Belle Mayor Daryl White, Jr., on July 18 wrote and submitted the following letter to Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s Office (AGO) as a response to Sunshine Law allegations made in December 2022 by Maries County Sheriff Chris Heitman.

Heitman’s original four-page letter listed 21 bullet points outlining alleged violations the mayor and Belle officials made regarding Sunshine Law and its business dealings. The AGO on June 15 requested a response from the city in regards to the allegations, requesting a July 6 response.

The city requested a 10-day extension on July 6 and was granted until July 17 at the end of business. On July 17, the city requested and was granted a second extension until July 18 at the end of the business day.

White wrote a one-and-a-half-page letter with 11 bullet points in response to the allegations. The Maries County Advocate received a copy of the following letter on July 20 via Sunshine Law request.

July 18, 2023

Dear Sir,

Addressing the sunshine violation allegation, I would like to give a little background. Yes, I was mayor over 20 years ago, the cause of my resignation was I had purchased property outside the city limits. I have since returned to the city, where I was later appointed to fill a vacancy on the city council, and then voted for mayor pro-teem and then appointed to Mayor. I have since ran for and have been elected by the citizens of Belle to serve as the current Mayor. I have not one time since June of 2023 seen Sheriff Heitman attend a city council meeting. I feel most of these complaints have been secondhand information and I feel that they are based on untruths or half-truths. I was never warned by anyone  at Maries County, of any wrongdoing. I feel the tension with the Sheriff’s office started as they learned of the city’s decision to end a contract between the county and city for policing services. The city was losing a lot of money, and not being properly protected, it became a concern of the council and the community. We also felt paying the sheriff’s office upwards of $200,000 to provide service in the same county was excessive. Although, the city terminated the services per the contract, and sought legal advice on how to properly exit the contract. This decision was a unanimous vote among the council.

1)  Yes, an alderperson started a Facebook page on her own. She later resigned. 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 provide login information of that account.

2)  The previous city clerk was not posting the meetings or keeping accurate records. When this came to our attention, the council voted to terminate the clerk. We hired a previous clerk with 20 years experience. That problem was corrected as soon as possible.

3)  Since the rehiring of our former city clerk, all meetings have been properly advertised.

4)  Bringing back the police department was discussed  in our publicly announced budget meeting. We thought it was a proper time to discuss, since we would have to establish a department budget.

5)  The side by side was a decision in early 2022, long before most of us were in the council. The new council members discussed the need. The one elected alderperson, and the public works director explained to us that it was approved and ordered the previous winter. It had just arrived and was to be delivered.

6)  Bank bids were solicited requests. The bids were sealed and opened publicly at a council meeting.

7)  We do occasionally amend the agenda, this is done at the beginning of council meetings, and normally for time sensitive or emergency situations. It is always voted on before any item is discussed.

8)  We have never turned off a recorder and turned it back on unless we went into closed session. We have never hidden anything from the public.

9)  We hired a deputy that was already working part-time, and the council voted in closed session to hire him full time.

10)  The resignations were not immediately shared with the newspaper because the council had not accepted the resignations, and one of the resignations was asked to be returned. We again sought legal advice on  how to properly address the situation.

11)  The newspaper has never been uninvited to a meeting. We had contacted the sheriff’s office and stated we would be addressing the commissioners about ending the contract. The Sheriff said he would like to discuss privately, and that he would not discuss anything in front of the commissioners.

All meetings that we host, and post are believed to be legal. We have not intentionally done wrongdoing. The current council has not tried to hide or deceive anyone. I have never personally turned off a recorder, or to my knowledge, no one has turned it off to hide anything. I would invite the newspaper to send a reporter to all our meetings rather  than a recorder, so that there isn’t any confusion or misconstrued information. As stated, last summer we were a new council, all with a heart for service with the best interest for our city and its citizens in mind. Any violations that the city may have committed were done with lack of knowledge or misunderstanding, never with ill intent and we have taken steps to correct those errors.

Respectfully,

Mayor, Daryl White