COURTLAND—Assistant Southampton County Administrator Jon Mendenhall has resigned to become the manager for Gates County, N.C.

County Administrator Mike Johnson said there are no immediate plans to fill the position. Mendenhall’s last day will be Friday, Jan. 11.

He began working for the county on April 25, 2011, at a salary of $65,144 annually. Mendenhall was the former director of engineering services for the City of Albemarle, N.C., and replaced Jay Randolph, who resigned in September 2010 to become the administrator for Lunenburg County.

Mendenhall was the topic of a Sept. 14 article in The Tidewater News after he failed to registered his BMW in Virginia 16 months after he was hired.

He violated a state law that requires permanent or temporary residents of the state to register their vehicles. If the BMW was registered in Virginia, Mendenhall would owe hundreds of dollars in personal property taxes to Southampton County.

According to Randolph County, N.C., tax records, the 2005 BMW 325I sedan was registered to Mendenhall in his boyhood home of Trinity, N.C., near Greensboro, about 3½ hours from Courtland. He paid taxes on it there from 2009 through 2012.