During my tenure on the town council, many people actually thought that the mayor's job was full time, also many people believed that he ran the day-to-day operations of town hall. Both are incorrect. I will address this from a Holly Springs perspective.
The mayor in NC towns is considered the ceremonial head of state and the spokesman for the council or town. The mayor conducts the town meetings, and in the case of Holly Springs, normally does not vote on council matters. He is only called upon to vote in the event of a tie.
As a council member, the mayor is more of a facilitator and consensus builder. The mayor can help steer or direct policy discussions and decisions, but does not and cannot dictate or implement policy on his own.
As far as the day-to-day town operations, the mayor does not have any power nor responsibility to handle these tasks. The town manager is responsible for that (which will be covered in a future post). The position and its pay is part time as the mayor's basic responsibility is only to run town meetings, vote to break ties and sign documents on behalf of the town. Anything else the mayor does is "gravy".
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