In a move that sent shock waves through city government, Athens City Administrator Pam Burton told council members today that she is retiring effective Dec. 31.
The announcement came during a City Council special session. Burton has been with the city for 36 years and has been the City Administrator for 19 years.
In a related move, council members accepted the resignation of City Secretary Pam Watson for personal reasons. She will be leaving the city on Sept. 30.
Burton said she made the decision to step down Tuesday night.
“I really decided to go ahead and resign because it is the best thing to do for Athens,” she said.
Mayor Jerry Don Vaught said he was “still stunned” about Burton’s retirement when reached Wednesday afternoon.
“I’m pretty emotional about it all,” he said.
Vaught said the city will start looking for a city secretary first so the replacement will have time to train with Watson before she leaves.
He said luckily both Watson and Burton have given the city adequate notice.
“They aren’t going to abandon the city until replacements are in place,” he said.
WHY STEP DOWN
Like seemingly everything else in Athens these days, Burton’s retirement is connected to the current water controversy.
“Because of the personal attacks on me, I think it has hurt our incumbents and they should be running for office on their record and their integrity and what they’ve done for this community,” she said.
In December 2013, the Athens Municipal Water Authority (AMWA) filed a lawsuit against the city which questions who should pay for the operation and maintenance of Lake Athens, the dam, and the water treatment and transportation facilities.
The City answered back by voting to dissolve AMWA. A petition circulated by AMWA, however, caused the issue to be placed on the ballot for voters during Saturday’s election.
That — coupled with the fact that seven of the 10 people running on the ballots are somehow connected with the water controversy — has turned this election into a referendum on AMWA.
Or that’s what it should be, Burton said.
“I believe the water issue is very critical and I think it is obvious that AMWA and the city are not in agreement,” she said. “I think they didn’t have a lot of merits in their discussion with the city, and I think they chose a person or two or three staff members and started getting everybody off of what is the real subject. And I honestly believe that.”
Burton has been taking heavy criticism in both newspaper ads and on Facebook, with much of the talk centering around her contract.
“I’ve been in this position it would be 20 years next May, and in all those 20 years I have never been personally attacked to the degree that I have been attacked, and I think it was a political ploy to get everybody off of what is the real issue,” she said.
LONG CAREER
After 36 years, Burton said she is going to miss the people and the employees.
“They are like family,” she said. “I will miss the people, not the politics.”
Some of the high points she remembers include:
- Acquiring the building on East Tyler Street for City Hall.
- The downtown sidewalk rehabilitation.
- Acquiring the Old Armory building and turning it into training center and EOC.
“My heart has always been here for this community,” she said. “I have taken great pleasure in working for this community and the citizens and I am going to hold my head up high and I am going to do my very best for the next few months and we are all going to move forward in a positive way.”
“I take my job very serious. I always try to do what’s best. People don’t always agree with me all the time, but I take the information I have at hand, I evaluate it, and I try and make the best decision and then I live with that decision afterward. Sometimes it works out well and maybe sometimes it doesn’t, but if I did it I believed in it.”
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