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New era for Havelock: City manager steps into role today. Here's what to know

Sun Journal - 1/18/2022

Jan. 18—A top leader from Raleigh is taking over the top spot in Havelock starting today.

Chris McGee begins his role as Havelock's new city manager today. This is McGee's first city manager role. He had been overseeing all transportation maintenance including storm sewer, street and sidewalk maintenance, highway mowing, and maintenance of Raleigh'sMunicipal Services District.

Coming from a military background, McGee said he feels at home in Havelock, which sits outside MCAS Cherry Point and is home to one of the county's largest employers — Fleet Readiness Center East.

"Growing up, I wanted to be a Marine and my uncle was in the Army," McGee said. "When I was 16, 17-years-old, I went about a dozen times or more with the Marine recruiter to Havelock. We spent a lot of time on base but a lot of time in and around Havelock for those two years. I always thought it was a neat town."

Though he did not make the official jump into military service, McGee has continued to frequent the area. His path in life has taken him through municipal certification classes where he connected with current Havelock Fire Chief Tom Dorn.

Working for the city of Raleigh for 13 years, McGee explained he has accomplished everything he has wanted to in the state capital. His next goal in life was to become an assistant city manager or city manager. And now he's doing just that.

McGee joins Havelock brass just before the start of budget discussions for the fiscal year 2022-23.

Employee retention, training, infrastructure needs, and in some cases an opioid crisis are issues currently on the radar for surrounding municipalities. McGee said Havelock will most likely be faced with most of those issues as well.

"Unfortunately, Havelock is facing a lot of the same issues all of our municipal governments are facing," McGee said. "Staffing is a big issue and we can all speculate as to why that is an issue. From my two divisions in Raleigh, I've been carrying a 20-25% vacancy rate."

There are currently five open positions with the city, most of which are public safety related. Havelock gave a 3.3% cost-of-living increase in July and an additional 5% increase to its employees at the end of 2021.

"We know it's not going to all be through salary because that's just not possible, but the benefits we offer, are we able to tweak them, are there different benefits employees may have that we can currently offer," questioned McGee. "Sometimes training and education are overlooked as a benefit and it ultimately makes an employee strong and more marketable."

Infrastructure is another issue Havelock will face, according to McGee, who added like other local governments, infrastructure is not in good shape and there is never enough money to maintain it.

"We have to find a balance with options in affordable housing and providing services that we provide to our citizens every day while maintaining an infrastructure that allows you to have clean water and safe roads to travel on," McGee added.

With this job being the first city manager position McGee has worked in, he knows there will be a learning curve that comes with that.

Over the first three to six months, McGee expects to personally meet with the mayor, commissioners, staff members, and members of the community. All to ensure an understanding of where the people want to see Havelock take off.

"I want to get a feel for the history, a feel for where they (officials) want to take Havelock, and once we have a really clear picture, I'm hopeful we can do some community outreach and find out what the community wants," McGee said. "Once we figure out what everyone wants, we will be in a better position to come up with a plan to make sure that vision happens.

Reporter Trevor Dunnell can be reached by email at tdunnell@newbernsj.com. Please consider supporting local journalism by signing up for a digital subscription.

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