Palmer’s police chief, fired by the now-former city manager, was reinstated on Tuesday.
Police Chief Dwayne Shelton was back at the office on Wednesday, after having been stripped of his badge by Stephen Jellie, who was then immediately forced out of his city manager’s job by the Palmer City Council.
Jellie, who was hired from outside the state, had only been in his position as city manager since August. The current interim city manager, John Diumenti, made the announcement about Shelton’s return during Tuesday night’s council meeting.
Some members are still unhappy with the severance agreement with Jellie and also want an investigation into supposed deleted emails from his computer. Cindy Hudgins of Palmer has started a recall petition to try to remove Mayor Carrington from office because he didn’t follow what she believes would have been the proper procedure for designing Jellie’s severance agreement. She said it was done outside of the open meetings process.
Hudgins led a successful recall against three members of the council in 2022.
Carrington was elected mayor in 2022 after running unopposed. In order to recall him, Hudgins will need to get the signatures of a number equal to 25% of people who voted in the last election on Oct. 1, which was 230.
