Town Administrator Tim Bragan, set to retire July 1, has already left the building, but the search for his replacement is just beginning.
The Town Administrator Search Committee has held two meetings so far, largely organizational in content. The hard work of determining the skills they’re looking for in the town’s next administrator as well as the questions they will ask interviewees is scheduled to begin this week at the committee’s April 17 meeting. And the committee plans to add two more members on the authority of a letter to the editor that the Select Board sent to the Press a few weeks ago, although the board’s letter announcing the addition without first discussing it in a public meeting may have been an Open Meeting Law violation.
The committee currently consists of seven members: Moderator Bill Barton, who was unanimously elected as chair at the committee’s April 3 meeting; Select Board members Kara Minar and Don Ludwig; Finance Committee Chair Eric Ward; School Committee member Shannon Molloy; Police Chief James Babu, and Liz Allard, the town’s conservation agent and land use administrator.
On March 25, Bragan’s position was posted to the various sites that list municipal career opportunities in the state. The deadline for applications is April 26. At the committee’s April 10 meeting, Barton said no resumes had been received.
Signs throughout town reflect the desire of some residents to hire a professional firm to lead the search for town administrator candidates. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
The committee’s main function is to evaluate applications and determine which candidates should be interviewed. Ideally, there would be enough applicants to whittle the list down to the best two or three to recommend to the Select Board. While the committee’s interviews will be held in executive session to protect the anonymity of the candidates, the Select Board interviews will be held in a public forum. The board will choose the next town administrator from those candidates.
To prepare for the initial interviews, the committee will create a rubric, or a list of skills, that it will use to evaluate candidates so they are all judged by the same criteria. Member Eric Ward said the public should be asked for its input to the rubric, and Minar said board and committee chairs would probably also have something to contribute.
The second task of the committee is to develop a list of questions. Legally, all candidates must be asked the same questions in the same order. Allard said a procurement guide that Ludwig had distributed among members had an excellent set of interview questions in an appendix.
To make the interviews consistent for all candidates, Molloy said they should either all be conducted in person or all conducted over Zoom. Ludwig suggested the interviews should be held in person at Town Hall. Minar said it was important that everyone on the committee be present for all the interviews, and Ludwig said Zoom might be used in cases where committee members were out of town.
An unofficial action to add residents to the search committee?
At the April 3 meeting, the topic of expanding the committee with a few members of the public brought to light a letter to the Harvard Press, signed by all the Select Board members except Minar, stating that the board was going to add two members of the public to the committee. Molloy read from the letter, “Additionally, we’ll take the following steps: Add two to four more residents to the search committee.” She said, “I feel like that’s a commitment that’s been made.” “By who?” Allard asked. Molloy responded that the statement was in a letter to the editor from the Select Board (see sidebar). Allard hadn’t heard of the letter. Ludwig said adding members was for the search committee to decide. But Chair Rich Maiore expressed a different opinion to the Press, saying that the board would act on the search committee’s recommendation to add more people to the committee, but it had received no such recommendation as of yet.
While it remains unclear if the committee has the authority to change its composition without a vote of the Select Board, members plan to review an application form for citizen volunteers at their April 17 meeting and to post it on the town website. The committee had hoped to finalize the form in time for an April 26 deadline, but Ludwig told the Press that deadline would have to be delayed a week.
In addition to the committee’s other duties, members plan to review the current town administrator job description and suggest any changes they agree on to the Personnel Board.
Molloy asked if there was still a possibility that an outside search firm could be brought in if the town didn’t get a good group of candidates. Barton responded that the Select Board would make that decision. “We need to advance what we’ve been asked to do,” he said. Molloy also asked what the committee would do if it received only one or two applications. Barton said that would be discussed in executive session, but he wasn’t too worried because Boxborough just went through this process and had 30 applicants.
The Massachusetts Municipal Association career opportunities list (as of April 16) included town administrator or town manager jobs in four other towns—Mendon, Holbrook, Hopkinton, and Gosnold, which, with a population of only 64 people and accessible only by ferry, is looking for a part-time administrator.
Ideally, the committee would like Bragan’s replacement to start July 1, but Ludwig said the board wants to make sure the town gets the best person for the job. Barton asked him and Minar to initiate a discussion with the Select Board about an interim solution in case the search takes longer.
Select Board reacts to citizen concerns for town administrator search, but was it legal?
The letter sent to the Press, published in its March 29 edition, was signed by four Select Board members and listed additional steps the board planned to take in its search for a new town administrator. One of those steps was to add two to four residents to the search committee.
The letter prompted the Press to ask Board Chair Rich Maiore how that decision had been made. The change to the committee’s composition had not been discussed or approved in a public meeting of the board, and therefore may have been a violation of the state’s Open Meeting Law. At a March 19 Select Board meeting, the board had voted unanimously to create a seven-person search committee with no members of the public.
Maiore initially responded in an email, “There was no meeting, discussion, or action by the SB re adding new members to the search committee.” The Press reminded him of the specific wording in the letter, which stated “Additionally, we’ll take the following steps: Add two to four more residents to the search committee.”
In response, Maiore wrote, “The wording was not precise as it should have been. We’ll act on recommendations from the search committee. So far, they have not made any recommendations to the SB.” He also said that “actions taken outside of a posted meeting are not official.”
Board member Kara Minar told the Press she had nothing to do with the development of the letter and was asked only to sign it. She said she agreed at first, but later decided against it. “I agreed with most of the suggested changes but ultimately, I felt it was worthy of more discussion in a Select Board meeting and did not sign it,” she said in an email. Town Administrator Tim Bragan told the Press he had no knowledge of the letter until he read it in the paper.
The Press continues to investigate the possible Open Meeting Law violation.
—J.E.
