HAMLET — Outgoing City Manager Jonathan Blanton has agreed to stay on part-time until his replacement can be found.
Mayor Bill Bayless said several applications have been received and the City Council members now have to get together to go through them and make a decision on who they want to interview.
Blanton’s last full-time day was Friday.
Last year, Wadesboro hired an interim town manager through N-Focus, a Kannapolis-based firm that assists municipalities with planning, administration and code enforcement.
Bayless said the Council had considered going the same route until Blanton decided to stay on board.
Blanton announced his resignation last month after taking a job with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
There, he will be the new director of business affairs and finance where he will oversee an $18 million budget, as well as personnel and business operations for the University’s Graduate School, according to a press release.
Whomever is hired will be the third city manager for Hamlet in the past six years since the resignation of Marchelle Adams-David.
Adams-David resigned in August 2014 to take an assistant city manager job in Raleigh. She had worked with the city for more than 20 years and was city manager the last 13.
Replacing her was Marcus Abernethy, hired in October 2014. He resigned at the end of 2016, citing his wife’s promotion and relocation as the reason.
Blanton was hired in January 2017.
