‘Resign right away’: Glennville mayor, council members under fire for derogatory comments

GLENNVILLE, Ga. (WTOC) - The Glennville mayor and several city council members are facing backlash after a video surfaced showing them making derogatory statements about community members.

After a special called meeting April 28, the Glennville mayor along with city council members Marcus Noble, Tammy Waters and Greg Janeczek stayed after the meeting and began discussing city matters.

“When you have three or more council members present and they’re altogether in the room, that could be a violation of the sunshine law, so basically they’re breaking the law, violating Georgia code and also doing something illegal and unethical at the same time,” Micah King said.

The group also began speaking negatively about community members and other council members.

Some members from the group can be heard calling Zuber Malek a terrorist and negatively speaking about doing business with him because of his religion.

Malek owns several businesses in the Glennville community, employing hundreds. He has also helped the community rank top five in Georgia for most amount of money raised for Children’s Miracle Network.

Malek is calling for the leaders in the video to resign.

“They shall resign right away, resign right away,” Malek said. “This is just 20 minutes, so we don’t know what is going on for last six years.”

Community reacts

Members of the Glennville community said they are outraged and upset that the leaders they elected could say such things about someone who has done so much for the community.

“See that happened and I was very like heartbroken,” Glennville resident Tavontae King said. “Like things like Christian, you can’t like pick and cheese buffet style, which you kind of want to use it when you want to use it in the time you want to use it, and so just seeing that was very heartbreaking to me.”

Glennville resident Glenda Thompson said she has always been proud of her hometown.

“Shameful. I mean, cause first of all, no matter what your race, religion, we’re human,” Thompson said.

The Glennville Ethics Committee is holding a meeting tonight with the city’s attorney at 5:30 p.m. The meeting will be open to the public.

City officials are also under scrutiny for an altercation that broke out after another council meeting May 5 where an officer can be seen shoving a community member.