City says mayor is mistaken

Former City Manager Adel Al-Adlani (left) and Mayor Adam Alharbi

By Charles Sercombe
The city is pushing back on the mayor’s legal appeal to reverse the recent firing of City Manager Adel Al-Adlani.
City Attorney Odey Meroueh filed the city’s answer to Mayor Adam Alharbi’s request in Wayne County Circuit Court to turnover the firing of the city manager, which happened two weeks ago.
Mayor Alharbi, through his attorney Nabih Ayad, is accusing the city council of violating the city charter. Councilmember Mohammed Hassan added the proposal to fire the city manager as the June 9 meeting began.
Hassan, along with other councilmembers, has in the past added items to the council agenda just as the council meetings began – a custom that some say has been abused, and that also violates the spirit of the state’s Open Meetings Act.
“The charter is our city constitution that we must follow,” Alharbi said, at a press conference he held on the Monday afternoon after the prior week’s council meeting. “We cannot have elected officials not follow the charter.”
But City Attorney Meroueh disagreed in his answer to the mayor’s claim:
“The Mayor’s case rests on a mistake about which rule applies. He treats the agenda procedure as part of the City Charter, but it is actually a Council ‘standing rule’ (Section 30.004).
“The Charter says the Council sets its own rules of procedure, and a companion rule (Section 30.011) lets the Council suspend those rules with a two-thirds vote of the members, not counting the mayor. The Council did exactly that, amended its agenda by a recorded vote, and then voted 4 to 2 to terminate the City Manager.”
The council did not state a reason for firing the city manager, who had been on the job for only four months. However, according to sources, Al-Adlani rubbed a number of city hall employees the wrong way.
Meroueh pointed out that the city manager was hired as an “at-will” employee.
“The Charter expressly makes the position at-will, so termination did not require cause or a hearing,” Meroueh said. “The Council relies on Manning versus City of Hazel Park, where a court reached the same conclusion on similar charter language.”
Meroueh also argues that the mayor can’t take up the legal fight of Al-Adlani.
“The Mayor is raising someone else’s rights. Any employment or due-process claim belongs to Dr. Al-Adlani, who is not a party to the case. The Mayor cannot enforce another person’s contract or constitutional rights, and the Charter limits the Mayor to voting only to break a tie,” Meroueh said.
The Review reached out to Mayor Alharbi, who had championed the hiring of Al-Adlani, but he said he had not yet seen Meroueh’s response to his lawsuit.
Al-Adlani has reportedly already hired an attorney to fight his firing.
Posted June 26, 2026