You can't watch the Loudon City council meetings without thinking of the movie, Groundhog Day. That where the same thing happened to the TV reporter day after day. If you've been following these meetings, you can't help but notice that every meeting it's the same thing, 2 for Jeff Harris to be city manager and 2 opposed.

The big drama from Monday's meeting was, would mayor/realtor, Jeff Harris break the tie stalemate by voting for himself. We didn't have to wait long to get that answer. Harris asked city attorney, Kris Frye to explain. According to Frye, Harris voting for himself could be "a violation of ethics" and it might even be considered "official misconduct". Duh, Harris needed a lawyer to tell him that? Harris other option as requested at a previous meeting by councilman Eric Newman, was to withdraw his name from consideration. Harris said that wasn't going to happen. So apparently, Harris has dug in on the job tighter than a tick on a dog's ear.

I think the most telling statement of the night came from councilman/vice mayor Tim Dixon. After a lengthy discussion, councilman Newman addressing the rest of the council said, it looks like the only way we get a city manager would be to vote for Jeff Harris, Dixon responded "yes".

Going back to the whole "a violation of ethics" and "official misconduct" issue, couldn't the exact same argument be made for councilman/vice mayor Dixon? As vice mayor, if Harris is appointed as city manager, Dixon becomes mayor via the city charter. I want to be clear, I'm not picking on councilman Dixon, it would be the same situation regardless who was the vice mayor voting for Harris.

It appears there's no solution to the standoff at this point. This may go the the November election when both Newman, opposed to Harris as manager, and councilman Bear Webb, supports Harris for manager, will be on the ballet if they chose to seek re-election. Webb made the point that in the six months Harris has been action city manager, everything has been going great to which Newman asked if that was the case, does the city really need a full time manager.

Below is a link to the meeting video. The manager discussion begins at the 21:25 mark of the video.

Click Here For Video.