A longtime Dearborn resident is seeking a court order to prevent the City of Dearborn’s Civil Service Commission from replacing Commissioner Marge Powell with a new member until a proper hearing can be held.

Powell’s status as a commissioner – a position she has held for 17 years – was called into question by Dearborn Council President Tom Tafelski last May. Tafelski discovered Powell had not taken an oath for her most recent four-year reappointment – a violation of Dearborn’s City Charter – one day after the Civil Service Commission by a 3-2 vote tabled a request from Tafelski to re-assign/classify an employee from the City Council office to the City Clerk’s office.

Powell, a former Dearborn councilwoman, was reappointed in May 2009 and had been serving for a full year before Tafelski’s “discovery.” The City Charter requires an oath of office take place within 10 days of an appointment. The Civil Service Commission oversees the hiring and appointment of persons to various city government positions and their salaries.

Morris Goodman

Dearborn resident Joanne Arrick, the plaintiff in this matter, and her attorney, Dearborn resident Morris Goodman, are seeking a temporary restraining order against the City of Dearborn to prevent the Civil Service Commission from appointing someone to the Commission until Powell can be sworn in or pending the Dearborn City Council voting on whether it will extend the time for Powell to take the oath of office for being a Dearborn Civil Service Commissioner, according to court documents filed in Wayne County Circuit Court.

“. . . There have been a number of Commissioners in the last 5 years or so on a number of Commissions who did not take their oath of office within 10 days of their appointment and were not deemed to have voided their office and were allowed, without city council being asked to extend the time for them to do so, to take their oath more than 10 days after they were appointed, including Commissioners on the Library and Planning Commission,” Goodman states in the court documents.  “The above fact, not conjecture, shows that, in this case, there is unlawful selective enforcement of a rule that has been violated with impunity by other Dearborn officials in similar situations.”

In fact, the court documents state that Dearborn’s acting fire chief was informed in January of 2010 by the City Attorney’s office that he “should have been sworn in three years previously, but although no oath was taken at that time, he was sworn in subsequently after the omission’s discovery in January of 2010.”

Arrick said she is taking this action because she feels there is a double standard on how the Powell matter was handled by Dearborn city leaders. At least three other people have been allowed to retain appointed city positions despite missing the 10 day window to take the oath of office.

“My concern is more about the process,” Arrick tells Deepsaidwhat.com. “I am not comfortable with how things have been worked with the matter. It doesn’t seem like the proper way to work. Government ought to work more fairly than what I saw.”

The case has been assigned to Wayne County Circuit Judge Brian Sullivan who is expected to issue a hearing date on Monday (9/27).