Two days after the police chief resigned, Gouldsboro’s town manager has submitted her resignation.
Sherri Cox’s last day on the job will be Aug. 12, she said Friday.
Cox said that her resignation is unrelated to the situation with the police department, adding that “many things” factored into her decision. She declined to elaborate.
“I’m going to pursue other avenues,” she said.
Cox’s decision comes two days after Tyler Dunbar, the town’s police chief, submitted his resignation to the town. His last day on the job will be June 26.
Dunbar, 26, said he decided to resign because of “a clear lack of political support for the police department from the town government.”
Dunbar has been under scrutiny since a group of citizens successfully petitioned the town this spring to hold a vote on whether the town should disband the police department and contract with the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office for regular police patrols.
At a public hearing on the proposal in April, some of the discussion veered into a critique of Dunbar’s job performance.
A vote on that question will be held as part of the town’s annual elections June 25.
The resignations are the latest examples of turnover among the town’s top administrative positions.
Prior to Dunbar being hired in 2016, the town had fired three of its police chiefs over 15 years — Paul Gamble in 2016 and Guy Wycoff twice, once in July 2002, before he was reinstated a few weeks later, and then again in 2008. Cox will be the second town manager to come and go since August 2015, when longtime Gouldsboro town employee Eve Wilkinson retired.
Cox said she plans to work for her boyfriend’s business, local construction firm J.E. Tracey & Son, as a bookkeeper, and that the couple plans to spend a few months in Florida each winter.
“I can’t do that in my current job,” Cox said.
