FOLEY, Ala. - A special meeting of the Foley City Council has been called Thursday to appoint a new city administrator from two finalists, but Fairhope City Administrator Gregg Mims is no longer in the running for that job.

“It’s been narrowed down to Michael Thompson and William Whitson,” Foley Assistant City Administrator Sandra Pate said Tuesday morning.

Mims said this week he may have lost out on that Foley municipal job because of an e-mail sent by a Fairhope resident to the mayor there during the interview process, and that he has hired an attorney to consider his legal options.

“I’ve retained legal counsel to deal with that issue,” Mims said Monday. “I take it pretty seriously that someone would send an e-mail that would affect the outcome of a potential employment issue.”

Mims was one of six candidates who interviewed for the Foley city administrator job on Jan. 13 and 14. Foley narrowed the list down to two last week, Pate said.

Thompson was Baldwin County administrator until he left that job late last year following a shakeup in several county positions after the November elections. Whitson is former city manager of East Ridge, Tenn.

Chris Warner, a Fairhope resident and unsuccessful mayoral candidate in 2008, sent a Jan. 13 e-mail to Foley Mayor John Koniar, which made several strident allegations about Mims and his role as Fairhope’s incident commander during the city’s response efforts to the BP oil spill last year.

Warner’s e-mail linked Mims to allegations in an ethics complaint filed against a state senator, which he helped draft, regarding a Fairhope city contract awarded to the senator’s company for protective boom installed along the city’s coastline as part of the response efforts.

“Foley does not need a ‘public servant’ like Mr. Mims,” Warner’s Jan. 13 e-mail stated. “Instead, the city should seek to hire someone that will always do the right thing with respect to the public trust.”

Warner’s statements in that e-mail and numerous others during the past few weeks to city officials, media and others have created a furor among some residents, according to some replies sent to Warner.

Warner claims he can back up all the statements he made in those e-mails and the one sent to Koniar.

“Mr. Mims is not going to sue me because everything I’ve said is true,” said Warner, who has a doctorate in urban planning. “Tell him to bring it on.”

Mims was hired as Fairhope’s city administrator in July 2009 at an annual salary of $110,000. The Foley city administrator job will pay between $90,000 and $120,000 annually. Mims is the highest ranking Fairhope city staff person, second only to Mayor Tim Kant in authority.

Mims declined to say which attorney he has hired regarding Warner’s statements.

“I will tell you that I am going to pursue whatever options I have individually,” Mims said. “Dr. Warner has sent out multiple e-mails recently on a variety of topics, and I take (the one to Koniar) pretty seriously because it definitely affected the outcome of that situation over in Foley.”