Ruling on fired tax assessor’s hearing expected Thursday

Former Cherokee County Tax Assessor Barry Kelley holds out little hope the grievance commit-tee will recommend he return to his old job when it makes its ruling Thursday.

The reason?

Kelley said the committee members are behold-ing to Cherokee County Interim Administrator Ben Clary, who fired him July 19.

“The administrator picks the people to be on there,” he said. “They don’t want to risk their jobs. They aren’t going to stand up for what is right.”

The grievance committee includes Cherokee County 9-1-1 supervisor Delissa Coggins, magis-trate’s office employee Tallulah Goforth, sheriff’s department employee J.P. Manning, and emer-gency management director Ricky Peterson.

Kelley told them in a hearing on July 28 he was fired because of his efforts to fairly enforce the state’s agriculture land use tax laws.

“I feel all this has come about because of the agriculture land use problem we have,” Kelley told the committee. “Ben Clary wanted to smooth this over and not do anything about the agricul-ture use.”

Clary cited insubordination as the reason for Kelley’s termination on July 29. In particular, Clary said Kelley did not provide monthly reports on the tax assessor’s office in a timely manner.

Coggins, who chairs the committee, said she’ll issue a 2-paragraph statement Thursday.

“It’s not going to take long,” she said. “We heard both sides of the story and after the (hearing) we met and decided.”

The committee can either recommend to uphold the firing or ask for Kelley’s reinstate-ment. According to law, Clary still has the final say.

Kelley said he plans to attend Thursday’s griev-ance committee meeting.