Ringgold mayor pushes for changes to charter
Ringgold, Ga.’s mayor wants to undo a charter change that he says he didn’t know about.
Mayor Nick Millwood said the city’s elected officials asked their local state representatives to pass an act in Atlanta last year, tweaking a couple of things in the city charter. But Millwood said that in October, when he was looking through the city’s rules, he stumbled upon a change that was new to him.
To fire the city manager, the Ringgold charter used to require affirmative votes from three of the city’s five council members. But now, all five council members have to approve of the firing, creating a higher bar to clear.
Millwood said state Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, added that amendment to the charter without alerting him. He said City Manager Dan Wright told him he didn’t know anything about the change, either. Wright did not return a call Monday seeking comment.
“My first thought was it was a mistake,” Millwood said.
Mullis said Millwood could easily have known about the change. Mullis advertised the changes to the charter in the Catoosa County News before he and former state Rep. Tom Weldon, R-Ringgold, introduced the bill in the capitol. The local act also was on the state Legislature’s website two months before Gov. Nathan Deal signed it into law.
“Stability is what I’m trying for here,” Mullis said. “I think it should be a super majority to fire a city manager or some type [of] related position again for stability and for due process. Not to run just to fire a city manager for political reasons.”
He added that he told Millwood he would introduce a new charter change if the council approved a resolution outlining the changes. Millwood, who is not a voting member of the council, put an item about the charter on the agenda during the Oct. 10 meeting. The council members did not move to vote.
According to the Georgia Municipal Association, the city council also could make the change without the state legislature, passing the tweak through a “home rule” vote. This summer, Millwood plans to take a different route.
He said he will collect signatures from city residents, hoping to solidify support for a special election. The election would ask voters if they want to return Ringgold’s rule for firing the city manager back to its previous, three-vote threshold.
Millwood said he doesn’t want to fire Wright; he simply thinks a five-person vote is too steep of an expectation. He also thinks it’s improper to make charter changes that the council did not request.
“A majority of the council can set policy,” he said, “and it should be within that same majority’s authority to make sure the policy is enforced.”
Millwood said Mullis told him he wants to bring the same change to all the municipalities in his region of North Georgia. It would keep city administrations more stable, particularly after elections in which multiple city council seats change hands, Mullis said.
Other members of the city council had mixed reactions to the issue. Councilman Jake Haynes and Councilwoman Sara Clark believe Mullis should have communicated with them more about changing their charter. But both also said they support Wright and don’t see this as an immediate problem.
Asked about the change, Councilman Randall Franks said the city has to follow the new charter. He declined to answer further when pressed on whether he likes the change.
“I don’t feel like adjudicating it before I adjudicate it,” he said.
Councilman Larry Black, meanwhile, supports the new rule.
“The super majority vote takes a lot of the politics out of sometimes career-ending decisions made out of spite,” he said. “Dan Wright, in my opinion, does an exemplary job as our city manager and has performed in that function for over 20 years. Mayor Millwood is not a voting member of the governing authority of the city of Ringgold and is not included in some of the discussions because of his propensity to use social media.”
Other cities in the region have different rules for firing a city manager. Chickamauga requires at least a 4-1 vote. Rossville, meanwhile, doesn’t have a city manager. Fort Oglethorpe requires a simple majority, 3-2 vote.
Fort Oglethorpe Mayor Earl Gray does not think his city’s rule should change. If all five council members had to vote in agreement, he said, one elected official who was friends with the city manager could hold the local government hostage