LAUREL- The city’s current chief administrative officer has announced he’s parted ways with Laurel, and plans to rehire a replacement are on hold, according to Mayor Tom Nelson.
Tuesday, former chief administrative officer Matthew Lurker mailed out a statement alerting his colleagues that he is no longer an employee of the city of Laurel.
He directed questions to the Nelson and City Attorney Sam Painter and alerted the city’s department heads to inform their staff of the departure.
However, Lurker did not state why he was no longer with the city, but a statement emailed out by Nelson gave some insight as to the reason.
“It had come to a point where both the CAO and I had different expectations of each other, which led to the hard decision for us to dissolve our professional relationship,” Nelson’s wrote in a statement.
Laurel has a form of government commonly know as strong mayor. The mayor is elected by popular and serves as chief executive of the city. The chief administrative officer runs the day-to-day operations of the city and reports directly to the mayor.
Lurker was on the job nearly a year, according to Nelson, who also said Wednesday to Q2 News that he has no immediate plans to refill the position.
“I am not planning on it, not right away,” said Nelson.
Instead, Nelson said he may be more open to hiring in a different capacity.
Nelson said Lurker’s last day was Tuesday.
