Valley Grande city clerk resigns

Published 6:45 pm Monday, September 1, 2008

When the city certifies the Aug. 26 election results today, it will do so without its top election official.

Valley Grande City Clerk Virginia Webb submitted her resignation Friday afternoon.

“I have greatly enjoyed serving as Valley Grande’s City Clerk and will miss serving the residents of our area,” Webb said in a statement. “However, I feel that the new administration will be better served by appointing a new city clerk who may be more in line with the goals and direction that this administration has for Valley Grande. I wish nothing but the best for the people of Valley Grande and their new administration.”

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Webb declined to elaborate further when contacted by phone.

One of only two full-time employees for the city, she managed the city’s business and its Web site, in addition to overseeing the election.

She has worked for Valley Grande all five years of its incorporation.

Mayor Tom Lee said there exists a division in Valley Grande between people who want to see the city grow and those who want to contain its size, and Webb’s resignation may have stemmed from that.

“We’re right now in the process of evaluating where we are, and obviously fixing to set up and start looking to replace that position,” Lee said. “She felt like she wasn’t happy with what was fixing to happen.”

Those beliefs became increasingly evident in a candidates’ political forum held a week before the election.

“The growth group was elected exclusively,” Lee said. “All of the people that talked about wanting controlled, managed, slow but positive growth, almost to a person those people got elected. Those people who spoke about wanting to keep Valley Grande exclusive and like it was for the last 10 years, they were defeated. Folks are just deciding whether they want to be part of that or not.”

Lee will run the election certification meeting, combined with the city’s regular bi-weekly meeting, which was postponed because of Labor Day.

The meeting will begin at 11:30 a.m., and the results must be submitted to the state by noon.

The mayor doesn’t foresee the time frame as a problem because the city used one polling place and one voting machine.