Town of Magnolia to get Lead for NC fellow

By Ena Sellers

Duplin Journal

The Town of Magnolia was recently selected for a Lead for North Carolina grant through the School of Government.  

 According to Magnolia Town Manager Charles “Twig” Rollins, Magnolia was selected from a pool of 100 other local government applicants. This fellowship in local government will provide the town with the opportunity to work hand in hand with a recent college graduate from the cohort of Lead for North Carolina Fellows. 

 “It’ll be the first one ever in Duplin County,” said Rollins excitedly. “It allows me basically to have a special assistant who is college educated, who has a keen interest in going into government, and I can put them on special projects.” 

The town manager explained that this was mutually beneficial for the town and the fellow, who will be working with them for a year. Rollins said they want to make sure they take advantage of applying for every grant they can, and the fellow can help them do that, as well as help in other areas. 

“One of the key areas I want to work on with the person we’re going to get is in our developmental ordinances, our zoning and code ordinances and subdivision ordinance, and update those,” said Rollins. “I want to work on an asset inventory, on disposing of some old town property, special projects, any and all kinds.”

Rollins added that this also benefits the fellow as it allows them to shadow the town manager and gain real-world hands-on experience. The fellowship counts for five hours towards the master’s in public administration explained Rollins. 

“Most of them are going to get their MPA and, you know, it’s setting them up for a real-world experience. These are people that have a spirit of service to fellow mankind,” said Rollins. 

“It’s a very unique opportunity because we’re a Justice 40 community…we’re going to be able to expose this fellow to a lot of different facets of local government because we’re a small town.” 

“Coming from the mayor-council form of government to the manager, there’s a lot of projects, a lot of things the board wants to get done,” said Rollins, adding that in the past six years the fellows have applied for and secured $92 million collectively, in grants on behalf of the local governments.” 

“We feel very fortunate and humbled,” said Rollins, adding that it was an extremely competitive process.