NASHVILLE, TN — Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s first appointees:
Wallace (Wally) Dietz will continue to be Metro Legal’s Director .
Katy Varney to be the interim Director of Communications.
Marjorie Pomeroy-Wallace will serve as Chief of Staff. She ran O’Connell’s campaign as campaign manager.
Bob Mendes will join the O’Connell administration as Chief Development Officer.
Alex Apple will serve as Deputy Communications Director and Press Secretary.
Kristin Wilson will continue to serve as Chief of Operations and Performance.
In previous administrations, mayors hired mostly white men for senior level positions. Under Mayor Cooper, the first Black woman, a former Senior level SBA Federal official was hired and fired by O’Connell.
It is not known yet, whether she was offered another position or if any of Cooper’s Black or white employees were offered other positions.
The issue in the Black community is that a mayor wins election in Metro Nashville with almost 100 percent support from the Black community they then ignores the Black community until the next election cycle. As soon as Metro mayors begin to officiate, whites are transfed into other metro departments and fires some Blacks, who are usually in non-essential low paying positions and as usual they are the “last hired and first fired.”
