OWASSO — Apologizing and saying he has “never had a track record for bad behavior,” the vice mayor who was stopped for an alleged DUI in February publicly addressed a resident who called for his resignation at City Council meeting Tuesday night.
Calmly from his city councilor seat, Chris Kelley spoke more than 4½ minutes after resident Dwight Schenk walked to a microphone and asked him to step down.
“I don’t have a track record of bad behavior,” said Kelley, a local veterinarian. “I’ve never had a track record of bad behavior. I made a mistake on this night.
“…I’ve learned from it. I plan to continue to make more mistakes in my life, and I’m going to continue to learn from those mistakes.”
In June the city released two police videos of the Feb. 1 traffic stop of Kelley, who was driven home by police after first being told he was being arrested for DUI.
Kelley never was charged or jailed in connection with the early morning stop, during which he said he had “had a few drinks.”
The release of the videos preceded the June 25 resignation of Owasso City Manager Rodney Ray, who, according to an internal memo, ordered the deletion of the videos in April.
Criminal charges related to an alleged bounced check are pending against Ray, who also is the primary target of a petition seeking a grand jury to investigate his actions as city manager.
Reading from a statement, an audibly nervous Schenk suggested that Kelley participated in a cover-up.
“As a citizen of Owasso, I do not want officials in Owasso hiding things from the public,” Schenk said. “If nonelected officials are covering up for elected officials or vice-versa, there is no accountability. It is in an environment of no accountability that corruption grows and flourishes.”
Kelley scoffed at any notion of a cover-up.
“That could not be further from the truth,” he said. “The night that ended was all my involvement in this situation.”
Kelley said that aside from media members, Schenk was the first person who has addressed him personally on the issue, adding that no one previously had asked him to resign.
The vice mayor said that while it’s “never OK to have any drinks and get in a car,” he was “physically and emotionally fatigued” because of unspecified health-related issues with his family.
“I’m not trying to make any excuses here,” he said. “I’ve owned up to what I did. I think I’ve done everything I can to be accountable to the people that I’m accountable to, which is God, my family, my business partners and also my constituents.
“… I regret the situation that I put myself in. This is not something that I’ve taken lightly. It’s been a very difficult thing for me.”
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The bus had two occupants, a driver and an 8-year-old girl. The driver had a suspended license, police said.
