Marble Hill's city administrator resigns; post may not be refilled

MARBLE HILL, Mo. — Don James resigned Monday morning as Marble Hill city administrator.

Mayor Jerome Gaines announced the resignation Monday night at a meeting called last week to restructure the city administrator’s position.

James had turned in a resignation a week ago, but before the regular board of aldermen meeting May 8, he had asked to rescind the resignation and instead work part-time.

After the board approved the request to rescind, its members decided to meet Monday to restructure the administrator’s job description and salary.

What is left for the board of aldermen is to determine whether it wants to have a city administrator at all.

Instead of calling a special session to restructure the job description for city administrator and advertise a job opening, some aldermen suggested they prefer to talk to other communities that don’t have an administrator to see how it works for them before making a decision.

“A lot of towns don’t have a city administrator,” Alderman Kevin Robinson said. “All that is required is a city clerk.”

Piedmont, Chaffee, Advance and Oran were mentioned as communities in the area that do not have a city administrator.

Once the aldermen have looked into other communities, they will meet to decide which direction they think the city of Marble Hill should take.