The special Greensboro City Council meeting Tuesday, May 25 was only scheduled for 10 minutes, but it didn’t take quite that long for the City Council to unanimously appoint Assistant City Manager Chris Wilson as interim city manager beginning June 15.

City Manager David Parrish has announced he is retiring on June 30.

Wilson has been an assistant city manager since 2013, which is a long climb up from when he started working for the city in 1992, at age 19, maintaining tennis courts.

Most bios of city staff on the city website are pretty dry affairs with a listing of job titles, educational degrees and awards.  Wilson’s official city bio, however, starts, “Chris Wilson is often referred to as the cheerleader of the organization because of his passion for the services provided by the City of Greensboro.”

But the bio does leave out the important fact that during his more than 20 years with the Parks and Recreation Department, Wilson, regardless of his actual title, was also known as the “critter guy.”  Wilson was the one who got called when there was a fox on the golf course, a raccoon in a trash can or pretty much anything else involving wild animals being where people didn’t think they should be.

Wilson in his years as assistant city manager has overseen the fire department, Guilford Metro 911, budget, finance, human resources, human rights, communications and marketing, workforce development, libraries and museums, neighborhood development and, of course, parks and recreation.

Wilson is a graduate of Northwest Guilford High School and UNCG.

Mayor Nancy Vaughan in the city press release said, “Chris brings a wealth of experience and an abundance of institutional knowledge with him into the interim city manager position, making him an easy choice for this position.  People know Chris as our Parks and Recreation Champion, but I can assure you, he is that and more to the City of Greensboro.”

Wilson will be paid a salary of $182,000 to serve as interim city manager.