FAIRHOPE,

Alabama—For the third time in two months, Fairhope corrections

officer Ronald “Tony” Avera is expected to have the appeal of his

proposed firing heard by the Fairhope Personnel Board.

Avera’s

appeal is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. tomorrow in the Delchamps Room at

the Fairhope Municipal Complex.

His first two

scheduled hearings were abruptly cancelled by the city with no

advance notice to the public in December and none to the board

earlier this month, when five of its six members appeared at the

municipal complex at 8 a.m. on Jan. 9, expecting to hear the

case.

“Somebody is

making these cancellation decisions, and we should be doing that,”

Beeman Bond, longtime personnel board member and former chairman,

said after the hearing was cancelled that morning.

Council

President Lonnie Mixon, who attended the Jan. 9 meeting, said he

thought it should be the board making such decisions.

“But until

it’s presented to the board, you can’t make that decision,” Mixon

said that morning after the hearing was cancelled.

Mayor Tim

Kant apologized for the late cancellation at the City Council

meeting that night, stating that the city failed to offer a

procedural step during the disciplinary process to Avera prior to

his recommended firing by Police Chief Bill Press.

But neither

Kant, nor the city’s human resources administrator, have responded

to several phone calls seeking comment about why the board was not

informed of the Jan. 9 cancellation in advance, and whether it

should be the board, not the city,  to consider requests for

delays.

The

allegations for why Press has recommended Avera’s termination have

not been released to the public, with the city citing personnel

confidentiality rules as the reason for not doing so. Nor has the

city stated how long Avera has been on paid administrative from his

$37,000-a-year job. He has worked for the city since January 2007,

according to records.

Avera’s is

the first of two cases expected to be heard by the personnel board

this week. The second case involves police officer Tervelle Lee,

whose firing recommendation was upheld by a hearing officer

following a different Jan. 9 hearing that did take place that day,

and is scheduled for a hearing Thursday morning before the

board.

As a sworn

police officer, Lee has additional due process rights during the

disciplinary process, which are not available to other city

employees such as Avera, who is not a sworn officer, according to

staff.

Those

additional rights include an initial appeal from a recommended

firing to “an impartial hearing officer.” That hearing officer is

Deputy Chief James Barber of the Mobile Police Department, who was

appointed by the city in December to hear police officer

disciplinary cases.

Barber heard

Lee’s case on Jan. 9 and issued a written opinion the following

week, which upheld the firing recommendation by Press. Lee has

appealed to the personnel board from that decision, seeking to

overturn Barber’s ruling.

Four other

police employee cases are also pending—either before the board or

Barber— three of which involve sworn officers, according to the

latest information from city officials and staff.

Cases before

the personnel board are subject to Alabama’s Open Meetings Act but

not those before Barber, according to staff and others familiar

with the law.