BELLE — A letter from the Belle mayor to the Missouri Attorney General’s Office (AGO) on July 18 alleged that the reason the city may have been inconsistent with upholding Sunshine Law was that previous aldermen failed to give login information and former public figures may have requested the return of their resignations. However, all three parties refuted the mayor’s claims.

Belle Mayor Daryl White, Jr. said in the first bullet point of his July 18 letter to the AGO that the reason the board of aldermen stopped posting public information to the city’s Facebook page and website was that former aldermen failed to leave him the logins and passwords.

“Yes, an alderperson started a Facebook page on her own. She later resigned,” White said. “I was never given login information or passwords. The previous page was also being run by a former alderperson who moved and to my knowledge, had not provided login information of that account.”

In his response, White referred to former aldermen Kayla Bray, who resigned on November 1, 2022, and Sundi Jo Graham, who resigned in June 2022. Graham said White was given the information for the city’s Facebook and website before she left the city.

“Several different people have had access before I ever left, the new mayor being one of them,” Graham said. “Daryl was posting before I left. It was only a few months ago that I took myself off as an admin. I left in June 2022.”

Bray said she made the Facebook page Belle Aldermen-Alderwomen at White’s request and he was an administrator on the page from the beginning.

“White didn’t have to have login information,” Bray said. “He was created in there as an admin and had full access to that page. I do know for a fact that he made the post about ‘Merry Christmas from the Belle Police Department’ on that specific page after I had resigned. I deleted the page when I realized they weren’t using it for anything. I didn’t want to be tied to it, so I got rid of it. I know he got all the login information. How was he making posts? How did he hire the new guy (the city’s new technical person is Brayden Cooper) to change everything on the website? He had it all.”

White further alleged that the reason he couldn’t confirm or deny resignations submitted on Nov. 1, 2022, by Bray and the city’s former police chief Joe Turnbough was that they had not been accepted.

“The resignations were not immediately shared with the newspaper because the council had not accepted the resignation, and one of the resignations was asked to be returned,” White said in his 10th bullet-point to the AGO. “We again sought legal advice on how to properly address the situation.”

As a public official in an elected seat, Bray’s resignation does not qualify for 610.021(3) as an authorized closed record by definition according to Missouri Sunshine Law. Furthermore, Bray and Turnbough both denied requesting their resignations to be returned.

“I have never tried to take my resignation back,” said Turnbough.

“I never asked for my resignation to be rescinded,” Bray said. “When I turned in my paper I was done. After we turned in our paperwork, and our resignation letters, Joe (Turnbough) asked me to give him a ride back to his house. After he dropped off the police car, Jerry (Coborn, then deputy, current marshal) asked us what was going on and we said we had resigned.”

Bray said the primary reason behind her resignation was the mayor and another alderman were making allegations about a romantic relationship between herself and the former police chief during a closed-session meeting.

“You aren’t going to sit there and accuse me of having an affair with anyone and expect me to stay,” Bray said.

After both Bray and Turnbough had submitted their resignations, White came out to speak with them.

“Daryl (White, Jr.) came out and was cussing at us,” Bray said. “He asked us what the (expletive deleted) he was supposed to do now. I said that was his problem. Neither one of us recalled our resignations at all.”

Bray said the mayor asked both her and Turnbough for a 1 p.m. meeting the following day.

“Daryl told us he would meet us at 1 p.m. the next day to see if we would take our resignations back and we said ‘no, we don’t want to do that,’” Bray said. “Neither Joe nor myself tried to recall our resignations.”

Bray further alleged that the mayor’s lack of posting topics of discussion didn’t stop in open and closed meetings.

“On top of all that, the text messages,” she said. “We approved a police car through text messages and then it was picked up and already here before we talked to a bank about a loan or before it was discussed in a meeting to be voted on in public. We had to park it in the city garage for a week because it didn’t have insurance on it. They allowed Joe to drive the car around for the first week-and-a-half and it didn’t have insurance on it. We didn’t know it. Daryl told me everything was taken care of.”