The Cary Town Council announced town manager Sean Stegall’s resignation and swore in Russ Overton as interim town manager at an emergency meeting on Monday evening.
During the meeting, mayor Harold Weinbrecht said the town asked for Stegall’s resignation after public records requests filed earlier this year revealed that he had undertaken or directed others to engage in “over-the-top spending and inadequate financial reporting … lack of transparency with the full council, staff, and citizens, [and] an unhealthy work environment.”
Weinbrecht told reporters after the meeting that Stegall’s discretionary spending fund had ballooned to $1 million dollars in his decade as town manager. He did not know what the original amount was. Weinbrecht also said Stegall signed off on a land purchase near Cary Elementary School without the town council’s approval.
Weinbrecht said he does not believe Stegall broke any laws, but that he did violate the town’s fund balance policy multiple years in a row.
Stegall’s termination agreement includes a $194,832 severance package, according to a copy of the document viewed by the INDY. Per Stegall’s employment contract, which INDY also viewed, his severance must equal six months’ aggregate salary.
Stegall was appointed in 2016 and was placed on paid administrative leave in late November following his annual performance review. He has not responded to INDY’s requests for comment. Weinbrecht said the council was not aware of any issues with Stegall’s performance, spending, or conduct until this year.
“It was the fall of this year when the public records request came out,” Weinbrecht told reporters after the meeting. “The first one I got [was] about tuition spending. … I questioned the town manager about it, and he was trying to defend it. … As more and more public records came out, I found out more and more.”
After Stegall’s leave began, the News & Observer reported that the Town of Cary paid about $37,000 toward council member Lori Bush’s public policy master’s degree at Northwestern University without the full town council’s knowledge. Bush told the N&O she repaid the entire amount once she learned some of her council colleagues weren’t aware of it. She said she didn’t believe Stegall’s leave was related to her tuition payment.
The N&O also reported that the town of Cary paid $3,400 for Stegall to stay in a hotel for four nights during a work trip to Texas.
Weinbrecht said the town has hired Womble Bond Dickinson, a law firm that specializes in employment investigations, to “join us into looking deeply into Sean’s activities and the things he’s directed staff to do to ensure that we are fully aware of any problems, and that we put process changes in place so that something like this will never happen again in Cary.”
Weinbrecht said it has been painful and emotional for the town to “unwind our relationship with Sean, because for many of us, we saw Sean as our friend, not simply as an employee.”
Bush said many town staff have “been in the dark and struggling quietly, but still doing their job every day to keep Cary humming.”
Council member Michelle Craig apologized for the town’s weeks of silence on the reason for Stegall’s leave, but said the council was legally obligated not to speak. Stegall’s termination agreement was drafted November 25 and he signed it on December 13.
The town manager’s role
Like most bigger cities and towns in North Carolina, Cary’s government is organized in a council-manager system where the town council sets policy and the town manager implements it and runs the government’s day-to-day operations.
The Cary town council hires and fires just three officials: the town manager, town clerk, and town attorney. The town manager is responsible for the rest of Cary’s 1,328-person staff and $510.9 million annual budget. According to the Town of Cary staff directory, there are 76 employees in the manager’s office including four assistant town managers.
As Weinbrecht explained in a November 23 edition of his blog, the council conducts annual performance reviews of the three employees it directly oversees. The news of Stegall’s administrative leave came after the council spent about seven hours conducting performance reviews in closed sessions on November 18 and 20. Last week the council held two more closed sessions—totaling five hours—to discuss personnel matters and consult with its attorneys.
Weinbrecht told reporters after the emergency meeting that the town would implement new oversight and guardrails for the manager, beginning with shrinking their discretionary fund and eliminating one-on-one meetings between the manager and individual council members.
“We’re working together to make sure that everybody has the same information at all times,” Weinbrecht said. “We have a town manager now that we trust, and we’ve known him for many, many years, and he’s already set these processes in place.”
Overton, the new interim town manager, was previously Stegall’s deputy town manager. According to a 2020 profile in The Cary Citizen, Overton started working for the town in 1998 as an engineer, then led the Inspections and Permits Department, then became an assistant town manager.
Stegall’s impact in Cary
Stegall published a book this summer called The Top Of The Arc: Cocreating a More Innovative, Adaptive, and Effective Local Government. In it, he reflects on his accomplishments in a decade as town manager: establishing the town’s 311 system, building Downtown Cary Park, planning the Fenton mixed-use development, and reorganizing the town government to make it all possible.
The book is full of testimonials about Stegall’s leadership, sourced on his behalf by an unnamed “journalist and best-selling ghostwriter.” The testimonials suggest Stegall was extremely devoted to his job.
“I didn’t know if I wanted to be a manager before working with Sean. And now I know: I don’t want to be a manager,” Allison Hutchins, the town of Cary’s director of learning and organizational development, recounted to the ghostwriter at the top of Chapter 9. “I could never commit the personal sacrifice Sean commits to his job, especially with the Council members. He listens to them when they call at night or whenever. … He’s always going to try and find a win for them.”
In the book, Stegall spells out his vision for keeping Cary from slipping down the metaphorical “arc” from its current, optimal position; it has an AAA bond rating from national crediting agencies, is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, and routinely tops national lists ranking the best places to live. A section from his copyrighted OneCary Toolkit called “Leading for Change” contains such nuggets as “We reserve the right to get smarter as we go,” “Communicate good news regularly,” and “We stand for transparency.”
Stegall also describes his approach to working with the council to get his initiatives approved.
“I was being empathetic. But I was also being strategic,” he wrote. “I was keeping a potential opponent to [the project he was working on] close. In this light, good people skills are good political skills.”
The town of Cary owns the copyright for The Top of the Arc and sells copies on its online merch store. The INDY has requested a copy of the book contract. Per the terms of Stegall’s resignation, the town retains all rights to the book.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Chloe Courtney Bohl is a Report for America corps member. Follow her on Bluesky or reach her at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].