The little but growing Town of Summerfield just north of Greensboro may be one of the hardest towns in North Carolina to run. That’s largely because of the huge divide among residents over how much, how fast and what type of development should take place in the town.

So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Summerfield Town Manager Charles “Twig” Rollins Jr. has decided to step away from the job earlier than some people expected.

At a special called Summerfield Town Council meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 18, Rollins announced that he plans to retire, with his last day as town manager coming on Feb. 28, 2027. The announcement appeared to catch at least some people in the town by surprise.

Rollins hasn’t returned a call from the Rhino Times seeking more information about his decision.

The announcement means that, less than three years after Summerfield went through an extraordinary upheaval that left the town without a manager and at one point without a staff, the Town Council will once again have to search for someone willing to take the top administrative job.

Rollins was hired in September 2024 after one of the most tumultuous periods in Summerfield’s history. Before coming to Summerfield, he had been town manager in Magnolia, NC.

In February 2024, the Summerfield Town Council voted 4-to-1, at about 1 a.m. after a lengthy closed session, to give longtime Town Manager Scott Whitaker 60 days’ notice that his contract wouldn’t be renewed.

Whitaker had managed the town for roughly 12 years and had survived plenty of political battles in a community that had long been divided over development.

However, the decision to push Whitaker out set off a chain reaction.

In May 2024, the entire town staff announced that they would resign. Staff members were highly critical of the way Whitaker had been treated and particularly of the Town Council majority’s initial decision not to provide him severance pay or continued insurance coverage after his departure even though his wife was battling cancer.

At an emergency meeting on May 20, 2024, the council reversed course and agreed to give Whitaker six months of severance pay and keep him on the town’s insurance plan during that period – but by then the staff members had decided to leave. Whitaker’s last day was June 10.

The result was almost unheard of for a municipal government. The town of about 11,000 people suddenly faced the prospect of operating without a professional staff. Town Council members and volunteers ended up performing basic functions such as emptying trash cans and cleaning restrooms at town facilities, and a popular children’s fishing derby was canceled because there was no staff to run it.

Former interim Town Manager Dana Luther was brought back in June 2024 to serve as interim manager and temporary finance officer while Summerfield tried to rebuild its government virtually from scratch. Rollins was hired several months later as the permanent manager.

All of that turmoil played out against a much larger battle over the future of Summerfield.

For years, farmer and developer David Couch sought approval for a massive residential and mixed-use development on nearly 1,000 acres in the town. The dispute was largely over density, including whether apartments and other higher-density residential development should be allowed. That issue became one of the defining political fights in Summerfield, with one side arguing that growth was inevitable and should be managed through compromise – and the other fighting to maintain the lower-density character that attracted many residents to Summerfield in the first place.

Eventually the fight moved from Summerfield to Raleigh. Couch sought help from state legislators and the North Carolina General Assembly approved legislation removing roughly 1,000 acres of his property from the Town of Summerfield. The de-annexation became effective June 30, 2024, putting the property under Guilford County’s land-use authority rather than Summerfield’s.

At the height of the town’s turmoil, there was even serious discussion about whether the General Assembly might go considerably further and revoke Summerfield’s municipal charter. That never happened, but the fact that the idea was being discussed demonstrated just how unstable the situation in the town had become.

The disputes surrounding Whitaker and the former town staff didn’t end when Rollins arrived.

After Rollins took over, questions were raised about financial records and other actions of the former administration. Former State Auditor Beth Wood was brought in and, at a January 2025 Town Council meeting, she presented a list of allegations concerning financial practices, employee leave payments, town records and other issues.

Whitaker and former Summerfield Finance Officer Dee Hall strongly denied wrongdoing and said that they had never been contacted for explanations before the allegations were aired publicly. The Guilford County Sheriff’s Office later investigated and, after consulting with the Guilford County District Attorney’s Office, declined to pursue criminal charges. Civil litigation involving the town, Whitaker and Hall continued.

Against that background, reaction to Rollins’ retirement announcement on the Summerfield Strong Facebook page was predictably spirited.

One poster summed up the town’s seemingly endless political turmoil with the comment, “Get out before the ship sinks.”

Another raised what will soon become a very practical question for Summerfield: “So who on Council will be vetting our next Manager?” The poster also questioned who would want the job given the ongoing litigation and the town’s history with former employees.

Another Facebook poster wrote that a new Town Council should offer Whitaker and Hall their old jobs back, while another took the opposite view and said Rollins’ departure would give Summerfield a chance to hire a new manager.

And one poster responded to the news with perhaps the shortest indication that the announcement had caught some residents off guard “What?!”

Rollins’ planned February 28 departure also lines up neatly with North Carolina’s retirement system rules. Summerfield participates in the NC Local Governmental Employees’ Retirement System, and retirement benefits under that system become effective on the first day of a month. A final workday of Feb. 28 would therefore allow for a March 1 retirement date. For some reason that is not clear to the Rhino Times, the end of February is a very popular time for local government employees to call it quits.

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