At a noon meeting Tuesday, the Falmouth City Council voted unanimously to remove Mayor Sebastian Ernst on three charges. Ernst didn’t attend the meeting and calls the charges frivolous and unsubstantiated.
One charge was that Ernst denied a request from the Pendleton County Republican Party to hold a meeting in council chambers after working hours. Ernst, a Republican, acknowledges he’d let the party meet there before, and that he’d said the party had moved away from what he calls “conservative Christian values,” but says that’s not why he said no.
“If I'm not available, and I'm not planning on attending the Republican Party meeting, I have to like call a city employee that lives out in the county to drive all the way to Falmouth to unlock the building for him, hang around for a couple of hours on the clock, I might add, so it’s actually costing the taxpayer money.”
Ernst was also accused of using Facebook to mix mayoral and personal business. Ernst says it was his page, not the mayor’s, and that other elected officials do the same.
He was also accused of pressuring a city council member to resign by threatening to make his son’s alleged misbehavior public. The son works for the county school district, and Ernst says he did post about alleged abuse of students.
Ernst says in his year in office, the council ignored or resisted his efforts to reform or sell the city’s utilities and make what he considers other improvements. He says his removal from office by mostly appointed council members – one of whom was the former city fire chief he’d fired -- was because he’s a conservative Republican.
“This is a buddy system. But who you know, if you know the right people, they'll put you in if you don't know the right people, they just impeach you.”
In 2017, City Councilmember Ernst voted with the rest of the council to remove the then-mayor of Falmouth from office. Ernst doesn’t face criminal charges and can run again for mayor.
WEKU News called the city council and was told to contact the attorney representing the city. The attorney forwarded the charges and vote totals, but did not respond to a request for comment.
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