The new mayor of Millington says she doesn’t plan on changing any faces within City Hall now that Richard Hodges is no longer at the helm.

“I’m not anticipating that and that is not my goal,” said Linda Carter, who was appointed mayor Friday, Jan. 13, by the Millington board of aldermen. Her appointment came the same day that Hodges’ resignation became effective.

Hodges resigned following his indictment last year by the Shelby County grand jury on corruption charges.

He is awaiting trial and has pleaded not guilty.

“Why would someone come in for a short time to put in someone probably for a short time knowing the next mayor coming in is going to have the right to pick and choose whoever they choose?” Carter said.

Carter will not be a candidate for mayor in the Sept. 25 Millington city elections. She will serve as mayor until the winner of that election takes office Jan. 1, 2013.

Carter is a former alderwoman. After her selection as mayor she met briefly with division directors “to let them know that our message is that the citizens of Millington are our customers and we are going to give them A-1 customer service in spite of everything else.”

She will meet with them again individually Thursday, Jan. 19, as she prepares to lead the city into the budget season.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do. The first thing we’re going to do is work together on the budget and look at that,” she said. “We’re doing it a little bit differently this year. We’ll look very carefully at items. It’s pretty much a zero-based budget to kind of clear out some cobwebs and reprioritize.”

Hodges’ indictment followed a turbulent summer in which search warrants were served by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Shelby County District Attorney General’s office at City Hall and the Millington Police Department as well as the city’s Public Works Department.

The investigation, which appears to have centered initially on illegal gambling in Millington, surfaced in July the day after Hodges’ wife took her own life. That’s when the search warrants were served and an affidavit filed later with the warrants showed Hodges blamed an earlier suicide attempt by his wife on attempts to collect on his gambling debts.

Hodges and others complained that the investigation limited their ability to run the city’s day-to-day operations. It was among the factors Hodges cited last year when he announced he would resign. Before he made the decision, Hodges had also been urged to quit by several aldermen for the same reason.

“I think that this is kind of like a CEO that comes into a company that’s hurting,” Carter said. “Your job is to heal it, get it ready for the next CEO that comes in and work with the board of directors – in our case, the board of aldermen – allow them to do their job and work together to make it better.”