Town group looks for new manager
Published on May 19th, 2004
STONEHAM, MA - Members of the Town Administrator Screening Committee held their first meeting Monday morning and began deciding how to choose five potential candidates for Town Administrator David Berry's soon to be vacated post.
With at least 47 resumes to review and less than 10 days to accomplish their task before an April 28 deadline, the five committee members remained confident they would complete their task on schedule.
"All we really have to do is look at the resumes. We basically just have to screen out the ones on paper and we don't have to deal with any background checks or interviews," said screening committee member and Town Accountant Ron Florino. "I think we have to meet the deadline because the Selectmen really have to get through this."
Appointing Town Clerk John Hanright as the committee's chairman, Calthea Street resident Mat Whooley as vice-chair, and Stoneham Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Sharon Iovanni the group's secretary, several members expressed their hopes that the Board of Selectmen would respect its ultimate decision as to which five candidates should be considered for the post.
"I just hope the Selectmen will respect our ability to screen through these resumes and respect the fact that we put a lot of work into this for the benefit of the town," Hanright remarked. "But like I said before, this is just a recommendation to the Selectmen and they're going to do what they want anyway."
Committed to thumbing through the applications and placing the resumes into a yes, no and maybe pile by this Friday, the screening committee then began to establish a list of informal criteria to rate the candidates by.
According to Hanright, his ideal Town Administrator would have a solid financial background and at least some experience in community development.
"By far, the number one thing we should be looking at is financial experience. We've been going through tough financial times for two years and I don't think that's going to change in the immediate future. We should also include community development because that's a key to town government," said Hanright.
While Florino agreed that a financially minded person was needed for the job, the Town Accountant wanted to see a decisive, out-of-the-box thinking candidate with collective bargaining experience -- especially given the possibility that the town could operate very differently should the June 15 override ballot fail.
"The big thing is to work with the people, get the unions together and raise the morale in town. We need somebody who can clearly communicate with citizens and explain things like why we need an override. So we need an aggressive, creative person who's going to say this is how it's going to work and this is how we're going to get more revenues into town," Florino opined.
With virtually all committee members agreeing that communication skills were a must for any candidate, Iovanni asked members how much they were willing to compromise on some of their requirements.
"What skills can we say can be learned on the job but that don't necessarily need to be brought to the table? For instance, I think if you have some financial background, you can grow through the budget process. But I don't think you can learn people skills. Either you have it or you don't," Iovanni commented.
Agreeing that some compromises needed to be made on some qualifications, Screening Committee member Marcia Wengen argued that education was another criteria that could be overlooked in some cases. While Wengen also expressed concerns with considering out of state candidates, she resisted accepting a criteria that would award points for persons with a knowledge of Stoneham.
Claiming that in the past too many Town Administrators have been at a learning curve disadvantage because of their limited knowledge about Stoneham issues and politics, Florino fought to keep the criteria.
"They didn't know what they were getting into. They come in, they don't know the major players and then they waste our time and say, 'this job isn't what I thought it is and I want to move on," Florino argued.
At the close of Monday's meeting, the group informally accepted ten ranking categories including: financial experience, community development experience, capital planning experience, computer knowledge, education, Stoneham knowledge, collective bargaining experience, municipal experience, grant writing experience, and management experience. The group plans to next meet this Friday at 10:30 a.m.
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