Sioux City’s Inclusion Liaison Semehar Ghebrekidan has been put on administrative leave.
Many of her supporters spoke up for her at Monday’s city council meeting.
City leaders will not comment on the reasons for Ghebrekidian’s leave and have not addressed what might happen next.
While Gherekidan is not commenting publicly, many of her friends did just that at Monday’s city council meeting.
Jim Jung is the vice chair of the Inclusive Sioux City Advisory Committee. He listed some of her accomplishments.
“She’s done things like the sounds of West 7th Street, the talent show which was unbelievable. She’s done different dialog series, She’s affected a lot of people across Sioux City. I’m concerned.”
Ike Rayford, the president of the Sioux City chapter of the NAACP was also concerned. Rayford echoed many other supporters of Ghebrekidan when he said the memo about her leave failed to explain the reasons behind it.
“I don’t understand what I read. What was stated it was just, uh, vague and it really made no sense.”
Sioux City resident Trisha Rivers also spoke in support of Ghebrekidan. She asked Mayor Bob Scott directly why he would not express his concern about the situation.
“Bob, do you care? I don’t think that’s the point. The point is that Semehar has hired an attorney. And when someone hires an attorney, we don’t the privilege or the opportunity to say anything about that in public.”
Ghebrekidan’s administrative reaches the 30 mark on Thursday and the city has not addressed what will happen next.
For Siouxland Public Media I’m Mary Hartnett.
