Dodge City mayor declines to resign

? The mayor of this western Kansas town has said he won’t resign, even though two commissioners asked him to step down after learning he had filed for bankruptcy.

“If I felt like I did something wrong, I would have resigned prior to that meeting ever coming about,” Terry Lee told the Dodge City Daily Globe on Tuesday.

Dodge City commissioners Mike Nelson and Jim Sherer asked Lee during a meeting Monday to leave his mayoral post, but did not ask for him to give up his seat on the commission. Later, a motion Nelson introduced and Sherer seconded was withdrawn.

The commission had discussed whether Lee should stay on as mayor after media reports that he had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection Oct. 15 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wichita. Lee’s filing lists $72,956.01 in unsecured debt to seven creditors and an unknown amount to four more.

Nelson later said he and the other commissioners decided it would be best to leave the decision to Lee.

“That is our hope, that that will still happen,” Nelson said. “I think that’s something that the mayor needs to deal with, and I’m sure he will.”