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Taylor offered Camilla city manager position
Ben Taylor
Ben Taylor. - photo by File photo

Bryan County Administrator Ben Taylor has been offered the job of city manager in Camilla, south of Albany.

Taylor could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening. Bryan County Commissioners Chairman Carter Infinger said he planned to meet with Taylor Wednesday morning and that an official comment would be released at that time.

Camilla, the county seat in Mitchell County, has about 5,500 residents and a general fund budget of $10.3 million.

According to the Albany Herald, the Camilla City Council voted 5-0 at a called meeting Monday morning to offer Taylor the job. Bennett Adams, Camilla’s current city manager who plans to retire Jan. 26, told the Albany Herald that Taylor had not signed a contract to accept the position, but that he “expects Taylor to sign shortly.”

Adams is slated to retire Jan. 26, the Herald reported. The city council was hoping to have a new city manager on board Jan. 23.

The Herald also reported that Taylor wrote in his cover letter when applying for the job that: “This opening is what I would consider to be a great opportunity for my family and myself. My past experience as a city manager of a smaller community has exposed me to the critical operational details of local government and has allowed me to directly experience a more detailed vantage point of service delivery.”

Taylor was city manager in Ashburn, northeast of Camilla, from 2004 to 2014. Taylor was hired by Bryan County in August of 2014 at a yearly salary of $95,000. Commissioners voted in October 2016 to give him a 21 percent raise, a bump of $20,000 annually.

Camilla made national headlines last week when its newly elected mayor, Rufus Davis, announced he would boycott city council meetings. Davis, an African-American, said the city operations are discriminatory. The Albany Herald reported that Davis did not participate in the search process for a new city manager and was not present for the city council’s vote Monday offering the job to Taylor.

Taylor holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Georgia and a master’s degree in public administration from Georgia Southern University.

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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