My name is Reinaldo Olavarria. I am a Wake County Resident. I reside at 614 Gaslight Trail, Wendell, North Carolina 27591.

The structure of the board of commissioners is such that it has a county manager. The county manager helps and guides the county departments, those very departments the county commissioners funds in part.

When the county was looking for a county manager, it posted a job description. The job description seemed to be custom tailored towards an applicant. I have seen job descriptions that ask for previous experience. I have not seen one that asked for over 10 years experience, and that was found on the Wake County Job Description for county manager. The Wake County job description says “Required Experience: Ten years of leadership experience as a City or County Manager, Deputy Manager, Assistant Manager or Department Head in a comparable organization.” That job description is not the typical one that says “over one year experience” but rather 10 years experience tends to lead a reasonable person to conclude HR was looking for a specific person and hired him.

Here is the comment, I went to three Wake County employment interviews, and two of them the employees were all of the black race. None of the employees on the interviewing team were disabled, and not a disabled person employee was found in the buildings during the time of interviews. One last interview was via teams, but again, the lack of diversity in the interviewing team was noted.

The county manager counsels the county departments. One county department, the Wake County Housing Department, knows or should know Frank Lawrence of the South Wilmington Center for Men was/is regularly hiring his friends and not using open and competitive hiring. Over 5 years he was been doing such. David Ellis has been county manager for over five years counseling and guiding Human Resources. A reasonable person can conclude then that David prefers and encourages black people to be hired at the county. That is shown by the failure to take action upon someone you knew was using preferential treatment. The county commissioners need to address this issue.

The lack of open and competitive employment is a problem. Here in Wake County, as the issue was raised in the past with the county manager and this board, the lack of open and competitive hiring causes position to be filled by often times by unqualified persons or remain unfilled to create opportunities for things like over time pay and a fleecing of the county. Declare an emergency and insist on open and competitive hiring.

Charlie Kirk encouraged the “debate” and for us to have open dialogue. A recent comment by a county commissioner is “we do not comment on public comments”. If you do not comment on public comments then your are defeating the purpose of public comments. Again, documents and other material may be found on https://www.wakecountyfails.com/ if you do not comment, then do something. Impose open and competitive hiring.