Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, GETTR, Truth Social, Twitter
President of the Oxford Commissioners Swears in New Town Manager Holly Wahl
For many of Oxford's residents, Tuesday night's meeting meant a new era of more transparency and professionalism in the town's administration.
The town swore in Holly Wahl as their new town manager. Wahl was hired after a nationwide search by the firm Baker Tilly. The town started the search after former town manager Cheryl Lewis retired in July. Wahl is coming from Chesapeake Beach, Maryland where she spent the last eight years as the town's administrator. Chesapeake Beach is a town of approximately 6500 residents in southern Maryland.
Wahl will have much to do as she recreates a town office that is down to one employee, Clerk Vicki Sharp, due to retirements and resignations of previous staff. She will also take over a town where the residents desire to have a more positive future after two years of questions, controversy, and demands for transparency.
Tuesday's meeting was one of the shortest ones in recent history. After brief comments from the Commissioners, Wahl commented that she was impressed with how everyone, including Commissioners, worked together during the recent snowstorm to get work done. She also announced that the town office would be resuming regular hours immediately.
Wahl said that the idea of everyone working and getting involved in town governance was why she wanted to come to Oxford.
During the meeting Wahl listed various projects the town was working on including creating a new, user friendly, secure and informative website, signing an agreement with Easton Utilities to provide redundancy to run the town's critical infrastructure, applying to FEMA for a hazard mitigation grant based on the town's 2016 Stormwater report, sending and reviewing bids for stormwater pumps, and codifying the Town's Charter and Code documents to make them searchable online. Currently, citizens have to review outdated PDF documents if they need information regarding certain sections of each document. Changes are listed on the town's website but not in the documents themselves.
Public and Commissioner comments included kudos to town clerk Vicki Sharp for her consistent, accurate information during the recent snowstorm. As one resident put it, "her information was more helpful than AccuWeather!"
The meeting ended with a reminder that there will be a "meet and greet" with Wahl on Thursday, January 16 th at 5:30 p.m. at the Oxford Community Center.
Citizens leaving the meeting commented that they were very pleased with the new sense of professionalism and organization Wahl is bringing to the town. As one woman put it, "What a difference!"
