The Select Board-led search for a town administrator is underway. So far: The current town administrator announced, with just a couple of days notice, that he was taking off “the 320 hours … he has accrued over his 17-year career,” meaning that he would be out of the office essentially from April 12 until his last day at the end of June; the Select Board appointed a committee without any community members to perform the search; the Select Board then sent a letter by an unidentified author but signed by four of its five members to the Press saying that two community members would be added to the search committee; the only attorney on the Select Board decided not to seek reelection to the Board; the Press filed an Open Meeting Law complaint against the Select Board for the secrecy with which it handled search committee expansion.
A primary function of that committee, however ultimately constituted, will be evaluating applicants to the job posting. A central component of a professional firm’s work, in contrast, happens earlier in the process: soliciting applications from people who may be unaware of the posting, or, indeed, are not currently looking for a job. That broadens the applicant pool, which, although making for more work in evaluating candidates, may well lead to better applicants.
Those of us who thought the town should have hired a professional search firm are not reassured. Aside from obvious confusion and delay in the search, these actions will narrow the potential pool. Only those who fail to perform their own due diligence to learn about the Select Board to which they will report or are sufficiently desperate to not care about its dysfunction will apply.
It is probably not quite too late to hire a professional search firm, since there will be a Special Town Meeting soon. The cost will be incomparably lower than that of hiring the wrong person.
Billy Salter
Elm Street
