misinformation or missing facts.
Following the legal explanation, the council voted on two separate motions recorded in the meeting minutes: one to take (appoint) Yolanda Williams Richardson to the board and a later motion to place Lewis Perkins back on the board. Both motions passed by voice vote; the transcript records members saying “aye,” but individual vote tallies were not specified in the meeting record.
The council did not record a dollar amount, term length, or seat number for either action in the minutes, and the meeting record does not show a formal, detailed finding of misinformation that prompted the reversal. The director of PD Community Action was reported to the council during discussion but did not record a formal vote or public statement in the meeting transcript.
The council completed the item and moved on to other business.
