HAMLET — City Manager Jonathan Blanton has submitted his letter of resignation from his position — and this time, he means it.
Blanton, 27, has served as city manager for just over three years, taking office in January 2017. During that time he’s weathered the myriad storms that have brewed in the small city of 6,300, and charted a path forward that Mayor Bill Bayless hopes it will follow in the future.
“I chose to embark on a career in local government to help others and to make a positive impact through a life of public service,” Blanton wrote in his letter. “I feel like I have done that just that over my tenure as city manager here in Hamlet.”
The decision to leave Hamlet “has been incredibly difficult and particularly painful,” Blanton said. He does not yet know when his last day in his current role will be, but he will stay on to guide Hamlet through its budget planning for fiscal year 2020-2021. The city is in the midst of a monumental effort to add new features to the Hamlet City Lake, has over the last year transformed the way the police department interacts with the public, and is working on renovating its severely outdated water treatment facility which have hamstrung its growth.
“Although there is never a good time to transition in these types of positions, this is a particularly active and busy time here in Hamlet,” Blanton said. “The city of Hamlet is in the best condition that it has been in since I arrived over three years ago.”
Blanton, a South Carolina-native, will land in Ranlo, North Carolina, a suburb of Charlotte in Gaston County, where he will be the town’s first town manager. The Ranlo Board of Commissioners voted unanimously on March 12 to select Blanton to fill the role.
Ranlo, a town of about 3,600 people, has seen significant growth over the last decade due to Charlotte’s expansion.
Bayless said Hamlet will miss Blanton. “He has done a fantastic job, he’s made a ton of improvements and we’re hopeful that we can just progress with the things he’s started,” Bayless said. “He needed to get back close to home, that’s going to be a big thing for him.”
Blanton said his proudest accomplishment was hiring Tommy McMasters as Chief of Police of the Hamlet Police Department, along with earning the trust of the City Council to make the decision to hire McMasters.
“Chief McMasters was the first Chief of Police to not be promoted from within the department in decades and has built an organization that embodies strength, professionalism, and structure,” Blanton said in an email.
Blanton previously resigned on April 22, 2019 and accepted a job as director of business affairs and finance for the University of North Carolina in Charlotte where he was to be overseeing an $18 million budget, as well as personnel and business operations for the University’s Graduate School. Three weeks later, he accepted an offer to return to Hamlet after serving in the interim while the city search for a replacement.
When he initially took the job in January 2017, Blanton was the third city manager Hamlet had had in less than three years. Blanton earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of South Carolina Upstate. He then moved to Charlotte where he obtained his juris doctorate and master’s degree in public administration through a dual-degree program between the Charlotte School of Law and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
