{"id":8801,"date":"2015-01-06T14:25:14","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T19:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=8801"},"modified":"2015-01-06T14:27:17","modified_gmt":"2015-01-06T19:27:17","slug":"city-council-elects-linda-lavender-norris-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=8801","title":{"rendered":"City Council elects Linda Lavender-Norris president"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marie Lawson elected vice president while Michael O’Rourke debuts as acting city manager<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

By Kyle Carrozza<\/strong>,\u00a0Staff Writer, The Times<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"MG_8831-798x800\"<\/a>

Acting City Manager Michael O’Rourke talks with City Council member Ingrid Jones before Monday’s organizational meeting.<\/p><\/div>\n

COATESVILLE \u2013 City Council voted Linda Lavender-Norris as 2015 council president and Marie Lawson as council vice president at Monday\u2019s organizational meeting.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am a woman of faith. I believe. Therefore, I believe that we can do better and will do better,\u201d Lavender-Norris said after taking her position.<\/span><\/p>\n

The new officers take over for former president Joe Hamrick and former vice president David Collins, the latter of whom resigned last month.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a good positive movement because I don\u2019t think we should have the same person every year,\u201d said Hamrick.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lavender-Norris, who became a councilor last year, said that she learned her duties as a council member last year and will continue to learn this year. She also acknowledged the critical situations currently facing council.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll work diligently to turn our city around for the better,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hamrick will continue in his capacity as Coatesville\u2019s Western Chester County Council of Governments representative, and council member Ed Simpson will serve as alternate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Council also voted to accept Collins\u2019s resignation.<\/span><\/p>\n

In another administration change, Michael O\u2019Rourke attended his first meeting as acting city manager. Council previously stated that O\u2019Rourke will stay on until a new manager is found, a process that could take weeks or months.<\/span><\/p>\n

O\u2019Rourke said that his role is primarily to help the city transition from former City Manager Kirby Hudson to the next permanent manager but recognized that his input will be important for balancing the 2015 budget.<\/span><\/p>\n

O\u2019Rourke said that the undertaking will be difficult as municipality expenses grow, but revenue often does not. He said that he has encountered the problem in his previous work and in particular, pointed to population density as a difficulty for many urban areas. Because so much revenue depends on real estate taxes, a high population density means that the city must serve more people with a smaller tax base to draw from.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marie Lawson elected vice president while Michael O’Rourke debuts as acting city manager By Kyle Carrozza,\u00a0Staff Writer, The Times COATESVILLE \u2013 City Council voted Linda Lavender-Norris as 2015 council president and Marie Lawson as council vice president at Monday\u2019s organizational meeting. \u201cI am a woman of faith. I believe. Therefore, I believe that we can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[181,5207,5208],"class_list":["post-8801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-city-council","tag-linda-lavender-norris","tag-marie-lawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8803,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8801\/revisions\/8803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}