There’s a better way to hire and fire Town Administrator
Published on July 25th, 2001
STONHAM, MA - Stoneham has a new Town Administrator and, according to Franklin Street resident John DeGeorge, citizens are simply lucky that all five elected members of the Board of Selectmen were present for this important appointment.
DeGeorge had been trying for months to appeal to the Board to reassess the way such an important position is filled. According to DeGeorge, the Town Administrator Act calls for a simple majority approval vote of the Board to make the appointment.
"That bothered me so I wrote Article 29," said DeGeorge, referring to the warrant article he submitted at the May Town Meeting which called for requiring a super majority vote (4 of 5) for approval of such an appointment.
But while the Finance Board and the Board of Selectmen indicated the article had some merit, according to DeGeorge, both boards voted unfavorable action because a super majority vote (4 of 5) requirement for appointment would be inconsistent with the simple majority vote (3 of 5) required for terminating a Town Admin-istrator.
DeGeorge then tried to offer an amendment to his article on Town Meeting floor was but told the amendment was out of order. There it might have died if DeGeorge took the matter less seriously.
But the possibility of appointing someone to such an important town position with the way the Act is currently written did not give DeGeorge the confidence he was seeking in an appointing body.
In reply to the board's earlier argument of inconsistency in the act, DeGeorge pointed out that the Act already is inconsistent in that it calls for a simple majority of the Board for appointing a Town Administrator without specifying a full Board be sitting. This could be a vote of two out of three sitting members.
Yet for terminating a Town Administrator, the act does specify a simple majority of a full board, three out of five sitting members.
In a letter to the Board, dated May 21, DeGeorge requested that the Board of Selectman present a warrant article at the fall Town Meeting calling for changing the act to specify a super majority vote of approval for appointing the Town Administrator and eliminate the existing inconsistency in the Act by calling for a vote for both actions by full Boards.
In the meantime, he requested, "that the Board adopt the super majority vote requirement, as a matter of policy, when the Board votes to appoint a Town Administrator to fill the currently vacant position."
"I think we need a confidence level here as a matter of policy," DeGeorge said. "I'm saying a majority vote is fine, but let's at least get a full board."
According to Town Counsel William Solomon, the language of the act cannot be changed by a vote of the Board.
"It's a legitimate concern except that .... there's really no chance any board would make that appointment with any member or members missing ... You don't need a law ... because you would take care of it through common sense."
All the same, it is likely that DeGeorge and possibly others would feel more comfortable with something in writing.
The Board made no decision on whether or not it would sponsor such a warrant article for fall Town Meeting.
DeGeorge told the board he was "disappointed" that this was the first public acknowledgement the Board made of his May 21 letter.
To The Independent he stated that while there must be a system in place for screening written correspondence from citizens, it's difficult to understand the criteria the Board uses.
The Board of Selectmen has an obligation to the citizens of the community who take the time to write a letter, DeGeorge said.
"As unimportant as the Board may think it is, it's important to the person who wrote it," he said.
"If nothing else, as a courtesy (we) should be responded to."
Another issue that DeGeorge is concerned about regarding the new Town Administrator is the issue of his residency.
Town Meeting voted down an article in May that would have required the next Town Administrator to live in Stoneham, with some residents saying that imposing such a requirement would limit the scope of search.
However, the advertisement that was published in search of candidates for the position stated that the person to fill the position should expect to move to the town since it was published prior to the Town Meeting vote.
While DeGeorge acknowledges that the town did receive qualified candidates inquiring about the job, the residency statement may have prevented some fine candidates from applying.
"We'll never know," DeGeorge said.
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