The commissioners of the Town of Highlands cannot decide if the town manager should be able to unilaterally hire and fire the police chief and planning director/zoning administrator. He already has that authority for all other department heads.
The decision could have been made except for “illegalities” in the proposed ordinance. That caused the process to move back to square-one. When the commissioners held a meeting to discuss a new ordinance proposing the same, they failed to make the precedented media announcement. That was considered OK, because the announcement was posted in the town hall. (Don’t laugh. Highlands could actually be a bizarre community where conscious citizens consider it their duty to frequent the town hall to seek out things to read.)
After debating whether or not the item should be retained on the agenda for the formal meeting, the commissioners ended up directing staff to draft two ordinances for consideration: one with the commissioners retaining hiring/firing authority over the police chief, the other with them relinquishing that authority.
