WARNER ROBINS – Thursday’s City Council meeting degenerated into a verbal fracas, with charges of illegal meetings and power-grabbing taking place.

The get-together’s focus was to be the proposed Law Enforcement Center, the site of which the council has grappled with all this year.

The second-floor meeting room was packed with supporters of not placing the center at Jimmy Perkins Park, and they took the council to task for considering placing the center there.

A proposal by council member John Williams to place the center in a park near City Hall was supported by resident Mike Brashear, who said it would help keep Perkins Field intact.

After another resident accused the council of stabbing the mayor in the back and having their own agenda, council member Bob Wilbanks was attacked by Williams who said Wilbanks knew there were some illegal meetings taking place about the center’s location.

“You and I know it was a closed-door meeting, it was illegal,” Williams said. “Your own agenda all along was to have it on Perkins Field. You and I met at the Waffle House. How do you think you got me to agree to that?”

Wilbanks replied his one agenda was to “help the men and women who put their lives on the line every day.”

Council member Paul Shealy said the meeting was to let the public know the options for the center’s site and took issue with the comment about the council doing back-room deals away from the public.

“This meeting was done in a back-room deal,” replied Shaheen, who did not call for the meeting and said he didn’t know about it.

Council members Tom Simms and Mike Daley said the meeting was called for by four council members, with Daley saying he had notified the mayor.

Council member Daron Lee said the meeting was his idea, that he wanted the center to be discussed.

“Somebody has to lead this,” Lee said. “We had a 24-hour notice. It was legal.”

“Give 48 hours notice next time,” Shaheen replied.

A Regional Development Agency meeting followed right afterward, with Chairman Daley saying the group is in good hands with its Georgia-Robins Aerospace Maintenance Project going ahead.

“It’s in the hands of the mayor, he’s the lead man on this,” Daley said.

Wilbanks then said statements by Shaheen on a radio show earlier this week that he was removed as RDA chairman because Lee and brother Gary Lee wanted that done to grab power, and that they wanted to fire Don Jarzynka, the city’s point man on the G-RAMP committee, were not true.

“We have complete confidence in the G-RAMP committee,” Wilbanks said. “These things were never considered.”

Daron Lee said he and members of his family did not have to do anything underhanded to gain power, and he was “very upset” at the mayor’s remarks.

“You want to talk about the letter you and your brother wrote me?” Shaheen shot back before adjourning the meeting.

“Bob, you took a good situation and made it worse. You hear me?” he said to Wilbanks as the meeting broke up.