Procedure to remove city marshal position remains unclear

Discussion of the appropriate and legal means to remove the city marshal position from Willow Springs government was tabled last Thursday night. City Attorney Zane Privette was unable to be present during the March meeting, and the board of aldermen hesitated to proceed without his legal opinion. 

 

The city marshal position in Willow Springs is redundant, explained City Administrator Beverly Hicks. Its duties, especially those of providing courtroom security, are better and more professionally performed by the presence of the police department. 

 

Missouri law defining fourth class cities like Willow Springs calls for the creation of certain elected officials – among them a city marshal. However, the same law allows for the appointment of a police chief to perform all the duties of a city marshal. 

 

“You do not have to have both,” Hicks stressed. “The chief can assume all the duties of the marshal.”

 

As previously reported by Howell County News, the city marshal position remains in the city ordinances. Willow Springs last elected a city marshal in 2021. Police Chief Bryan Hogan was elected but retired as police chief in 2022. He never formally resigned from the city marshal position, and a replacement was never appointed. 

 

The city has continued to function without a city marshal since that time. 

 

Hogan’s term is up in April 2025, but the city marshal position is not on the ballot. 

 

At Thursday’s meeting, Hicks’ presentation to the aldermen referred to, “question that was brought up last month.”

 

“We were all kind of shocked with that question. We were not prepared to answer,” she said Thursday.

 

The question, posed by Howell County News at the February meeting was, “Who decided to leave the city marshal position off the April 2025 ballot?”

 

Discussion at the March meeting centered on the best way to remove the city marshal position from the books legally. 

 

Hicks told council she began researching the question two-to-three years ago and found no satisfactory answers that she was prepared to bring to the aldermen. 

 

“If there’s really a need to point a finger at someone, I should have been pursuing it,” Hicks said. “It went by the wayside, and that’s on me, on no one else but me… I don’t believe there’s any scandal going on here. Just because somebody doesn’t move forward doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been activity.”

 

The position has, in effect, been removed from Willow Springs government. Without the appointment of a replacement city marshal in 2022 and without the opportunity to elect another in 2025, there is no city marshal in Willow Springs.

 

How to remove the position legally from the ordinance book remains unclear. Information gathered by the city from the Missouri Municipal League (MML) indicates that if a city marshal role was created at the time of Willow Springs’ original organization, it can be removed by ordinance. 

 

If it was, however, created by some proactive action of the city government, it would have to be removed by a vote of the people. City Clerk Heather Tooley searched city records and could not find any instance of instituting the city marshal role, only an ordinance from the 1970s defining its compensation.

 

Hicks and the aldermen repeatedly said they are willing to take the decision to a vote of the people, if necessary. However, the consensus was that a legal opinion is required. City Attorney Zane Privette attempted to be present via video call, but the signal did not allow for productive conversation. 

 

“I certainly have no problem if we need to take this back to the voters,” Hicks said. 

 

Kim Rich, serving as Mayor Pro Tem in Mayor Brooke Fair’s absence, said, “Since Zane is not here, and we can’t find anything in our own records that indicates that it’s a vote of the people, to me it seems the assumption is that it was the formation of our city government. It seems like that’s something we can change with a vote [of the aldermen].”

 

Rich suggested tabling the question, and the remaining aldermen agreed. 

 

The April meeting will take place Friday, April 25 at 5:30 p.m.