Special Town Board Meeting August 17 11:00

The Town of Oriental has scheduled a Special Workshop Meeting August 17, 2010 at 11:00 am with Mr. Hartwell Wright of North Carolina League of Municipalities to discuss Human Resources.

Warning! This could be a stealth effort to change the form of government the Town of Oriental has enjoyed for nearly 40 years, without alerting the citizenry to the issues.

To set the stage, I quote from a recent letter of Mayor Bill Sage to the Local Government Commission (back)dated April 1, 2010:

"The prior Town Administrator, Wyatt Cutler, had served for nearly a decade when he announced his retirement in late 2008, effective January 31, 2009. The Town began a search process for his replacement and hired the current Administrator, Randall K. Cahoon, in March 2009."

"Pay no attention," the letter seems to say, "to the contract between the Town of Oriental and the same Randall K. Cahoon, made the 9th of March, 2009." The contract was addressed to "Randall K. Cahoon, Town Manager" and signed for the Town of Oriental by "William R. Sage, Mayor." Pay no attention, likewise, to nearly 40 years of minutes describing the "Town Manager's Report," correspondence addressed to and signed by "Town Manager," and the fact that during his "nearly a decade" of service, Wyatt Cutler was styled as and performed the functions of the Town Manager.

With no notice to the public, someone working out of Town Hall seems to have decided to expunge the term "town manager" from our lexicon and replace it with "administrator."

Isn't this a distinction without a difference? Not exactly.

What is at stake is how the town is governed.

The Council/Manager plan of government promotes the separation of the Town Board's responsibility for political judgments and policy direction from the manager's responsibility for administration in accordance with the council's overall policy guidance and his or her own politically neutral expertise.

I think this is a fair description of how the Town has been governed for many years.

The Mayor/Council form of government assigns decision making responsibility to the Town Board as a group, with no clear executive authority.

Advocates of the Mayor/Council model contend that the Town's 1899 Charter provides for a Mayor/Council form of government.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

More to come.