Oriental Town Commissioners and Management

Some Oriental Town Commissioners seem to have great difficulty grasping the proper role of the board of commissioners. Let's try again.

The Town of Oriental has a council-manager form of government. That means the board of commissioners exercises a legislative role by providing general direction and control over town government, adopting general personnel rules, regulations, policies or ordinances and providing oversight over the Town Manager's activities.

The Town Manager is the chief administrator of the town. He is responsible to the board of commissioners for all municipal affairs. His powers and duties are spelled out in North Carolina General Statutes.

The manager supervises and directs all departments of Town Government, including appointing, suspending or removing ALL city officers and employees not elected by the people (subject in some cases to other provisions of the law).

In brief, the town board gets to hire the town manager. The board has NO statutory authority to hire or fire any employee subordinate to the manager. To be sure, the board can establish general personnel rules, regulations and policies.

Commissioners have NO operational role in the town's administration. No supervisory role and no authority over employees. No individual commissioner has any administrative or disciplinary authority over the manager or any other employee. Neither does the mayor.

We saw at today's agenda meeting the sort of problem that can arise when an individual commissioner takes on the task of obtaining cost estimates, "bids," making design decisions, and attempting to move forward with a project instead of asking the entire board to task the manager with the project. In this case, the project that seems unnecessarily muddled is the pier at the end of South Avenue.

There have been other matters unnecessarily muddled by commissioner meddling in the past year and a half.

The board needs to address this. It is a procedural issue.