BECKLEY, WV (WOAY)- On January 9th, 2024, Beckley’s City Council voted to become a city manager style of government.
Just over a year after that, the first City Manager, Michael Resare, officially resigned shy of two months into the job. Resare became the City Manager on December 9th, 2024.
The executive session meeting before the official announcement took less than 30 minutes for the council. The City Council announced Resare’s resignation and said it was a mutual decision for both parties.
“I mean, just it’s unfortunate. It’s not something we saw a couple of months ago,” said Ryan Neal, Beckley Mayor. “We’ve been waiting for months to finally get a City Manager here in Beckley. So it was the last thing that we wanted to see, but it was just a mutually agreed decision to part ways.”
With Beckley not having a city manager now, the next step for the city would be to find an interim City Manager. However, that won’t be the final outcome.
“From there they, they being City Council, will determine the procedure they want to follow in recruiting the best possible city manager for a long term,” explained William File, Beckley Attorney. “It’s a process that we may go back through. The recruit recruitment firm Baker Tilly helped us initially.”
Now, the question many may have is, due to this, will Beckley go back to a strong mayor style of government?
“No, there’s there is no way the city can go back to a strong mayor form a government without amending its charter, which would most likely require an election by the people,” said File. “So we’re very new into the city manager form of government. I think the City Council is certainly determined to see if this isn’t the best course in the long term. We’ll just proceed to find a very good candidate to be the permanent City Manager.”