The East Ridge City Council will conduct interviews to hire a new City Manager in coming days.
On Thursday evening at 6:30 p.m. during the regular city council meeting, the board will interview Lyndon Bonner.
On Friday, during a special called meeting, the board will interview Caryn Miller, David Milliron and Christopher Dorsey. The interviews begin at 5 p.m. at City Hall and are open to the public.
Last September then-City Manager J. Scott Miller announced that he would retire in November. City officials said they received about 45 resumes from people interested in the job.
The University of Tennessee’s Municipal Technical Advisory Service (MTAS) assisted the city in filling the position by evaluating the candidates’ qualifications and culling the number of resumes to eight. MTAS officials used a scoring system to further evaluate those eight candidates.
City officials said that four of the eight either dropped their names from consideration or had taken another job since submitting their resumes.
According to his resume, Lyndon Bonner has a Masters Degree in Business Administration and over 25 years of private and public administrative experience. His local government experience includes responsibilities for managing budget and finance, public safety, utilities, public works, capital improvement projects, parks and recreation, building services, facilities management, human resources, information technology and code enforcement.
Most recently, Bonner was the County Administrator of Jackson County, Florida from March 5, 2018 to March 26, 2018. Prior to that he was the Interim City Manager of Brooksville, Florida from May to November of 2017.
In his cover letter to East Ridge officials, Bonner said that he was terminated as Jackson County Administrator during a special called meeting by a commission vote of 3-2.
According to the Jackson County Floridian, an administrative assistant to Bonner said she was uncomfortable with several statements he had made in various conversations.
“Termination was for allegedly creating a hostile work environment,” Bonner states in a cover letter submitted with his resume. “I denied the accusation that I was responsible for the hostile work environment that exists in Jackson County.
“Further the Consulting Labor Attorney, hired by Jackson County to investigate the complaints concluded that, the evidence did not support the allegations and that none of the complaints rose to any level of a hostile work environment.”
Caryn Miller, who holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration, is an accredited City Manager through the International City Managers Association. In a letter to East Ridge city officials, Miller writes that she has extensive experience in downtown redevelopment and has secured millions of dollars in grants to accomplish redevelopment.
She lists her areas of expertise as grant writing, strategic planning, human resources, finance and budget, project and operations management and economic development/redevelopment.
“I am an open door manager and a coalition builder that believes communication is the key to any successful manager,” she states in the letter.
According to her resume, Miller was the City Manager of Millersville, Tenn. from December 2014 to March of 2018. Prior to that, she was the Town Administrator for Pine Bluffs, Wyoming from 2011 to November of 2014.
Miller resigned from her position in Millersville in March 2018. The Smokey Barn News reported that Mayor Tim Lassiter said she was not forced to resign. It was reported that Miller added her daughter’s name to her sewer account. Lassiter told the news source that Miller did nothing illegal.
David Milliron holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration. He wrote in a resume cover letter to East Ridge officials that he has more than 30 years of management experience in the private and public sectors. His private sector experience, he writes, “includes a multi-functional background in finance and local funding methods, public utilities, economic development, urban planning and strategic planning.”
Milliron has been the Hogansville, Ga. City Manager since September of 2017. Hogansville has a population of 3,200 people and a budget of $12 million. Milliron also serves as the Public Works and Utilities Director overseeing electric, natural gas, water, waste water and sanitation services.
In his resume Milliron lists among his key accomplishments during his tenure the “development and implementation of a downtown master plan and economic development corridor study; … purchase of a vacant bank building for future use as City Hall; implementation of an anti-littering campaign and adopt-a-street program; development of a master plan for the revitalization of the blighted historic Royal Theater; and development and implementation of a blight ordinance.”
Prior to his position in Hogansville, Milliron was City Manager in Villa Rica, Ga. from May 2015 to March 2017. According to the Douglas County Sentinel, in mid-February 2017 Milliron was placed on administrative leave – the reason not known – prior to his contract being terminated a short time later. Villa Rica Mayor Jeff Reese told the Sentinel, the council “felt like this was the right move to make, and the overwhelming majority felt like there needed to be a new direction.”
Christopher Dorsey holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration and is a Certified Municipal Finance Officer.
Dorsey is currently the City Administrator of Sparta, Tenn., a position he has held since May of 2015. Sparta has a budget of $5 million and employs 123 people.
In his application for the East Ridge position, Dorsey lists his key accomplishments during his tenure at Sparta as coordinating a $1 million Multi-Modal Transportation Project that modernized U.S. Hwy. 70 with curbs, gutters and sidewalks. He said that he worked with affected businesses to address concerns on project design.
From February 2014 to March 2015 Dorsey was the Interim City Manager of Millington, Tenn. Among his key accomplishments there was the initiation of plans with the Tennessee Water and Wastewater Commission to address the city’s water loss issues.
Dorsey was the City Manager of Signal Mountain from June 2013 to January 2014. He also had a long tenure (2005 to 2011) as City Manager of Red Bank.
After being on the job six months, Dorsey was dismissed from his Signal Mountain job by a 3-2 vote of the council. According to news accounts, he was terminated for failing to meet expectations.
During Dorsey’s tenure in Red Bank, on his resume he noted a key accomplishment as using $1 million in federal grant money to fund new sidewalks, upgrade signals and install decorative lighting on some city streets.
