Roanoke City Manager Bob Cowell has resigned, effective June 7, following several recent high-profile personnel issues at city hall, and in the midst of an election season that promises changes to multiple city council seats.
Mayor Sherman Lea, who plans to retire at the end of his term, will serve as acting city manager as the city seeks an interim and then a permanent top executive.
The city council has hired a national search firm to identify an acting city manager who will be named soon, according to a news release from the city. The same firm will work with the council to develop a process for hiring a new city manager.
Lea and council member Trish White-Boyd, who is chair of the personnel committee and is also retiring at the end of this term, declined to comment on Cowell’s departure, saying it is a personnel matter.
Cowell handed copies of a letter to reporters after Monday evening’s city council meeting but declined to comment.
In his letter, Cowell said his tenure has been his “distinct privilege.”
“I am immensely proud of what this organization has accomplished under my leadership and grateful for the partnerships and friendships that have been formed along the way,” he wrote.
The council voted unanimously to accept Cowell’s resignation and for Lea to take over in the interim.
Cowell was 49 when he came to Roanoke in September 2017 from Amarillo, Texas. He had been the deputy city manager and interim city manager there, according to the Amarillo Globe-News. At that time, he had worked for 25 years in city and county governments in Texas, Michigan, Missouri and Indiana, according to his biography on the Roanoke government website. He was hired at an annual salary of $200,000.
During his Roanoke tenure, he wrote in his resignation letter, “We have built a strategic, intentional, creative and welcoming organization based upon empowerment, collaboration, efficiency and diversity and equity. Together, we have ensured Roanoke is and will remain Star City Strong.”
Controversies had emerged in recent months, however, which included Cowell demoting an assistant city manager. The Roanoke Rambler reported last month that a city budget analyst told the council that then-assistant city manager and finance director Brent Robertson verbally attacked and physically threatened her after a March 6 meeting.
The former senior budget analyst resigned from city employment after alleging that she had never in her career “been so brutally attacked,” according to multiple published reports.
Cowell told reporters in April that he reassigned Robertson at a lower salary and accepted his retirement effective Nov. 1 — timing that would allow Robertson to be vested in the city’s pension.
That came several months after the January resignation of the city’s parks and recreation director, Michael Clark, who wrote in a letter to Cowell and Assistant City Manager Angie O’Brien that his department’s culture was one that was “free of passive aggression and intentional slight,” which he called a “stark contrast to the rest of the organization,” the Rambler reported.
Lea said he didn’t envision being in the city manager’s office daily from June 8, saying it would be a team effort.
“I’m going to do like Bill Belichick, with the Patriots,” Lea said after the meeting. “Everybody do their job. And we as a council … will do what we need to do to keep the city going.”
Also leaving the council is Luke Priddy, who is moving to Alexandria to work as chief of staff for Democratic state Sen. Adam Ebbin, according to multiple reports. Council member Stephanie Moon Reynolds is running for mayor, and her council seat will be in play. The council will appoint a replacement for Priddy to serve until November, when his seat, as well as those currently held by Moon Reynolds, Lea and White-Boyd, will all be on the ballot.
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