By Jeremy Carroll
C & G Staff Writer

ROYAL OAK — Saying he’s received dozens of phone calls and e-mails from neighbors, supporters and people he doesn’t even know asking him to reconsider his resignation from the City Commission, Stephen Miller has turned in a letter to the city rescinding his June 3 resignation.

The letter was handed over to the city clerk on June 9, and City Attorney Dave Gillam is looking into the legality of the resignation rescission letter.

“We are in the process of taking a look at it,” Gillam said on June 10. “To our knowledge, this has not happened before in the city of Royal Oak.”

The City Commission had not formally accepted Miller’s resignation by the time he rescinded it. The commission is set to meet on June 15, and it remains unclear if Miller would be sitting at the table with fellow commissioners.

Miller resigned June 3 in an e-mail letter to Gillam, saying he was “sick to death of people lying about me, threatening me with litigation and fighting every attempt I have made in the last 3 1/2 years to fix the city’s worsening financial crisis,” in the letter obtained by the Royal Oak Review through the Freedom of Information Act.

The letter came the morning after it was revealed that the Oakland County Sheriff's Department was looking into wrongdoing among members of the City Commission, but Miller previously claimed his resignation had nothing to do with the investigation.

Miller said he wants to fight for his family name, and said he is confident that he will be seated at the June 15 City Commission meeting because Robert’s Rules of Order allows for someone to rescind their resignation before the body formally accepts it.

When he resigned, Miller told the Royal Oak Review that he was “sick and tired of people lying about me and trashing my family name,” and said he never intended to run for re-election in the fall.

“I’m absolutely running this fall,” he said on June 10. “They lit a fire under me. I have 150 signatures that I had gathered up until the (Memorial Day) pancake fundraiser. I’ll get the rest before the Fourth of July.”

Miller, first elected in 2005, had earlier indicated he planned to run for mayor in the 2009 election, before backing off that claim and then pulling petitions to run again for city commissioner.