Town Administrator denied contract renewal
Published on March 3rd, 2004
STONEHAM, MA - The town's Board of Selectmen voted unanimously to oust Town Administrator David Berry from his position by July 1.
Publicly announcing their decision at last Thursday's Selectmen meeting, board members first rendered a vote on Berry's future three week's ago in executive session.
"As discussed, the Board of Selectmen has voted not to renew your contract to serve as Town Administrator," read a Feb. 26 memo submitted by Selectmen Chairwoman Mary Pecoraro. "The Board appreciates your cooperation in arriving at this amicable parting."
According to the Selectmen, board members based their ruling on an annual performance evaluation of Berry's work over the past year.
While personal confidentiality clauses protect those documents from public examination, the Selectmen all characterized Berry's laissez-faire leadership style as one of the major motivations for not renewing his contract.
"Dave's a great guy but in my opinion he's not very forceful. He's letting the Indians run the shop and as the most powerful official in town, he just didn't exercise his power," remarked Selectman Cosmo Ciccarello, who constantly chastised Berry at public meetings for letting department heads walk all over him.
"Don't get me wrong, he's a decent person and an excellent man. I just feel that in this business you have to be a little more forceful to gain the respect of your employees. Sometimes being a nice guy, you finish last," the seven-term Selectman added.
With Selectmen Smith, Pecoraro and Kennedy all agreeing with Ciccarello's assertion that Berry needed to rein in department heads with a firmer leadership style, Pecoraro cited some specific examples.
"Take Franklin Street. If there were questions about the lighting or the bump outs, he would always seek the information -- I'll give him credit for that -- but I never thought that when the report came back that if fit in with the overview of the whole project. And then we'd have to revisit the whole issue again," the Selectmen Chairwoman explained.
A demonstration of the town administrator's professional attitude, it was business as usual in Berry's office Tuesday afternoon.
As classical music sounded softly from the small clock radio that sits on a wood paneled file cabinet behind his desk, Berry, in his traditional work-mode, sat hunched over a stack of capital needs requests.
"From the outset, I made it clear that my leadership approach was a more open-communication and democratic style," responded Berry to the Selectmen's perception that his leadership skills were soft.
"That approach hasn't worked in that it hasn't gotten me a second contract," joked Berry with a chuckle. "But I think it works. I have 25-years experience as a manager and it's always been the best approach."
Building on his confidence in his leadership approach, Berry argued that department heads, who get paid thousands of dollars and in some cases have decades of experience under their belt loops, should know and recognize the best ways to operate their offices.
According to the town administrator, while he considered leaving his post seven or eight months ago after he and the Selectmen butted heads on a variety of issues, he had thought those differences had been smoothed out.
"I really didn't expect this and I was surprised and disappointed. There was a time when this wouldn't have been a surprise. I even thought that if things continued along the way they were that maybe I would start looking elsewhere," said Berry, explaining that his controversial decision of choose FMC to run the Arena occurred at the height of his souring relationship with the Selectmen.
"My contract has a six-month notice provision, so I thought that if anything was going to happen, it would happen in January. But after their explanation of the differences between us, I thought it was time to move on," Berry added.
According to Selectman Charlie Smith he was also blindsided by the decision, finding out that board members had agreed to the move as he walked into executive session three weeks ago.
"I found out the day we were going over the review that we were letting him go...I didn't know this was going to happen. I walked into the meeting and Mary [Pecoraro] said, 'we're letting him go,' and I said, 'what?' She said, 'didn't you get the memo you sent you?'" Smith said.
Claiming that the Selectmen initially wanted to fire Berry immediately, Smith reluctantly went along with the board in exchange for allowing the town administrator to stay until June.
"I was just looking for a way to keep Dave on because having somebody here is better than keeping no one," explained Smith.
As a result of that compromise, Berry agreed to relinquish $8376 of his three month severance package, a payment entitled to the town administrator according to his contract, which required the board to give Berry six months notice of any decision to remove him from office.
Had Berry not agreed to the compromise, he still would have been paid the remainder of his contract for 2004 (including compensation for unused vacation) and would have received a $25,128 severance package.
Explaining his reasoning for agreeing to the deal in a time and age where many people would just pack their bags and leave, Berry, true to form, said he has unfinished business with the town.
"I just want to try to continue to do my job and do the best I can with the time I have left here. The budget will be my primary focus. The union contracts are also tentatively settled but I have four left and I'd like to finish out our capital plan," Berry commented.
Asked whether he had any advice to impart on the incoming town administrator, Berry was at a loss for words.
"That's tough. That goes back to whether I could have acted differently to change the outcome of this. I honestly don't know what type of advice I could give," said Berry.
"I think one of the things I could have done is had a better line of communication with the Selectmen about these types of issues rather than waiting for my annual evaluation. So maybe I would say, 'keep the lines of communication more open'...But I don't think the Selectmen really know what they want. One of the impressions I got when I was applying for this job was that the person I was competing with was not chosen because he came on too strong," said Berry.
Berry also believes an incoming town administrator should be prepared to work in a town heavily ruled by politics, an element of the job he was neither prepared for or used to.
"People have more of an awareness here about elections and politics and the things that need to be done to get votes. When I worked in Bolton, those types of considerations really didn't hinge on the decisions that were made," Berry commented.
"I guess that's something I'll pay attention to a lot more closely in the future, although I'm still not sure exactly how I'll handle it until I get there," Berry continued.
When asked whether he might have kept his job if he had ignored the political pressures and acted with the heavier hand that the Selectmen claimed he was lacking, Berry said he wasn't really sure.
"Maybe I should have been more decisive and just said, 'forget it I'm not going to do this and I'm not going to go along with the board.' But I get the impression that had I done that, I would have been gone a lot sooner," said Berry.
While the town administrator finds it hard not to take the Selectmen's decision personally, he bears no hostility towards the board.
"I'm not mad at them. It's not anybody's fault. I won't say that. It's not the Selectmen. It's not me. Things just didn't work out," asserted Berry.
"It's tough. You think back and wonder what you could have done differently. You wonder whether it was a personal shortcoming or whether it's just the way it is. You try to balance it all out and say to yourself, 'it's not my fault."
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