Tag: Tarron Richardson

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Coronavirus News

In brief: Masked melons, summertime sadness, and more

Cooling off in the city’s splash gardens is a thing of the past, thanks to a recent announcement that all Charlottesville pools and spraygrounds will be closed this summer. PC: Ron Paris

Goodbye, summer

Monday is Memorial Day, the traditional start to summer, but this year, much of the city’s outdoor recreation space will be off limits. Last week, Charlottesville Parks & Recreation closed all city pools and spraygrounds for the summer, and canceled camps. In addition, other outdoor facilities, including basketball and tennis courts, picnic shelters, and the Sugar Hollow Reservoir, will remain shuttered until further notice. In Albemarle County, all swimming lakes will be closed, along with playgrounds and ball fields.

“Our decision at this point is based on public safety and health, and our staff and keeping our staff safe,” says Todd Brown, Charlottesville Parks & Rec’s interim director. Where parks are open, both the city and county will employ monitors to ensure visitors are social distancing.

Under Phase One of Governor Northam’s reopening plan, which began May 15, pools are allowed to open for lap swimming, and private facilities like ACAC and Fry’s Spring have done so. But city and county officials say the decision to keep public pools closed has to do with staffing.

“We don’t have a year-round staff for lifeguarding, and so it’s really difficult to recruit seasonal lifeguards when we don’t know when they would be able to start work,” says Emily Kilroy, the director of communications and public engagement for Albemarle County. Brown noted that the city did not start training lifeguards in March, as it usually does, and that carried weight in the decision.

“With things being delayed in terms of the different phases…that uncertainty, it goes against being able to plan on how to open and operate pools so that you’re keeping people safe,” says Brown.

Amy Smith, assistant director of the county’s Parks & Recreation department, says “park ambassadors” will be stationed at the county’s swimming lakes this summer, to make sure no children make their way into the water. But how to keep kids with no other options for cooling off away from other, unguarded bodies of water—like the Rivanna River—is less clear.

“We know that there is going to be a reaction to this action, and that could also cause negative impacts elsewhere,” says Brown. “And we are concerned about that, too.”

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Quote of the Week

“I am hopeful that our students will be back in the classroom this fall.”

—Governor Ralph Northam, at a press conference on Monday. (So are we, Ralph. So are we.)

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In brief

Sour grapes

Listening to the President these days, you’d think the pandemic is over. But don’t tell that to Charlottesville’s Trump Winery, which soft-opened this week behind a set of complicated social-distancing requirements. While Trump has famously declined to wear a mask in public, they’re mandatory for servers at his winery, and recommended for guests.

Budget bristles

City budget officials have their work cut out for them, as staff projects a $5.4 million loss in revenue this year. That’s made some in City Hall grumpy: This week, The Daily Progress wrote a story about the city-county revenue sharing agreement, but City Manager Tarron Richardson (whose job is to talk about the budget) didn’t like the coverage, and said at Monday’s council meeting that he was “too upset to talk about it right now.”   

Seedy suspects

On the evening of May 6, two people walked into a Louisa Sheetz wearing unusual face masks: hollowed-out watermelons with holes cut out for their eyes. According to the Louisa Police Department, the pair committed larceny, though it’s unclear exactly what they took. Police arrested one of the suspects—20-year-old Justin Rogers—on May 16, and charged him with wearing a mask in public while committing larceny, underage possession of alcohol, and petit larceny of alcohol. The second melonhead is still on the loose.

Major makeover

After many years of residents protesting against its dilapidated conditions, Crescent Halls will undergo major renovations starting this fall—but not without a huge price tag. At a May 18 meeting, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority announced that the project—which also includes the redevelopment and construction of new units on South First Street—would cost $26.94 million for construction, about $4.3 million more than last year’s estimates. To pay the bill, CRHA plans to secure additional funding from the Virginia Housing Development Authority, as well as private donors.

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Busted budget: Schools, housing initiatives among programs affected by coronavirus crash

Councilor Payne addresses his fellow councilors via videoconference.

 

The City of Charlottesville was almost all the way through the always-laborious yearly budget process when the coronavirus crisis derailed its plans. City Council held an online meeting Monday night—its first meeting in a month—to discuss the city’s deeply uncertain finances.

The most recent projections, delivered by City Manager Tarron Richardson, suggest $8.5 million of lost revenue as a result of the crisis. That means that many of the new, exciting programs the council had planned are now in jeopardy. The creation of a Director of Equity and Inclusion position and the Unity Days programming, two appropriations that community activists had fought for in the wake of Unite the Right, will be deferred. The pre-coronavirus proposed 2021 budget had given $2.1 million more than last year to the schools, but that increase won’t happen. The $7 million Capital Improvement Plan, which includes a variety of projects, from affordable housing initiatives to a controversial downtown parking lot, will be delayed; those funds will be put in an emergency reserve to combat the short-term effects of the virus.

“Something that gives us housing five years from now or three years from now is less important to me than something that might keep people in their homes now,” said councilor Lloyd Snook. The city has already suspended utility shut-offs and public housing evictions. 

UVA’s plans remain a looming unknown. Mayor Nikuyah Walker was pessimistic about the prospect of students returning: “We have an economy that’s built off of the university and tourism, and we’re going to have neither of those things,” she said at the meeting.

Things could get worse, too. “We could see the revenue gap grow substantially larger,” said councilor Michael Payne. “There’s going to be very difficult decisions to make.”

The council extended the deadline to pass a budget from April 15 to June 30. “I think we’ll be able to maintain our public services,” said Richardson. “But there will be some struggles.”

 

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In Brief: IMPACT takes on ICE, infiltrators at SURJ, City Manager fires back

A representative from a local congregation puts up signs at the IMPACT rally. Photo: Zach Wajsgras

Making an IMPACT

“It has been almost four years since the father of my kids was deported to Mexico due to his stay in the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail,” said Fanny Smedlie, reading a statement from her friend Karla Lopez.

Smedlie, a member of the Executive Committee of the Church of the Incarnation, addressed a large gathering of people of faith from all over Charlottesville at a March 5 rally for IMPACT, an interfaith community service coalition. Ending the ACRJ’s practice of voluntarily notifying ICE when undocumented immigrants are detained is one of the causes that IMPACT has adopted this year.

After a year in jail, Lopez’s husband was deported on the day he was supposed to be released. Lopez was waiting outside the jail with her children. “They had prepared balloons and a banner that said welcome home Dad. When we got back home, they destroyed it,” read Smedlie.

As well as lobbying the jail board to end ICE notifications, IMPACT also hopes to continue advocating for greater investment in affordable housing, a cause they worked on last year.

The rally this week was a warm up for the group’s larger annual event, which will be held March 31 at Charlottesville High School. The leaders at the rally revealed IMPACT’s guiding theory of change-making: “We need our people power to make all this happen,” said Greta Dershimer of Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church. IMPACT hopes to turn out 1,300 people for that event.

Reverend Will Peyton of St. Paul’s Memorial Church emphasized that the diverse crowd of people gathered before him on Thursday all represented one community, and that working towards divine justice meant fighting for each other.

“The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you,” Peyton said.

“It is not about individuals. It’s about the whole community.”

Suspicious minds

A Charlottesville Police detective who assembled a dossier on anti-fascist groups in the months before the Unite the Right rally approvingly quoted right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, and described antifascists as “using words to cloak reality,” according to newly surfaced city government documents. Cops also compiled research on Black Lives Matter (in addition to the white nationalist groups that organized the deadly rally), and two detectives even turned up covertly at the downtown library for a June 2017 meeting of Showing Up for Racial Justice, or SURJ.

“The meeting started with the group”—40 to 50 people, mostly women— “chanting the names of individuals who had suffered ‘police’ brutality,” one of them wrote. “A female spoke for approximately 30 minutes on the history of the Monacan nation.”

The detectives witnessed the handover of a racial justice yard sign and T-shirt before being forced to abort their mission. “I left early,” one wrote, “as I was concerned that I would be made during a group activity where all were forced to participate.”

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Quote of the Week

“I know they are here, my ancestors. The people that found the town called Winneba are here with me and I think they are so proud.”

­—Nana Akyeampong-Ghartey, president of the Charlottesville-Winneba Foundation, on the honorary designation of 6 1/2 Street SW as Winneba Way

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In Brief

Hot under the collar

City Manager Tarron Richardson and local firefighter’s union leader Greg Wright exchanged fiery emails last week, after Richardson declined to grant the fire department’s request for 12 new staff. Wright said Richardson was “willfully ignorant” about the department; Richardson shot back that “Your educational achievements…will never be a match to any of my qualifications or credentials,” in emails procured by The Daily Progress.

Be ready

Like everyone else, city and county school systems are preparing for the possibility of a local outbreak of coronavirus. ACPS released a detailed plan that includes implementing social distancing in schools, advising parents to secure long-term childcare, and the potential cancellation of  assemblies, athletic events, and field trips if a case of COVID-19 is identified in the region.

Crime ring?

Albemarle County Police Department has announced that it’s joining more than 400 police departments nationwide in partnering with Ring, Amazon’s video doorbell home security system. That means county cops will be able to access video footage from outside (and sometimes inside) people’s homes, which is also stored on Amazon’s servers. New York Mag calls the system “dystopian;” The Intercept notes its “dismal privacy practices;” and Vice says Ring is essentially “de facto beta testing” for facial recognition software. What could go wrong?

 

 

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News

In brief: Fire fighters fight the budget, Barracks bikers, and more

City Manager Tarron Richardson. Photo: Eze Amos

Money talks 

City Manager Tarron Richardson presented his proposed budget for fiscal year 2021 at the City Council meeting on March 2. If that sentence made you yawn, we understand—but the tail end of the hours-long council meeting represents the beginning of the end of the budget cycle, some of the more important city business of the year. Richardson’s office has been working with City Council on the budget since September, and will finalize the plan in April.

Around 20 firefighters attended the meeting in yellow T-shirts reading “staffing matters,” as a protest against Richardson’s decision not to fund nine new positions for the department. Richardson says the fire department’s hiring program was developed before he arrived, and that new hiring has to be done strategically.

The new budget includes significant appropriations for affordable housing, with $4.1 million for housing in FY21 and $31.2 million in the five-year capital improvement plan, though it doesn’t include the roughly $400,000 requested by the Charlottesville Housing Affordability Grant Program. Community activism around housing “elevated it as a priority for City Council,” Richardson told us in a rare interview February 28. “And as city manager, I try to follow through with their defined priorities.”

Richardson also defended his decision to give the school district a $2.1 million budget increase instead of the $3.8 million it requested. He says the $2.1 million is in accordance with the 40 percent of new property taxes that has historically been given to schools. The school board presented a breakdown of its request at the meeting, emphasizing teacher compensation as a critical component that could be jeopardized by lack of funding.

Then there’s the Market Street parking garage, a $10 million expenditure that Richardson has explained away as “basically signed off on with the county” before he arrived. Councilor Michael Payne criticized the garage at the meeting, saying “it could be very easy for us to spend 10 million on this to meet a need that’s not exactly there.”

C-VILLE asked Richardson if declining requests from citizens all day long takes a toll on him. “It takes a toll, yes,” he said. “Do I say no all the time? I would say no. But what I try to do is make sure that we take things and look at it from a holistic approach.”

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Quote of the Week

“I want teachers to be able to afford to live in our city.”

­—Charlottesville School Board chair Jennifer McKeever, addressing City Council about the school district’s unmet funding request

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In Brief

Bikers on Barracks?

On March 2, City Council voted unanimously to approve a state-funded project that will add a shared-use pedestrian and bike path to a stretch of Barracks Road. But some nearby residents objected—one speaker at the council meeting suggested that installing sidewalks and bike paths was unnecessary because there were never any walkers or bikers on the road. Perhaps that’s because there are no sidewalks or bike paths? Impossible to say for sure.

Baby steps

During the same meeting, council expressed support for a requested special use permit from developer Woodard Properties for a new apartment complex on Harris Street. The permit would allow Woodard to build 105 units; the developer indicated that 10 of those would be designated affordable housing. Without the permit, Woodard could build 50 units and wouldn’t have to keep any affordable. Mayor Nikuyah Walker wanted to push Woodard to include more cheap units, but Councilor Michael Payne backed the permit, saying blocking developments like these won’t address the deep-lying issues that have created the local housing crisis.

Honoring our ancestors

Dozens of people gathered in Court Square March 1 for a candlelight vigil in remembrance of the thousands of enslaved people, including children as young as 2, who were bought and sold there. The event, which included prayer, singing, and readings, kicked off the city’s Liberation and Freedom Day celebrations, which continue through March 9 and commemorate the arrival of Union troops in Charlottesville.

Still standing still 

Nothing has changed with the Dewberry/Laramore, our local eyesore on the Downtown Mall, but apparently that’s not for lack of trying. According to documents obtained recently by The Daily Progress, the city initiated a process to conduct a structural integrity study of the building last November, a potential step toward demolishing the long-neglected property under its blight ordinance. The catch? Dewberry Capital, whose Dewberry Group website declares the half-completed wreck is “poised to become the city’s premier luxury multi-use property,” hasn’t given the city permission to enter the site.

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Call for help: Human Rights Commission asks for more city support

HRC Chair Shantell Bingham says the commission and office need more staffing and resources from the city. PC: Eze Amos

Charlottesville’s Office of Human Rights and Human Rights Commission have an intimidatingly broad mission: to reduce discrimination in the city.  

So perhaps it’s not surprising that the office and its volunteer commission, which are tasked with both investigating individual complaints of discrimination and reviewing city polices for systemic discrimination, have received their fair share of criticism since their creation in 2013. During a 2017 Dialogue on Race meeting, former mayor Dave Norris accused them of not doing enough to uphold the city’s Human Rights Ordinance. At the same meeting, UVA professor Walt Heinecke said the organizations had been largely ineffective, a claim he reiterated in a 2018 Daily Progress op-ed. 

Today, similar feelings persist not just among community members—but among commissioners themselves. At last week’s City Council meeting, HRC Chair Shantell Bingham said that although there was “an uptick” in the commission’s ability to fulfill its role in 2019, “we really want to do more.”

Earlier this month, Charlene Green, who has led the OHR for five years, stepped down to join the Piedmont Housing Alliance. Bingham, who became commission chair last year, says both the commission and the office have faced numerous obstacles over the years. 

“The Office of Human Rights hasn’t been properly staffed for a very long time,” she says. Though the office hired Todd Niemeier as an outreach specialist in 2018, “before it was just [Green] in the office with interns. And now that she’s leaving, it’s going back to there being one staff person…which is just ridiculous.” The city is currently looking for Green’s replacement.

Since Tarron Richardson became city manager, the office and commission hasn’t had a direct line of contact in the city either, says commissioner Ann Smith.

Smith notes that former city manager Maurice Jones was “very involved” with the HRC, but says, “We haven’t had a chance to meet the new city manager.”

To improve the commission and office’s communication with the city, Bingham says there needs to be a city official who the HRC can directly report to. She also recommends that City Council receive and review reports from OHR on a monthly basis, rather than annually. 

Commissioner Sue Lewis suggests council also reexamine the city’s human rights ordinance, particularly the limited authority it gives to the OHR and HRC. They are currently only able to investigate complaints of discrimination in companies with five to 14 employees. Complaints from larger companies are referred to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission office in Richmond. 

If the city gives the OHR more money for staffing, it could turn it into a Fair Employment Practice Agency, which would give the office greater authority and better equip it to handle the thousands of discrimination complaints it receives each year, according to Smith.

City Councilor Sena Magill says the council takes the challenges OHR and HRC have faced seriously, and that equity will be a “huge part” of the city’s strategic plan, with the HRC being “a part of that equity work.”

And, according to Richardson, the city’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year “will include continued support for the Office of Human Rights, the new Office of Equity and Inclusion, and the new Police Civilian Review Board.” 

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In brief: VSP whites out, Queen of Virginia sues, Hoos win World Cup, and more…

A reporter suing Virginia State Police for a copy of its August 12 operations plan got 132 blank pages. staff photo

State police redact—heavily

Natalie Jacobsen, a reporter who has written for C-VILLE, has been trying to get the Virginia State Police to release its August 12, 2017, operations plan for almost two years under the Freedom of Information Act. She seemed close May 22, when a Charlottesville judge ordered the state police to produce the plan. However, what Jacobsen received is a document with 132 blank pages, and she’s going back to court.

According to the motion her attorneys with Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed July 9, the entire report was redacted except for portions previously published in the Governor’s Task Force and the Heaphy reports.

State police “were required to release all portions” of the operations plan, including non-public parts that are not subject to the tactical plans exclusion in FOIA, says the court filing. Jacobsen also objects to the state agency citing other FOIA exemptions for first time, and says with the
blank pages, she’d have to guess at which exemptions police are applying to particular information.

She wants the court to order state police to immediately release portions of the 177-page plan that were improperly redacted. A hearing date has not been set.

Quote of the week

“We want Charlottesville to be known as a community that has learned important lessons from our long and complex racial history, from the Summer of Hate, that we are resilient, and that we have set a course for a better future for all of our residents.” —City Manager Tarron Richardson on ditching TJ’s birthday

In brief

Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania got sued by a game maker who took issue with Platania’s assessment of Queen of Virginia’s legality. staff photo

Prosecutor sued

The company that makes the Queen of Virginia game filed a lawsuit against Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania, who banned the machines in the city in June and said enforcement would begin August 5 for those who had not removed the games, according to the Daily Progress. According to a post on SafeBettingSites.com, the manufacturer contends the machines are “skill games,” while Platania says they violate Virginia’s law against illegal gambling. 

World Cup Hoos

Three former UVA soccer players—Becky Sauerbrunn, Morgan Brian, and Emily Sonnett—were on the winning U.S. national women’s soccer team in Lyon July 7, and UVA women’s soccer head coach Steve Swanson served as an assistant coach.

Sanctuary fine

ICE is threatening to impose a $214,000 fine on Guatemalan refugee Maria Chavalan Sut, who has lived in Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church since October while she fights deportation, the DP reports. The Reverend Isaac Collins says “The purpose of it is to intimidate Maria and to put pressure on her.”

Can’t shut up

Crying Nazi Chris Cantwell allegedly threatened one of the lawyers suing him for damages stemming from August 2017. Attorney Roberta Kaplan asked a federal judge to order Cantwell to stop making “unlawful threats” on social media, such as this on Telegram: “When this stupid [anti-Semitic slur] whore loses this fraudulent lawsuit, we’re going to have a lot of fucking fun with her.”

State Senator Bryce Reeves points out that one of his Senate colleagues is “openly gay” at an NRA gathering. file photo

Sexual orientation noted

At an NRA conference in Fredericksburg in June, state Senator Bryce Reeves, who represents eastern Albemarle, said the agenda of the only “openly gay senator,” Adam Ebbin, is “infanticide” and gun bills, and that Dems want a “$20, $25” minimum wage, the Washington Post reports. Ebbin disputes Reeves’ characterization of his legislative goals, and says he’s “offended,” “hurt,” and “shocked” Reeves would invoke his sexual orientation.

Warmbiers want ship

The parents of UVA student Otto Warmbier have filed a claim for a North Korean cargo ship as payment on the $500 million judgment they received in the death of their son following his imprisonment in North Korea. 

Mall shooting

A shot was fired into the Commonwealth Restaurant & Skybar around 11:30pm July 5. Police found a bullet hole in the window, but no one was injured. Tayveyon Laric Brown, 18, was arrected and charged with attempted malicious wounding, shooting into an occupied dwelling, discharging a firearm in the city, discharging a firearm in a street or place of public business and reckless handling of a firearm.  

Caretaker crime

Danielle Messineo, of Madison, was sentenced July 3 to 10-and-a-half years active incarceration for forging checks and stealing money from a quadraplegic relative. She was convicted of three counts of grand larceny and three counts of forgery. Her sentence exceeded the two-and-a-half years sentencing guidelines because of the victim’s vulnerability and her position of trust as a caretaker, said the judge.

Scoot on!

Electric scooters will remain another six months, but hint to riders: Stop riding them on the sidewalk and blocking pedestrian traffic.

Lime and Bird electric scooters have made over 115,000 rides and sent 32 people to the emergency room in the six months since they came to town in December. Those were a few of the details City Council learned at its June 17 meeting, where council members voted to extend the pilot scooter program—before Bird took a summer hiatus.

Charlottesville residents will now have until at least December 2019 to rent ’em and ride ’em. For a starting fare of $1 and 15 cents a minute, riders can zip around in bike lanes and streets anywhere in the city—except the Downtown Mall, a designated no-go zone. City Council also voted to expand the scooter fleet from 200 to 300.

City staff identified several concerns with the program: users riding on sidewalks, leaving scooters willy-nilly around town, and not wearing helmets. Both Lime and Bird require participants to sign a virtual agreement to wear one but, with no concrete way to enforce this rule, residents are opting to go helmet-less.

But at 700 rides a day and growing, safety concerns don’t seem to deter potential riders.

In the meantime, the committee will continue to collect data on the pilot program, and City Council will reconvene in December to decide the permanent fate of the scooter sensation.

Correction July 16: The original scooter story should have indicated the nearly 700,000 gallons Lime says it’s saved are since the company was founded, not here in Charlottesville.

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New city manager wants open-door policy

Dr. Tarron Richardson at his introductory press conference last April. After a year and change, he's out as city manager. Photo: Eze Amos

City Council introduced its pick to be the city’s top executive April 15, and Mayor Nikuyah Walker urged citizens to be open to moving past “the way things have been done.”

Tarron Richardson, currently city manager of DeSoto, Texas, a Dallas suburb, was chosen out of 37 candidates in a process that’s taken almost a year. He said he intends to meet with staff, residents, and business owners to “make sure everyone is receiving the best service.”

Richardson says he’s not the type of CEO who’s rarely seen, and that he has an open-door policy.

Nor was he deterred by some Charlottesvillians’ confrontational style with city and elected officials. “That’s not unique to Charlottesville,” and he’s comfortable being in the hot seat, he said.

“If I’d been worried about being stressed, I never would have applied,” he said.

Richardson, 42, will earn $205,000. Before Texas, he worked two different stints in city government in Richmond, where he earned a Ph.D. from VCU.

While in Richmond, he said he was drawn to the vibrancy of Charlottesville when he came here during a Fridays After Five, and had always kept his eyes peeled for an opening in the city.

The new city manager, who starts May 13, also said he’s a UVA basketball fan. During the NCAA championship game, “I was probably the only one in Texas cheering for UVA,” he said.

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Meet the (possible) city manager

Mike Mallinoff points to similarities between Charlottesville and Annapolis, where he was city manager. Photo by Eze Amos

By Shrey Dua

Three finalists, out of a field of 37, are vying for the job of Charlottesville city manager, and roughly 100 people showed up to see them at an open-to-the-public interview.

City councilors questioned the candidates at a Jefferson School African American Heritage Center event on March 6, which was followed by a meet-and-greet so citizens could ask their own questions.

The candidates, all men, have city or county management experience, although two were fired from previous jobs, according to the Daily Progress. Apparently that’s not a disqualifier for city managers, as former Charlottesville city manager Maurice Jones was hired for the same job in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, after City Council declined to renew his contract post-August 12.

The position has been open since July 31, with Mike Murphy serving as interim city manager.

Michael Mallinoff had previously been county administrator in Charles County, Maryland, and city manager in Annapolis. Tarron Richardson is city manager in DeSoto, Texas, a Dallas suburb of about 54,000, and Theodore Voorhees is Powhatan county administrator.

Each candidate was met with a similar battery of questions from the five city councilors: They asked about public safety, race relations following the events of August 11 and 12, 2017, and the growing concern over gentrification within the Charlottesville community.

Mallinoff focused on maintaining a transparent governing body, and stressed the similarities between Charlottesville and Annapolis, where he was city manager for four years. He was let go when Annapolis elected a new mayor in 2014.

Richardson emphasized his commitment to working with any and all members of the community to further the city’s goals. “We want to create an environment for those who graduate from high school and college, where they want to come back to the community so you’re bringing folks who have lived here, and gotten their education here, and they can be the ones to work in our businesses and expand our economic development.”

Voorhees almost exclusively answered the questions with stories related to his long local government background, often getting bogged down by overly complex anecdotes. He stumbled a bit on his closing statement, as well as on some of the race questions, earning a few bewildered laughs from the audience during his remarks.

“Around the country people know what you’ve been through,” he said. “I hear it, people are sending me emails, messages, making little jokes about what happened and it’s unfortunate that the name Charlottesville is synonymous with tragedy.” His encouragement that the city would get through this drew hoots from the audience.

Voorhees served as city manager in Fayetteville, North Carolina, from 2012 to 2016, when he was asked to resign because of what the Fayetteville Observer called “perceived missteps and occasional political gaffes.”

Councilors met behind closed doors March 7, and the candidates continue to meet with community members. Timeline for a decision? Councilors say by April.