Tolbert: 'I'm going to keep doing whatever the hell I want to do!'

A quorum of the Pendergrass City Council met in an unannounced meeting Tuesday night at the real estate office of Mayor Monk Tolbert in an illegal city council meeting.

The mayor and council members Judy Stowe and John Pethel were gathered at Tolbert’s business office around 5:30 p.m.

Working from a tip, Herald editor Mike Buffington went to the office around 6 p.m. and knocked on the door. Tolbert opened the door, but denied an illegal meeting was taking place.

“We’re interviewing for the police chief’s job,” he said.

But no notification of a city council meeting had been given as required by law, nor was the meeting at the normal location of city council meetings. According to Georgia law, Tuesday’s meeting was illegal.

When told by Buffington the meeting was illegal, Tolbert vehemently denied it.

At one point in the heated 10-minute conversation, Buffington asked Tolbert: “You think you can just keep on doing whatever you want to do, don’t you?”

Tolbert replied: “I’ll keep on doing whatever the hell I want to do!”

Meanwhile, the GBI has begun a limited investigation into allegations of wrong-doing in the Pendergrass city government.

But the investigation reportedly won’t be expansive in scope. District Attorney Brad Smith asked the GBI to only investigate the possible misuse of city funds, officials said.

“We have started the investigation,” said GBI official Jim Fullington. “I don’t have a timeline at this time.”

For the complete stories on the Pendergrass government controversy, see the Sept. 2 issue of The Jackson Herald.