RFP Staff
♦ After reviewing the City Manager Doug Paris’s “no liability–guilt free” contract (posted below), the Rowan Free Press raises these questions:
• How was it the former 30 year old city manager was given a money-loaded contract with built-in protections from any liability for his actions?
• Mayor Woodson surely read Doug Paris’s contract before signing it. Is he not, then, in very large measure responsible for this atrocity?Why is there no liability in Doug Paris’s contract?
• Who, according to N.C. state statute, monitors the City manager’s activity?
• Woodson claims that he has no say when it came to a city manager’s decisions (Example: Woodson ‘s wrongful termination response in a city council meeting some months ago). Does a mayor and a city council oversee a city manager?
• Councilman Brian Miller stated in the recent Post article that “City Council employs only one person, the city manager.” It should not be difficult to oversee one person, their decisions, and their activities — should it?
• Does the gap in oversight and contractual liability create fertile soil for corrupt activity?
• Does a city manager, under such a contract, have a license to do as he pleases? And get away with it?
• Do other municipalities work this way: “City council determines policies and city managers carry them out”?
Larger questions reside below the surface of these questions that only a major independent probe can answer.
City Manager Doug Paris’s last contract:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2E5Ew6OLdElTzRJRmJNWFdhck0/edit?usp=sharing
How the council-city manager relationship works. The council must determine the manner of oversight, apparently:
http://www.sogpubs.unc.edu/cmg/cmg19.pdf
http://www.nclm.org/resource-center/Pages/How-Municipalities-Work.aspx — League of Municipalities
N.C. State Statutes on Administrative Jobs:
http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/PDF/ByArticle/Chapter_160A/Article_7.pdf — General Statutes on Administrative Jobs
General Statutes for Running a City Council:
http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/PDF/ByArticle/Chapter_160A/Article_5.pdf
