Just as the grass grows in city parks, so has the dispute between Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. and landscaper Lemarkus Snow.
Snow has cut grass and cleaned up city property around Selma for several years, either as a volunteer or as a contractor paid by a city councilperson. Snow, who is as handy with his smartphone as he is with a lawnmower, often posts videos or pictures of his finished work on public property, sometimes with a dig at city workers for letting it get so shaggy.
Snow has twice had tense encounters with city employees. While doing some volunteer cleanup in Old Live Oak Cemetery in July 2021, Snow and his crew had a standoff with laborers in the cemetery department. As a result, the city council passed a resolution giving Snow and his crew permission to work on city property as volunteers.
A similar standoff occurred on Oct. 11 as Snow and his crew were working at the Selma Marina. This time, they were not volunteers; they were working under an $8,000 contract approved by Councilman Troy Harvill. Perkins came to the marina in person to ask Snow to “cease and desist” his work until Perkins could “get to the bottom” of why Snow was cutting grass that Perkins said had been cut the day before by the Selma parks department crew.
In his “Fix It Friday” Facebook show Oct. 18, Perkins said that Snow refused to stop working and told him that he only reported to the city council. Perkins also accused Snow of recording and airing the showdown on social media for the purpose of “creating a public scandal.”
Snow came to the city council’s Oct. 17 work session to confirm that the council has the power to sign contracts with him and other vendors. “I don’t need the mayor and police officers pulling up on me like we’re committing a crime when we’re just trying to do our job,” Snow said.
Snow has done a lot of work for the city. Perkins said on “Fix It Friday” that the city council has paid Snow Cleaning Service about $406,000 since 2020, including $261,000 last year. That money could have been used to hire and retain city employees, the mayor said. The recreation department, for instance, only has two laborers to maintain 132 acres. This year’s budget has funds to hire five more laborers for the recreation department, but those positions are currently unfilled.
“I see this as an organized system put in place by a majority of the city council to make unethical and immoral actions legal, and they do it with secret meetings and block voting,” Perkins said. “They have intentionally held down wages (of city employees) and withheld monies to departments to favor their favorite contractors.”
Councilwoman Jannie Thomas said at the Oct. 17 work session that the council has been contracting with Snow “to keep our districts up” because the work isn’t being done by the public works and recreation departments. Harvill agreed. “Not a lot of attention” is paid to his ward, Ward 1, Harvill said. His constituents “are tickled pink when we get something cut,” he said.
Thomas told Snow that state law gives the council the authority to contract vendors. She also noted that the mayor was present the night the council approved the purchase order for Snow to work in the marina as part of the consent agenda.
“If the mayor had something to say, he could say something at the time,” Thomas said.
As for Snow, he has doubled down on his social media digs at city employees since the Oct. 11 incident. He has shown images of uncut grass and unkept shrubbery at more than a dozen of the city’s 20 parks.
He put his criticism on the record at the Oct. 17 city council work session. The city “looks horrible,” Snow told the council. “No work is being done. Department heads use this excuse that they are understaffed. They’re being paid to do the work.”
