Removal Of Mayor On Eddyville Council Agenda

Eddyville, Iowa – During last week’s regular city council meeting for the city of Eddyville, a simple agenda item, “4- Discussion and possible action on removing mayor,” was listed. We’ve included video of the agenda item above for your reference.

The current mayor of Eddyville is Debbie Sundeen, and her term is up at the end of 2023.

Sundeen reached the 4th agenda item and asked if there was any discussion on the agenda item.

Council member Laura Johnston said, “There’s a lot of discussion on it.”

Iowa law, under Chapter 66 outlines the process for removing a mayor from office. You can find that code section HERE.

Johnston said she’d asked Eddyville City Clerk Katie Smith to see what the council’s options were in removing Mayor Sundeen, with Johnston explaining “it would take a court removal and that we don’t have time to do that and to not bring essentially any negative light to the city to not do that, which I think is complete crap personally.”

Sundeen went to move on to the next agenda item, but Johnston wasn’t finished, saying, “I mean, so you’d have to file a court action.”

Eddyville City Attorney, via conference call, explained that the Mayor’s current term ends before a probable court date could be had by January of 2024.

Eddyville City Council for June 5th, 2023.

Council member William Liles explained that the city must also post a bond to file the petition to remove Sundeen.

The city attorney explained that the bond would be coming from taxpayer money, which, if Sundeen won, would go to Sundeen to help offset her legal fees.

Johnston then asked the attorney why more of the information about removing a mayor had yet to be addressed at the previous meeting, to which the attorney responded, “All it said was discussion from Laura. Didn’t say anything about removing the mayor.”

The attorney went on to say, “I started looking stuff up.”

Johnston then “This came up months ago. I’m sorry, this came up months ago; this has been something that’s been discussed at these meetings for at least six months now. So this could have been something that could have been looked at, I feel like it would probably be better, and maybe something that could have been addressed if you were at our meetings in person. I feel like it would benefit us a lot more.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I said that six months ago,” said Council member Robert Veldhuizen.

“I mean, you get paid to be at meetings, said Johnston to the city attorney. “I feel like it’s at this point; obviously, it’s necessary for us to have a city attorney at the meetings with the way things are going.”

The city attorney agreed that she would be at the next meeting in person.

“I think that would be beneficial for everybody,” Johnston said.

Liles asked his counterparts on the council, “Do you have proof? Do you have proof of all these? These things that she’d had to have done to get removable by the court. I mean, I don’t see as far as she fits any of these. So like somebody or some people have a case of the ass at the mayor.”

“Have you been to meetings in the last six months?,” asked Johnston of Liles.

“Yeah,” replied Liles.

“Like you’ve been present at them right?,” questioned Johnston. “So you’ve seen how she’s ran these meetings?”

Johnston outlined a couple of items in her case against Sundeen, stating her willful or habitual neglect or refusal to perform the duties.

Liles told Johnston, “She’s not all the time.”

“She’s not willingly stupid?” said Johnston.

“This is a waste of time,” said Veldhuizen. “We’re going to hopefully get a new mayor in November. I thought we had an avenue of incompetency, but we can’t follow that, evidently. And it’s gonna take a unanimous vote. So that’s not gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen, Bill, you know, it’s not.”

“I know, it’s not,” replied Liles. “Because it is not legal what you’re doing. What you’re doing.”

Johnston said she’s not the only one, but that “almost 100 other people in this town have signed a petition asking for her resignation. So I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing and representing our community.”

“Let’s move on. This is a waste of time,” said Veldhuizen.

Both Johnston and Veldhuizen left the meeting as soon as it adjourned, and Oskaloosa News couldn’t get further comment from them.

Eddyville Mayor Debbie Sundeen made herself available for comment after the meeting. We asked her about the controversy.

Sundeen said that changes to the water delivery, moving to Mahaska Rural Water “So with the water coming in, I think it caused some threatening feelings within the city because it will change the dynamic of employment for our city employees.”

“So we will have one full-time and two part-time instead of three full-time,” says Sundeen. “That was the catalyst of the blaming me, you know, for the things that were taking place.”

“And of course, one of our council members is the wife of one of the employees, and I don’t think she really wanted to see those changes take place,” Sundeen said.

Sundeen has been the mayor of Eddyville for approximately a year and a half and she says she worked in the office for almost three years. She believes the dynamic of how things have always been run has changed. “I’m the first woman mayor, so that has changed.”

Sundeen came to Eddyville from California, “So my perspective is a little bit different.”

When it comes to running for the position again this fall, Sundeen says, “I don’t want to run for mayor again. It’s from the basis that I think that maybe there’s more courage for people who have considered it.”

Besides being mayor, Sundeen runs a Facebook page called ‘Eddyville & You,’ now up to 682 followers. You can find the page at the link HERE – https://www.facebook.com/EddyvilleandYou