A former City of Summerville employee is appealing to the city for a re-instatement of her job after being terminated in December, without warning.

Former employee, Jessica Keith, was terminated abruptly on December 15th after refusing to resign. Keith, was called into the office of City Manager Janice Galloway along with her direct Supervisor, Carla Rutledge, was given a letter and asked to resign. When Keith refused to resign, she was terminated. Documentation from the city states that Mrs. Keith failed to remove several former city employees from the City’s health insurance policy costing the town around $10,000 in over payments to Flegal insurance.

Mrs. Keith has filed an appeal to the City Council for reinstatement of her job. Mrs. Keith told WZQZ News that she had not had any unfavorable employee reviews, nor did she receive any kind of reprimands verbal or written. Documents show that others who also oversaw the payments and reconciliations of these payments were either not reprimanded or were demoted but she was the only employee terminated.

All of these occurrences happened during a very tumultuous time at the City, as the employees were not only dealing with the national COVID-19 pandemic but also the water crisis that arose early last year and is still in the process of being resolved.

WZQZ reached out to City Manager Janice Galloway, and received a response from the City Attorney, Melissa Hise. Attorney Hise advised that WZQZ and other members of the public may attend Mrs. Keith’s final appeal to the City’s Employment Appeals board, as it is an open meeting under the State Open Meetings Act.

The date, time, and location will be announced later and made available.