Elsmere City Council called off its public hearing to remove Serena Owen on June 4 after she submitted her resignation earlier in the day.
Owen, who hasn’t attended a city council meeting since last year, announced her resignation from her position as councilmember in an email Wednesday morning to the Elsmere City Council that includes her handwritten signature.
The email was sent ahead of the special meeting to address charges of woeful neglect and misconduct that the council brought against her in April over Owen’s lack of attendance.
Owen’s resignation takes effect immediately.
“Ms. Owen is no longer a member of the city council, and as such she has no position to be removed from,” City Attorney Greg Voss said just as the meeting began. “That would negate any necessity of having a hearing for disciplinary action.”
Council motioned to adjourn the meeting immediately after.
Owen requested remote attendance at the scheduled hearing in the week leading up to it, just as she had for regular city meetings since September 2024. Although Elsmere City Council voted no to her request and to close the matter indefinitely in January, she maintained her request in emails to the council on account of feeling unsafe and threatened inside the council chambers.
In emails prior to her resignation, Owen also requested that the hearing date be rescheduled for later in June as she was trying to gather funds for counsel, as well as to attend the Kentucky League of Cities Summer Summit that take place June 3-5. The hearing was originally scheduled for May 27, then rescheduled to June 4 to give Owen enough time to prepare her defenses.
After the meeting was adjourned, Councilmember Gloria Grubbs expressed relief that the ordeal was over while allowing Owen due process. However, she said she also regrets that city funds had to be expended for Owen’s removal.
In her statement to the city, Owen criticized the council for spending $12,000 on legal efforts to remove her while rejecting $17,000 to install bulletproof glass around her seat at the council.
Attorney Jeff Otis, who represented Elsmere, gave each council member a binder with extensive documentation to support the seven charges of woeful neglect and misconduct against Owen. Had the hearing proceeded as planned, the council would have voted to decide whether he met the burden of proof.
“[Owen] has done nothing in the year 2025 to represent the citizens of Elsmere,” Otis said, referring to her absence at council meetings since 2024. “The citizens deserve better than that.”
Eric Bunzow, an employee with the Kenton County Clerk’s office who first drew attention to Owen’s absenteeism, said he was not surprised about her resignation.
“She didn’t want all of the paperwork that the attorney had to be released,” he said, adding he was happy that it was over.
Owen said she felt threatened around Bunzow because he carries an unloaded gun into Elsmere City Council chambers, a practice that began when his car was broken into with his gun inside.
In her letter, Owen attributed her resignation to what she describes as a hostile environment in the council chambers where no security cameras are present, as well as council’s inaction to her concerns.
“The Elsmere City Council’s repeated denial of my medical Americans w/Disabilities Act accommodations, alongside the ongoing public defamation and retaliation I have endured from having to file police reports and Human Rights Complaints, has left me unable to fulfill my duties while safeguarding my mental and physical health,” the resignation letter states. “My attempts to resolve these issues through petitions to also accommodate our community, formal complaints, and correspondence have been met with inaction.”
Elsmere has 30 days to fill the now vacant seat.