THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 14, 1995 TAG: 9507130153
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 16 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANCIE LATOUR, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
In the wee hours of its Tuesday night meeting, the Chesapeake City Council voted to renew the contracts of key city personnel.
Council members voted unanimously to retain and award raises to City Attorney Ronald S. Hallman, City Assessor Lawrence Street and City Clerk Dolores Moore.
Each will get a 2.5 percent raise in their salaries.
But the vote to keep City Manager James W. Rein on board was not unanimous: Rein's contract was extended for a year by an 8-1 vote, with no raise.
The decision showed that friction still exists between Rein and the council he serves, especially with Vice Mayor Robert T. Nance Jr.
After the closed-door session, Nance expressed disgust with some colleagues, who he said changed their vote in the course of the two-hour review.
But the decision also marked how far the city manager has come since the controversy that led former Vice Mayor Arthur L. Dwyer to step down on April 8.
At that time, several council members said Dwyer was the only one standing in the way of a clear majority who wanted to fire Rein during the manager's February review at a Williamsburg council retreat.
Details of the closed-door review surfaced in April amid accusations that Dwyer pursued a personal relationship with a Chesapeake woman while negotiating for her husband's health benefits. In taped conversations with the woman, Dwyer had bragged about saving Rein's job in exchange for his help in getting the benefits.
Council members who described the February meeting predicted then that Rein would not survive his next review in July.
And even as council members went behind closed doors on Tuesday to discuss Rein's contract, one council member was convinced that the majority still existed to oust the manager.
Explaining his opposition, Vice Mayor Nance said he could not support the manager because of differences over ``management style.'' Before the city's television cameras, he and Rein pledged to work with each other during the next year.
After the meeting, however, Nance said he was infuriated that four council members had changed their vote in favor of keeping Rein.
``I don't care who they are, Democrat or Republican,'' Nance said. ``The whole thing stinks, and it's rotten.''
The vice mayor said he would stand by his opposition to the city manager's performance in the future. In his castigation of the city manager, he said he could tie Rein to ``every scandal that has happened in this city in the past 10 years.'' by CNB