Crossville council candidates petitioning city council to delay hiring a new city manager.

UPDATE: Terri Manning has signed the petition as of the evening of 9-6-16.  Seven out of 8 candidates have signed to ask the current council to delay the hiring of a new city manager.

In a unique action, most of the 8 Crossville city council candidates have agreed to jointly sign a petition directed at the current city council requesting that they delay the hiring of a new city manager.

Council candidate Jerry T. Brownstead came up with the plan and worked to contact the rest of the council candidates to see if they agreed with signing the petition. Brownstead said he plans to present the petition to the council during the time of public comment at the regular September meeting on Thursday.

The city is currently accepting city manager applications until September 30 and with just over a month between that deadline and the November 8 election the current city council could easily hire a new city manager before the election.  Councilman Pete Souza has put an item on this weeks agenda hoping for action to delay the hiring until after the two new council members replacing Souza and councilman Jesse Kerley take their seats on the council. 

Seven of the candidates have signed the petition and one candidate, former mayor J. H. Graham declined to sign the petition.  Brownstead said he had left a message for candidate Terri Manning who has now signed the petition as well.

Brownstead said he felt the joint effort shows that the candidates that are running are willing to work together.

The petition says,

To the Crossville city council:

We, the undersigned candidates do uniformly petition the Crossville city council council to refrain from appointing the city manager until such time as the newly elected council members take office.  
It is our belief that as two of us must work in harmony with the council and city manager, we should all emerge from this election in concert with our goal of unity.

The signatures of the six candidates are below. Those signing include Mr. Brownstead who instituted the petition, Charles Cooper, Jr., Rob Harrison, Jeannette Parsons, Scot Shanks, and David Warner.