Funniest Story Of The Day, Cheatham to be “more visible”

I just had to laugh.  The StarNews striving for a puff piece on city governance gave me a good laugh with the following headline:

Wilmington city manager could take more visible role

That was just hilarious!  Heck, being seen in public would be more visible than what we see now.  Cheatham’s role in city government has almost been Rasputin like.  In the most visible and poorly envisioned project last year, the baseball stadium, Cheatham ducked all leadership instead letting assistant city manager Tony Caudle do the legwork and take the hits. He even had to make a multi-hundred thousand dollar change in the budget that he had forgotten to put in at the last minute on that very project.

What the StarNews essentially says is that Cheatham has survived, not that he has shown leadership.    A good excerpt from the StarNews praise piece:

In council meetings, Cheatham relies upon his staff, routinely deferring to his department heads or their designees to give presentations before the council.

Understand, this isn’t personal, but there is no real leadership coming from the city of Wilmington and certainly not from the city manager’s office.  Former councilman Jason Thompson said it best,  “I would not say he’s a risk-taker at all. I would say he’s more risk-averse.”

And Wilmington’s clearly not a city, under this leadership, that has shown anything truly remarkable  At $173,679 a year, we should expect something more than just delegating to staff and showing up.  He has a standing offer to come on my radio show for two years and has never done so.  More visible?  Ha!  And doesn’t want to take tough questions!

This could become an election year issue!  And what prompted such an odd story from the StarNews?