EDITORIAL: Interim appointment a solid move for city

Published 9:21 am Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Milledgeville City Council acted soundly and in a timely fashion last week when the board unanimously approved Hank Griffeth as interim city manager.

After City Manager Barry Jarrett announced his plans to retire effective July 5, it didn’t take City Council very long to confer and decide that an interim would be the next step in the process to solidify a permanent replacement. 

Griffeth is a solid choice. A local native, he has worked as city planner since 2014 and has worn a number of hats while working in the community. He most recently held the position of project manager for the Development Authority of Milledgeville and Baldwin County following the departure of the board’s executive director. Most notably, though, Griffeth has worked with both city and county officials, as vice president of operations for Central Georgia Technical College, through his work with the local Chamber of Commerce and with the Development Authority. That fact is key when one considers that there are several important issues that remain up in the air in local government that require an agreement between the city and county. The impending June 30 Service Delivery Strategy deadline is clearly the most important. Then, there is also the legal actions regarding water in the unincorporated areas of the county as well as SPLOST. 

Now that an interim has been named it’s time to shift focus back to finding resolutions for these issues that desperately need resolving. 

Griffeth said at Friday’s announcement that he wants to work on strengthening some of the weaknesses in city government in this new role and that he plans to have an open-door policy to those in the community. 

We certainly hope that is the case for as long as he is interim and beyond.

With his years of work experience in education, government, and his knowledge of the internal workings of the city government, Griffeth seems to be a steady hand who is familiar with a number of the issues on the table, particularly SDS. 

This community needs to have these issues resolved for the betterment of Milledgeville and Baldwin County.

If the interim city manager can do anything at all to push that forward, then we will all be better off for it.