OUR VIEW: Hogansville leaders need to address Lynn’s departure

Published 9:30 am Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

In today’s newspaper — and late Monday night on our website — you probably read where Hogansville City Manager Jonathan Lynn submitted his resignation.

As of this writing, very little — actually almost nothing — has been released to state why Lynn is no longer the city manager in Hogansville. We did get a small statement from Lynn, but so far we’ve only received crickets from city officials about his departure.

What we do know is the council had a four-hour executive session and following it they came back into a public meeting, accepted Lynn’s resignation and left. Four hours of discussion. About a minute in public. And then the meeting was called and everyone dispersed as if someone was chasing them.

It’s not uncommon for city officials to see their time end this way. It’s unfortunately fairly common for long executive sessions to end with very quick public action with little explanation.

But it’s also unfair to the public. For two years, Lynn managed the day to day operations of the city of Hogansville.

He oversaw projects, he listened to citizen concerns, and he managed the city’s staff and budget.

It’s a big job. And for the third time in about five years the city of Hogansville is already looking for a new city manager.

We think it’d be appropriate for city officials to say something — anything would be better than nothing — about Lynn’s resignation. The citizens deserve to know why the city is again looking for a city manager, even if it’s as simple as the two sides agreeing that a split was best.

Not being transparent and not giving a reason leads the social media rumor mill to swirl, which isn’t a good thing for anyone.

We urge transparency amid the change in leadership. We think the citizens of Hogansville deserve answers.