County manager terminated

Commissioners fired county manager Mike Phillips at a special called meeting Thursday, April 11 after nearly an hour in closed session. Commissioner Carol Bass made the motion and it passed unanimously. Commissioner Tamra Jarret made a motion to pay Phillips three weeks severance pay and that passed unanimously as well.”As a result of the executive session, I’m going to make a motion to terminate county manager Mike Phillips effective immediately,” said Bass. Commissioner Tommy Powers made a motion to appoint the firm Morton and Morton as interim county manager and that passed unanimously. The county is just now starting the budgeting process which takes several months and will go into effect July 1, 2013. The agenda was amended to add the closed executive session at the April 10 meeting after county manager Mike Phillips presented commissioners with a draft of the fiscal year 2013-14 budget. County manager Phillips presented the budget to commissioners and asked them to spend the coming weeks looking over it and he will answer any questions the commissioners may have. ”There are a number of notes in reference to revenues and in reference to expenditures,” he said. “Please take it with you and look over it and review it.” Commissioner Carol Bass asked the county manager if he sat down with each department head when planning the budgets. He replied that he sat down with about 2/3 of the department heads and the others requested the same budgets as the previous year. Bass then amended the agenda to add a closed executive session to discuss the county manager and personnel. After the closed sessions, commissioners asked that a special called meeting be scheduled for the following day at 5 p.m.