Maxton is a town with challenges.

There are vacant buildings downtown and complaints about rising crime. The town of 2,500 straddles the border of one county with the highest unemployment rate in the state and the other county with the highest poverty rate in North Carolina.

A new man has been tasked with helping the beleaguered town.

Vincent Long, a 59-year old Vietnam veteran with more than two decades of experience in municipal government, says he is up to the challenge of being Maxton's new town manager.

"Not every town wants to aggressively address the challenges they are facing," Long said. "There are a lot of towns that are struggling, but their boards do not necessarily take those issues as seriously as the Maxton board did. They have a strong commitment to improving the quality of life and business opportunities for their residents. Quite frankly, after being in this field as long as I have, not every board takes the concerns of the citizens as seriously as I sense the Maxton board does and wants to aggressively address them. That is more exciting for me to actually help improve people's quality of life than just going through the motions."

Long was unanimously appointed to the town's top spot Friday night by the Maxton Town Council, according to Mayor Gladys Dean. He started Monday. Long has a salary of $56,000 and will be provided a car for town business.

"We are very excited to have him," Dean said. "We think he is going to be a good fit for Maxton and he excels in the qualifications he brings to the town. We look forward to working with him and I am sure Maxton will come to love him because of his personality, his energy and his motivation to make Maxton a better place."

Commissioner elect James McDougald also praised Long, but said he was concerned that he and his fellow incoming commissioner, Victor Womack, should have been a part of the decision making process that ultimately brought Long to Maxton.

"I think that (our participation) is an important issue," he said. "I believe consideration should have been given to the new commissioners in order to give our input."

McDougald and Womack will be sworn in Dec. 15.

"I have been impressed with Mr. Long, and we agree on what are two of the most important issues to me," McDougald said. "One is law enforcement; it is the backbone of any community to be safe and orderly. The second is business: if the community is not safe, then no businesses will come."

Long's experience in city government began in 1985 when he worked as an administrative intern for the village of Villa Park in Illinois while working on his master's in public affairs at Northern Illinois University.

When he graduated in 1987, he went to the village of Oak Brooks, Ill. as an assistant to the manager, becoming manager of Countryside, Ill. in 1995. He moved to the city manager spot in Imperial, Calif., in 2001 and then manager of Cloverdale, Calif. in 2005. He retired from the city of 8,564 people in 2007 to move to Pinehurst.