WILMINGTON — It’s been a year of remodeling for the City of Wilmington under the leadership of new city manager, Becky Hawke.
After taking on her new role on June 30, 2025, Hawke has facilitated a county partnership for an additional 25-acre park, spearheaded additional funding for Wave Transit to ensure it reaches on-time performance, overseen the completion of the Greater Downtown Plan, as well as the traffic-calming program Vision Zero.
Though one of the largest pieces of her agenda is perhaps the implementation of a living wage for city employees in the 2026-2027 budget, to go before council for a second reading on June 16. The $350.3 million budget has to pass by June 30.
Hawke has implemented the living wage philosophy in the past and seen success in reducing resignations. The idea is that a higher wage will increase employee satisfaction and recruit high-quality employees, thus reducing turnover costs and production loss at the city.
Port City Daily asked if there was one thing she hoped people understood about the living wage or budget process.
“I do think that pay philosophy can sometimes be very confusing for people, and this kind of concept of, ‘Well, why would you give a raise to higher paid employee?’ or ‘Why would we give raises if the positions are currently filled?’” Hawke said. “You know, it’s critically important to retain the staff that we have.”
She added “internal equity” is also important, noting raising the pay of lower-income employees without also shifting the pay scales above them could result in some employees making more than their supervisor.
Another notable change she’s ushered in is the reorganization of city departments — what the city is calling realignment — to eliminate redundancies and promote efficient delivery of services within and outside the agency. This resulted in the elimination of 29 vacant positions, though Hawke affirms no one was let go as a result and those directly affected retained their same pay.
However, not everyone in the community has been thrilled about the changes; some have taken issue with the tax increase needed to support the living wage, which takes up the majority of the currently proposed 4.9-cent tax increase.
“My business in Wilmington cannot afford to pay my employees a living wage, all my employees — that’s just the reality of small businesses,” Tom Harris, co-owner of Front Street Brewery, said at the city’s May 4 meeting. “It just doesn’t seem right for us to have our taxes go up to subsidize city workers.”
Others have connected the reorganization and Hawke’s leadership to the exit of several high-level city employees, including a deputy city manager and the city’s HR director. The city and Hawke has also been criticized for replacing the roles, plus staffing new positions, with non-Wilmington hires.
Port City Daily sat down with Hawke on June 3 to discuss her management as she comes upon her hiring anniversary, the reasoning behind the living wage and reorganization, plus the criticism surrounding both.
Hawke told Port City Daily she was “well aware” that many city or town managers would have avoided tackling such an ambitious tax hike or reorganization in their first year on the job.
However, in both cases, it’s why she was hired.
Hawke said she was given an assignment during the hiring process to prepare a presentation on what she believed were the three most important issues facing the City of Wilmington. After observing a pattern of low salary numbers in the city’s vacancies, she chose to focus on employee pay; by homing in on police and fire (the former currently having around 40 vacancies) she demonstrated some of the “most important positions in the city” qualify for affordable housing.
“That was something that I was very transparent with council about from the get-go, — and [being upfront] is something that is core to my management philosophy — but kind of letting them know, like, ‘Hey, if this isn’t addressed, I really see this as a continuing problem that is only going to get worse,’” Hawke said.
Council also asked Hawke if she would be willing to take on a department reorganization. Hawke said she was game, noting getting to the root of organizational problems and cutting red tape was a core management tenet.
She started by talking with staff about their “pain points” and opportunities for improvement; some processes had been in place for a while but were no longer serving the organization. She noticed the city was doing the same tasks but the efforts were siloed in departments, and city staff were completing tasks that could more efficiently be outsourced to the private sector.
For example, the city had several different teams under different departments doing their own mowing; now all landscaping is done by one team in one department (the city has also discussed bringing in goats to help with this effort).
Hawke named land surveying as an example of outsourcing some processes, as the engineering department used to staff full-time surveyors; those roles are now full-time construction inspectors and the city is outsourcing specialized surveying as needed through contractors.
Hawke also asked department heads to complete justifications for vacant positions. Upper management reviewed the answers and ultimately reduced 29 vacant positions.
Hawke said previously more positions could be eliminated through attrition, though she further explained to Port City Daily there is “no list” anywhere of any positions the city is trying to eliminate. The justification process will only happen when a position becomes vacant; through the justification, the city will determine whether to continue with the position.
The city manager added there was not a pre-described vision for how the city’s organization chart would look, though what’s resulted is the combination of some departments — zoning administration and code enforcement into a compliance department, budget and finance into one unit — as well as the creation of new departments. These include asset and property management, transportation, strategy and innovation, safety and risk management, and safety and risk management.
The new departmental additions have come with new hires, including Director of Transportation Susan Habina-Woolard, Director of Compliance Suzanne Russell, Asset and Property Management Director Robin Slade, Safety and Risk Management Director Jason Eaves and Chief of Staff Dennis LaCaria.
LaCaria, Habina-Woolard and Slade all come to the city from Mecklenburg County and, thus, contribute to what some residents have dubbed the “Mecklification” of Wilmington. The concern is qualified Wilmington candidates are being passed over for people who either don’t understand the city or don’t have the city’s best interest in mind.
Hawke said she is more than happy to hire from within, but this isn’t always possible if internal candidates don’t have the specialities needed for some positions.
Port City Daily asked if each of the seven high-level positions announced by the city in recent weeks had internal candidates or Wilmington residents apply. Hawke said she couldn’t discuss applicant pools for each position but noted some did not have either.
“To deny a more qualified candidate the opportunity to come work for the city of Wilmington because they happen to not already live here feels like a disservice to the community in the long run, in what we are ultimately trying to accomplish, which is providing the absolute highest and best level of service that we can to our community,” Hawke said.
Though she defended hiring them, Hawke said she wouldn’t call the hiring of three people from the Charlotte area a “trend” — in fact, two of the recent high-level hires are from the Cape Fear area. Having been the town manager for the Town of Matthews, located on the border of Charlotte, Hawke said it is beneficial to the city if she can verify the ability of someone to fill a Wilmington role based on her past experience with them.
Still, Hawke claimed every employee is held to the same accountability and disciplinary standards, no matter how they came to the city or how long they’ve been there.
Hawke applied the same ethos to the people who left.
Since Hawke took her position, the following people have exited from city workforce:
- Deputy City Manager Chad McEwan: resigned in November
- Economic Development Director Aubrey Parsley: resigned in November
- Zoning Administrator Kathryn Thurston: resigned late January
- Public Services Director Dave Mayes: fired in late January
- Superintendent of Recycling and Trash Rick Porter: fired in late January
- HR Director Clayton Roberts: resigned in early March
- Chief of Code Enforcement Brian Renner: left in March, unsure whether fired or resigned
Hawke is bound by personnel law and, therefore, cannot discuss certain details on each resignation or firing. Generally speaking on the firings, Hawke said the misconduct discovered were both a combination of new and long-standing issues that predated her.
In the case of Mayes and Porter, both of whom had been with the city for more than a decade, human resources letters on their firing claim Mayes violated several city policies and failed to “prevent, correct, and address misconduct regarding timecard fraud.” The city also said he failed to address “substance-abuse-related behavior and performance concerns” that had been brought to his attention.
Porter was similarly cited, in addition to “mishandling” substance issue issues that exposed the organization to safety risks.
Mayes’ position wasn’t kept intact during the realignment but its solid waste component is now under new hire Heather Cashwell, who previously worked for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and the Town of Apex.
As for the department heads that resigned, Hawke said they did so for different reasons.
When Port City Daily pointed out some of the resignations overlapped with areas of the most changes in the organizational realignment and asked if the former department heads struggled to get on board with the changes, Hawke maintained this connection was “happenstance.”
Port City Daily also asked if she would consider the number of high-level departures since her tenure as unusual. She said it was hard to quantify, but the data collected on the number of citywide resignations wasn’t supportive of a “mass exodus” narrative.
Based on the data the city provided Port City Daily, there have been 83 resignations since July 1 2025, the day after Hawke started; 62 of these were after Hawke’s first 60 days. This is compared to fiscal year 2024-2025, in which there were 108 resignations, and fiscal year 2023-2024 there were 93.
“If somebody decides that this isn’t the right place for them, that’s better for everybody because I want everybody to be successful, and if they want to be here, we want them here. If they think that it’s better for me for them to be somewhere else, then that’s OK, too,” Hawke said.
Dismissals have increased to 39, compared to 21 and 11 in the two prior years; more than half of the terminations are attributable to the public works department, formerly overseen by Mayes.
According to the data, 25 dismissals and 10 resignations total (or 27.8% of this fiscal year’s citywide turnover) came from the public works department. Of those, nine dismissals and eight resignations were under Mayes. These numbers are consistent with the prior two fiscal years, where there were 24 and 36 total departures respectively.
Six of this fiscal year’s dismissals were in the Wilmington Police Department, consistent with terminations made in the two prior years.
“I can’t sit here and apologize for holding people appropriately accountable, and if anything, I would expect the community to appreciate that there is accountability and understand that they can trust that everyone who’s walking around with the City of Wilmington logo deserves to be here and is doing a good job,” Hawke said.
Port City Daily asked Hawke if the number of resignations and dismissals, plus the attention put on them, had staff concerned or nervous. She said, while there was some hesitancy when the realignment began, the vast majority of staff are settled.
Regardless, Hawke said she’s giving people time to get used to the change, while also giving them an outlet to express concerns at employee town halls. Hawke, who shares city updates before opening the floor for questions, has held two so far. Hawke said she makes it a point to read the questions verbatim and respond to every submission, no matter how uncomfortable the question is.
“Between formal channels, between back channels … I’m not hearing that as a problem,” Hawke said.
As city staff are almost out of the budget woods, Hawke said the next thing she’d like to focus on is getting the word out about the open positions and the new pay structure associated with them. An announcement for an economic development director is incoming, while the city still needs to hire an assistant chief and deputy chief at the WPD along with an assistant city manager, director of downtown services and special events, human resources director and IT director, in addition to lower level positions.
She thinks a living wage will generate more applicants and is interested in exploring ways to promote internal and local candidates, possibly through more apprenticeships and job-training opportunities.
Hawke said she will also be focused on ensuring the new organizational alignment is working and delivering services effectively, as well as turning her attention to the master plan for city-owned properties.
[Ed. Note: The information about surveying has been updated upon additional information from the city; the city has not shifted surveying to developers, but rather private contractors.]
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