I think that each community should have an election for a council of leaders. No one person should bear that responsibility. That can build resentment and unrest within the community.
They can choose to expand that in conjunction with the other communities or have each community's council working independently for their own people and land.
If each council were elected by the people then they would feel that they had a say in how things worked.
It also keeps leaders from working off of pure emotion and personal issues.
Didn't they have something like that at the prison?