Mariel Williams
editor@mitchellnews.com
The Spruce Pine Town Council voted to hire Richard Canipe as interim town manager.
Canipe served as town manager for 21 years before retiring in 2020. Under his new contract, he will run Spruce Pine after Darlene Butler’s retirement on Dec. 31 until a permanent manager is hired.
Before becoming manager in 2020, Butler served as town clerk for 23 years.
Butler noted that the employment contract brings Canipe on part-time, for just 30 hours per week. He will be paid $50 an hour and will not receive health insurance or additional retirement benefits.
“As a retired town employee he is not coming out of retirement through the local government retirement system,” Town Attorney Chad Donnahoo said. “There is a specific statute that allows … interim employment, it’s written specifically for interim county managers, interim town managers, through the … retirement system that allows for this type of employment.”
Council member Beth Holmes said that it’s important, in the wake of Hurricane Helene, to have a town manager who is familiar with Spruce Pine and the disaster recovery situation.
“Richard has been working with us in the role of coordinator and has been in every meeting we had for FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency],” Mayor Phillip Hise added.
Hise also said the council is actively working to fill Butler’s job with a permanent hire.
“We’ve narrowed our people down and have scheduled interviews for Jan. 7,” Hise said.
Downtown grants
The council also agreed to move $20,000 from two old grant funds in the Downtown Spruce Pine budget to a new grant fund covering flood and storm repairs.
Downtown Spruce Pine has already issued some repair grants for Hurricane Helene victim businesses, and Downtown Director Spencer Bost said the organization plans to issue more.
“For the previous grants … for any business that applied in the downtown business district … they were already guaranteed for approval,” Bost said. “So, we just took our pot and divided it by how many applicants we got. So, the plan is we’ll do another round of those.”
Bost said that his organization has been conducting fundraising to fund this effort above the $20,000 from its current budget.
Previous grants favored businesses on Locust Avenue (Lower Street) over Oak Avenue (Upper Street), because Lower Street received more damage. However, all Lower Street businesses got the same amount as all other Lower Street businesses, and all Upper Street businesses got the same amount as all other Upper Street businesses.
“Eighty percent went to Lower Street, 20 percent to Upper Street,” Bost said. “So, everyone on Upper Street got the same amount, and everyone on Lower Street got the same amount.”