Current Issues and Thoughts
April 25, 2006

The next selectmen’s meeting is tonight (Tuesday, April 25), starting at 6:00pm. We will meet again tomorrow (Wednesday, April 26), starting at 5:00pm. The main purpose of the meetings is to move forward on filling the open selectman seat.

Selectman Candidate Interviews

On Tuesday, starting at 6:00pm, we will interview six of the selectman candidates -- Nancy Amato, Cynthia Herman, Mark Parenti, Terry Parker, Steve Sexton and Corey Sullivan. All the candidates will be seated together at the meeting table. Each candidate will have 3 minutes for an opening statement. Then we will ask questions. Each of the four current selectmen (Gary, Larry, Noreen and me) will ask two questions. Each candidate, in turn, will answer each question. So, all candidates will be asked a total of eight questions and the eight questions will be the same for all candidates. The questions may come from the list we previously prepared (these are posted on my blog), or we may ask different questions.

On Wednesday, starting at 6:00pm, we will interview the other two candidates, Gil Archambault and Steve Sareault. Gil and Steve are travelling on Tuesday and so we moved their interviews to Wednesday. We will use the same format for the interviews.

After Wednesday’s interviews (that is, later on at the same meeting), we will discuss the selection of the new selectman.

Recruitment of New Town Administrator

At Wednesday’s meeting, starting at 5:00pm (that is, before the candidate interviews), we will go over the draft of the detailed job description for the new town administrator (TA) position. I worked on the draft with Gary Daniels over the last several days, and we’ve set up the TA role to be very similar to a town manager position. In other words, the TA will have full authority, responsibility and accountability to manage the town on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to the current system where the TA is more of a conduit between the department heads and the board of selectmen. The TA will be charged with delegating authority to the department heads and senior staff to ensure the efficient administration of town affairs. The idea is that the department heads and senior staff will have clear authority and accountability for their areas, and the TA, like a CEO, will have overall responsibility and accountability for delivering town services on a day-to-day basis. Under the new approach, the selectmen will be more like a board of directors – we will set policies and oversee the TA and the management of the town, and we will be much less involved in day-to-day matters.

It will be important to do a good job of communicating with town employees about the change in the TA role and the recruitment process. We will discuss how to do this effectively.

We will also discuss how to widen out the recruitment process for the new TA and make the search as professional and effective as possible. The plan is to expand the advertisements for the job to include regional newspapers (for example, perhaps the Wall Street Journal northeast edition), online job sites, the chamber of commerce and also groups/sites that focus on senior municipal officials. We will discuss other elements of the recruitment process including how we can most effectively “market” the position to candidates. Our goal is to get the broadest possible pool of capable candidates, including people from the government sector and the private sector.

Katie Chambers’ departure date is June 17, and we will discuss the need to have a transition plan in place to cover the job during any gap between Katie’s departure and the start date for the new permanent TA.

Please email me, call me or post on the blog if you have any questions, comments or thoughts.