Cabin worsens rift in Salyersville

FAMILY, COUNCILMAN BATTLE OVER CITY RESOURCES

By Dori Hjalmarson - dhjalmarson@herald-leader.com

SALYERSVILLE — A city council member has been criminally charged with threatening a city employee in an argument over whether city resources were being used in construction of the mayor's cabin outside city limits.

In the end, it turns out, the mayor's father (who is also the previous mayor) had taken the work truck belonging to the mayor's brother (who is also the city water supervisor), on a joy ride.

"There's nothing wrong with it, I don't think. It's just a one-time deal," Mayor Stanley Howard said on Sept. 14 at the city council's monthly meeting when Councilman Jeff Ross questioned him about the incident.

On Aug. 13, Salyersville Councilman Jeff Ross photographed a site where Mayor Stanley Howard is building a cabin. Ross identified the man on the left as Howard, the man on the right as Howard's father and said city workers were concealed behind the cabin frame.

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It was a quick, frosty exchange, not on the agenda, that came just after another councilman moved to adjourn the meeting.

A bitter standoff between a family entrenched in city business and a suspicious, rankling political newcomer has been brewing for months.

On Aug. 13, Ross, who has had a fractious relationship with the mayor and other city officials since Ross took office nine months ago, got a tip that city workers were up at the mayor's property at Cave Run Lake. He took his camera and drove up to Leatherwood Road in Menifee County, where the mayor and his wife are building a cabin. Ross parked 100 to 200 yards away and started taking pictures.

That's nothing surprising, said City Clerk Karen Howard, the mayor's wife. Ross is not above having her family watched or followed, she said, and he is convinced that the mayor's relationship with her, the previous mayor and other city employees means there's corruption going on. Ross's animosity with the mayor goes back to the 2006 election when Ross's boss at Prater Drug Store, Tom Frazier, ran a heated mud-slinging campaign against the mayor, Karen Howard said.

Ross doesn't feel right paying the city's bills because he doesn't think the city council has given enough information about them, he said. He voted against the agenda item at Monday's meeting and says the city won't provide records for him to view. That's not true, Karen Howard said — council members are free to look at any record they want, and they can get copies like anyone else in the world — by paying 10 cents each. Ross has become angry with her for asking him to pay the fee for nearly 1,000 copies of city documents he has requested.

So when Ross showed up near the mayor's property, the men hanging around and working there "went to hiding," Ross said. He claims several city workers were there, including the mayor's brother and city water supervisor, Thomas Howard, and city roads worker Larry Carpenter Jr.

Ross didn't get recognizable pictures of anyone but the mayor at the site, and a Herald-Leader reporter couldn't clearly make out the license plate on the truck in the pictures. Nevertheless, when he got back to town, Ross started bragging that he had dirt on them all, Carpenter said.

"I've never been there (to the cabin site); couldn't tell you where it's at," Carpenter said in an interview last week. He said he always follows city policy regarding his work truck — the only time it leaves city limits is when it carries him home at the end of the day. Carpenter says he thinks he was working on city sidewalks that day, and his time cards show that he was paid for a full day. Carpenter said he confronted Ross on Aug. 14, waiting for him out in the street around the corner from City Hall, off city property.

"I've got a right to confront him and say, 'Show me the pictures,'" he said. Carpenter said he and Ross exchanged words, and Ross — who is a good deal taller and bigger than Carpenter — acted as though he didn't know what Carpenter was talking about.

"I'll get you for slander," Carpenter said. And Ross said, "I'll smash you like a bug," according to court records.

That's not quite right, Ross said. Carpenter, also a volunteer deputy sheriff, carries a gun and has no business being afraid of anyone, Ross said. And he said, "You could be squashed like a bug" — squashed in a political sense, not smashed in a physical sense, Ross said.