THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 3, 1995 TAG: 9511030636
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Short : 38 lines
The City Council has narrowed its list of city manager prospects to five, Mayor H. Rick Gardner says.
Council members spent two special sessions behind closed doors sifting through 120 applications to arrive at the short list.
The applicants will be discussed next at the city's regular meeting Monday night.
Council members did not disclose the candidates' names, saying state personnel laws prevented it, and would not say whether Victor Sharpe, interim city manager since June, was among them. Sharpe has declined to say whether he applied for the job.
Gardner said Wednesday that the council was on track for selecting a new manager before two new council members are seated in early December. The mayor had said he thought the same group that accepted the former manager's resignation should choose his successor.
One council member said that the council was unlikely to make a hiring decision until Councilman A.C. Robinson Jr., who has missed several meetings in the past two months, gets back into the picture.
Robinson, who just retired from a high-level financial post at Elizabeth City State University, was absent from Wednesday's special meeting on the city manager candidates and from Monday's joint city-county meeting at which the merger commission was disbanded.
Councilwoman Dorothy Stallings also was absent from Wednesday's meeting.
The city manager post became open when Ralph A. Clark announced his resignation on May 31. Sharpe, the city's planning director, was tapped for the interim position shortly afterward. by CNB