August 24, 2016
By Paul Joseph, Paragon News Director –
The disruption and dissension at Cordell City Hall is continuing as one of the eight council members has resigned.
According to a story in the Cordell Beacon, Cheryl Hardage resigned her Ward 3 position yesterday morning effective immediately.
Hardage, who had served on the city council since April 2015, presented her letter of resignation to City Administrator JC Moser on Tuesday at 10 am.
In it, Hardage reportedly stated that “while it has been an honor to serve, I can no longer align my values, nor my care and concern for our community with the actions, or decisions made by the current Mayor and City Administration.”
The turmoil in city government has been brewing for several months and possibly began in February of this year as the city was discussing a new city new budget. The discussion of the budget that was eventually passed prompted heated exchanges regarding where and how to cut funding in the city’s budget. one of the areas discussed was in the area of the Cordell Police Department.
The specific issue in Cordell in the spring was the possible elimination of the city’s emergency dispatch center, a division of the police department and staffed by four employees.
City leaders pointed out that having a dispatch center for the City of Cordell and a dispatch center for Washita County – which are both funded by taxpayers – could be construed as a duplication of services and could thus be eliminated.
Cordell’s Police Chief Daniel Allen – who has since resigned after being with the Cordell Police Department for 10 years – went on record saying he didn’t agree with the recommendation to do away with police dispatch and was quoted in the Cordell Beacon newspaper saying that he thought the police department had suffered enough budget cuts over the last two years. He told the city council that his department was cut almost $120-thousand dollars for the last fiscal year alone, a cut of about 17-percent from the previous year.
Allen resigned in July to enter into private sector work. Following his resignation came the resignations of three other police department employees and a petition that continues to be circulated by a Cordell resident asking for Mayor Bob Plummer’s resignation.
Former councilwoman Hardage also wrote in her resignation that it’d become clear to her that she no longer had the ability to help effectively make positive change and progress for the future of Cordell.
She ended by saying, in the interest of self-preservation, she must step down but yet she wanted only the best for the city.
On Monday, August 15, during a 3-1/2 hour meeting, council members by a 5-1 vote named Cordell resident, Brandon Rogers, a former Washita County Deputy Sheriff, as police chief.
Cordell’s next council meeting is set for Tuesday, September 6, following the Labor Day weekend.
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