South Portland City Manager James Gailey will resign from his post to take an administrative job with Cumberland County, multiple media outlets have reported.
“A few months shy of 30 years ago, I started working for the City of South Portland as a high school kid refereeing recreation soccer games,” Gailey said in a Wednesday resignation letter to Mayor Tom Blake, according to The Forecaster. “A lot has changed since the fall of 1986, and the experiences and opportunities that I have had working in six departments along the way are amazing.”
A South Portland native, Gailey, 45, has served as city manager since 2007, rising up through the ranks over decades working eight other positions in the city government.
Gailey will take over as the assistant county manager in late July, a position that pays $106,000 in annual salary, according to the Portland Press Herald. But although that’s a pay cut compared to the South Portland city manager job, which pays $121,000 in salary, city councilors suggested to the newspaper the move will allow Gailey to untangle himself from what have been stressful controversies in Maine’s fourth largest city in recent years.
The highest profile of those has been the city’s ongoing legal battle with the Portland Pipe Line Co. over a local ordinance which prevents it from reversing its flow and potentially transporting so-called tar sands oil from Canada to the ocean.
“The divisiveness has been awful the last three years and it has intensified over the last six months or so,” Blake told the Press Herald. “Jim being at the helm, he couldn’t help but bear the brunt of it, but he did a great job through all of it.”
