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IPSWICH — Hiring a permanent town manager by March is the select board’s top priority — but how to get there sparked some debate last week.
In past searches, town-appointed committees comprising officials and residents helped screen candidates. This time, however, select board chair Charles Surpitski decided he wants to take a different approach.
“We represent the whole community and have some idea of what the community is looking for in a town manager,” he said. “Since it’s our decision and we’re ultimately responsible for the selection of this person, I think we should be involved from the very beginning of the process.”
This prompted selectpersons Linda Alexson and Sarah Player to ask the same question at once: “So, no search committee?”
Step further
Michael Dougherty took it a step further than Surpitski, saying that he’s “against” hiring a consultant to assist the board with the process.
Like search committees, consulting firms had been involved in previous town manager hirings.
“We are elected officials, and we are tasked with hiring, firing, and managing the town manager. And that’s one of our few primary functions,” Dougherty said. “We should be able to put out a very strong job description, receive résumés, and we should be able to comb through those résumés — with input — and come to a decision and sign a contract.”
He added that the town doesn’t need to spend “thousands and thousands of dollars” hiring a consulting firm that “gives us the same regurgitated questions with the same regurgitated résumés of the same people that just get recycled and filtered through this process.”
Selectperson Carl Nylen agreed in part, saying he’s “a little skeptical” of consultants because they tend to “put their finger on the scale” by favoring certain candidates.
Benefits and pitfalls
According to interim town manager Tom Younger, any approach has its benefits and pitfalls.
But when he previously served as acting town manager in Wenham, he said, a consultant-led hiring process resulted in a permanent manager who lasted “about six months.” During another stint in Wenham about five years ago, Younger added, he led the hiring process himself and that manager is still there to this day.
Younger also noted that the going rate to hire a consulting firm is “between $10,000 and $20,000.”
Regardless, he warned, Ipswich will always have difficulty finding outside candidates given its geographic location. “It can be difficult to get here,” said Younger, a Swampscott resident. “And you can’t hire to the east… [unless] they’re coming from Portugal or Spain.”
‘Shooting ourselves in the foot’
Beyond just location, Player wondered if the board was narrowing its scope of candidates by limiting its resources.
“If we’re looking to cast a wide net to find the best candidate,” she said, “a search firm does this all day long. They know about this whole process and the laws around it.”
By rejecting professional consultants, Player added, “we could be shooting ourselves in the foot.”
Dougherty forged on and made a motion to begin the hiring process without a screening committee or consultant. Surpitski seconded the motion.
“What’s the argument for not including other folks in a search committee?” Player asked.
Surpitski responded that the community “expects the board to make good decisions, and they expect us to hire good people — whether it be a fire chief or police chief or DPW director.”
‘Intimately’
Having dealt with the town manager’s office “intimately” on a weekly and sometimes daily basis for nearly three years, Dougherty said he has been able to “formulate” the questions he wants to ask any candidate for the position.
“Obviously, we need community feedback,” he added. “We want that input. But when it comes to the process of deciding who makes the cut, that should be made by someone who is sitting on this side of the table.”
Player asked about involving department heads in the hiring process. “They’re going to be working intimately with this manager. Why wouldn’t they be included in this search discussion?”
Surpitski said their input will be “invaluable” when the board whittles the candidate pool down to three finalists.
Dougherty again made a motion to forego the search committee and consultant, adding that the board would put together a job description and salary range for the town manager position. The board voted unanimously in favor.
