Two weeks after a heated Libby City Council meeting, Mayor Doug Roll decided to cancel the June 1 session, a move that surprised many on the council.
Roll told the Beacon on June 3 that he decided to cancel the meeting for security reasons.
Even though the meeting was shelved, three council members decided to hold an unofficial gathering to listen to the public’s concerns about the political turmoil that has engulfed the town’s government in recent weeks.
In May, the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices issued a report that stated Roll, the Libby City Council and former City Attorney James Reintsma had broke the law when the city filed a lawsuit against Roll’s only challenger in the 2013 mayoral race, councilman Allen Olsen. The lawsuit dominated local headlines in the final days of the race and in the end, Roll beat Olsen by just 13 votes.
On May 19, residents at the Libby City Council meeting grilled Roll and demanded that he resign. After nearly an hour, Roll ended the meeting, stating that public testimony was becoming “redundant.”
Just before the June 1 meeting was set to take place, Roll emailed the rest of the council to announce he had canceled the session, according to the Western News. Despite the cancelation, Olsen, Dejon Raines and Brent Teske still held a meeting. Roll said he talked to Libby’s police chief about security before the meeting and decided that it would be impossible to “control” the session. He did not say if there were any specific threats made against him or anyone else.
“The situation is volatile and we need to maintain control so that everyone can speak their opinions,” he said.