Editorials - 01/10/02

Complete details are still unavailable

Town leaders selected Richard McHargue, who holds a master's degree in public administration. Though lacking any experience as a city manager, McHargue is well known to Sylva board members because of his 15 months as director of Sylva Partners in Renewal, the downtown revitalization organization that derives much of its funding from town coffers.

In our opinion, McHargue is a likeable young man who has done a creditable job at SPIR. He has the proper credentials to be the town's manager, and we have no reason to doubt he will do a fine job.

For reasons only they know, town board members apparently feel a professional manager is in the best interest of town residents; from their statements at last week's meeting and over the course of the past few months, they even believe that a town manager is necessary for Sylva to "move forward."

We say "apparently" because we never heard them say why the town needs a manager in any of the concrete terms we journalists like so well.

During some six years of monitoring county commissioners' discourse as they first changed to a professional manager form of government, lost a lawsuit on the issue, won on appeal, hired an interim manager, fired an interim manager, went back to an elected manager, held a referendum, changed back to and in July hired a professional manager, at least we heard the matter debated openly by our elected officials.

Sylva's decision was made "in committee," as they say in the Legislature, during several meetings that did not comply with notification requirements contained in North Carolina's Open Meetings Law.

In a final effort to understand the process, we requested the minutes from the meetings we could not attend because we were not informed of them.

Unfortunately, we're still in the dark.

Minutes were not kept of these meetings, though the Open Meetings Law states that "every public body shall keep full and accurate minutes of all official meetings." Because town committees each consist of three board members, each committee has a quorum of the board. Therefore, each committee meeting constitutes a board meeting.

Generally, said town clerk Tommy Thompson, he attends town committee meetings and takes notes, but he was neither invited to participate in nor notified of several personnel committee meetings last spring. Former town board member Lynda Sossamon chaired the committee and confirmed that she did not keep minutes.

We may not know exactly why our town leaders decided to hire a manager, but we wish him success.

Whether a professional manager turns out to be good, bad or indifferent, it troubles us that we cannot write the complete story of this important decision.

So much for the historical record on this history-making board decision.

Back to Archive: 01/10/02.