City Manager Announces He Will Follow Mayor into Retirement
City Manager Jim Fatland made a surprise announcement Monday that he will leave his position after 10 years with the city and more than six years as manager.
BREVARD — Brevard City Council members had fond remarks ready for Jimmy Harris, who presided over his last full meeting Monday after serving 22 years as mayor.
They weren’t quite as ready for City Manager Jim Fatland’s announcement — at the very end of the meeting — that he planned to leave just weeks after Harris.
He said the two events are related.
“Six-and-a-half years ago, Mayor Harris, you called me up late at night and asked me to serve as interim city manager, and I accepted if we could go to work and start moving the city forward,” Fatland said.
“I promised the mayor I would stay on as long as he stayed on as mayor, and he’s stepping down . . . and what I'm about to say is, I’m about to retire.”
Harris announced in June that he would not seek re-election, sparking a vigorous four-way race for his seat. Fatland said he will leave at the end of December.
It’s just time, said Fatland, who previously served as the city’s finance director before assuming the additional job of city manager in 2015.
His wife has been retired for five years, he said, and he will turn 71 in two weeks. He recently missed seeing his granddaughter’s high school band “finish first in the country” in a competition, he said. “I missed too many of those opportunities.”
Fatland has been highly praised for his competence and knowledge by several sitting Council members, including Mayor Pro Tem Mac Morrow, who was recently reelected, and Copelof, who won Harris’ seat.
But he was also associated with old leadership that was ripe replacement by other candidates, including Aaron Baker, who won the remaining seat on Council.
But Fatland said in a brief interview after his announcement, that there were no other factors in his decision besides his readiness for retirement.
Morrow, Baker and Copelof will be sworn in at Council’s Dec. 6 organizational meeting.
Copelof announced several initiatives on Monday, including her intention to meet individually with council members to establish their committee assignments and for the Council to meet more frequently than once a month.
Copelof, like other Council members, didn’t have an opportunity to comment on Fatland’s retirement. But she did heap praise on Harris.
She called his 22 years of service “an absolutely amazing commitment.”
“It’s really an honor to be the mayor-elect and it’s really an honor to follow Mayor Harris,” she said. “Somebody said you have really big footsteps to follow and I don’t think anybody can follow those footsteps.”
Morrow remembered Harris speaking to a group in Raleigh.
“You said something like, ‘If you brush your teeth and say your prayers and take your vitamins, you too can live in Brevard.’ And he brought the house down . . . Somehow Maureen, you’re going to figure all that out. That’s going to be a hard act to follow.”
"more than six years as manger" - Dan, you typoed again!