Meanwhile, Back at Town Hall

The Town of Oriental has now resolved the police hiring impasse by recognizing that town administration, including hiring and supervision of police officers, is the legal responsibility of the town manager, not the Board of Commissioners.

The morning this revelation was announced, one of the commissioners revealed that she (the commissioner) had tasked one of the town employees with uncovering all of the amendments to the town charter and putting them on the web site.

Not a bad idea, but a better approach would have been to suggest the course of action to the manager and let him decide how to go about it. He is the one who must assign tasks to the staff. This is neither the duty nor the responsibility of a commissioner.

Now that the principal of how responsibilities are divided by North Carolina law between the board of commissioners and the town manager has been accepted, I think commissioners will find their own job very much easier. And they will probably do it better.