By Katie Northcott, News Director
According to Manchester Public Building Authority (PBA) Chairman Paul Thornton, the PBA disbanded at its meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 7, at the instruction of Manchester Mayor Joey Hobbs.
Thornton, Sally Singles, Lucky Knott, and Brandon Imhoff were appointed to serve alongside Hobbs and Aldermen Thomas Crosslin and Donny Parsley after the six previous PBA members resigned in June.
The PBA has historically been tasked with overseeing operations at Manchester’s Conference Center. In a statement after the June resignations, Hobbs said that he had proposed that the city begin overseeing operations at the conference center and that he thought it made sense to turn the Conference Center into a tourism center.
Find Hobbs’ full statement about the June resignations here.
Thornton said the new PBA members were appointed to “close out all the books” before the city began managing operations at the Conference Center.
“Basically, [we did] whatever needed to be done to enable the city to say the PBA is no longer needed because the city has gone a different direction where [the conference center] is going to be run through the city, not the PBA,” Thornton said.
Thornton said the PBA disbanded because it had done all the work that it needed to do.
“We were told by Mayor Hobbs that we had fulfilled all of our obligations by closing the books out and that we could dissolve, so that’s what we did,” Thornton said.
The PBA meetings were not video recorded. According to the city’s website, the new PBA members met on August 6, 2025, and Jan. 7, 2026. No written minutes are posted for the Jan. 7 meeting. At the time of this article, Peterson Media Group has been unable to obtain the Jan. 7 meeting minutes despite multiple emails to the Mayor’s Office asking for copies of the minutes.
Peterson Media Group has reached out to the Mayor’s Office for comment.
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