The Brattleboro Selectboard will hold a special meeting on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 at 6:00pm in the Selectboard meeting room at the Municipal Center.
Jan Anderson
Executive Secretary
Brattleboro Town Manager’s Office
(802) 251-8100
….
BRATTLEBORO SELECTBOARD
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2014
SPECIAL MEETING – 6:00PM
SELECTBOARD MEETING ROOM
AGENDA
1. CONVENE MEETING
2. TOWN MANAGER SEARCH – Consider, approve, and execute Employment Agreement with new Town Manager
3. ADJOURNMENT
Not tonight
Vlasta of BCTV just announced that this meeting will not happen, and that the Selectboard was not going to finalize an agreement tonight. Hmmm…
Again?
According to WTSA, from their Facebook page-
“At 11th hour Brattleboro town manager candidate pulls out select board will take new look at current applicant pool”
My understanding was they called around 4 pm and declined.
Didn't the same thing happen
Didn’t the same thing happen the last time around? The top contender changed his mind at the last minute? What the heck is going on? This does not bode well for the town. Something is wrong when you keep having candidates backing out suddenly.
Why not Patrick Moreland?
Forgive me if this has been discussed publicly and I missed it, but why not hire Patrick Moreland permanently for the job?
different goal?
My reading off all this is that if they had thought Moreland was the best for the job, it would have been offered by now. One might infer that they are looking for a different skill set, background, etc., or perhaps Moreland has refused. (I don’t believe he has, though.)
Early on the board chair said they had hoped a new hire “will allow us to reevaluate our priorities as a town” – so I have been assuming that they are looking for something we don’t already have here in-house.
Lineage and Legacy
If memory serves me, weren’t the two previous town managers chosen from in-house personnel?
The pay may be commensurate with other towns, but perhaps there is something off-putting for strong candidates in the structure of our governance?
The search
A few of the no-thanks were from people who had multiple job offers and chose another option. I’m not sure that people are bailing for any reason related to the town (they probably wouldn’t apply and go through interviews if they didn’t want the position). It’s not like many other towns are doing really well…
In the 2nd round, at least, we were slow to make offers and missed out. Our fault.
This time around, we hustled. We’ll hear more at the next SB mtg, I’m sure.
As spinoza says, our last TM was the assistant TM, and a less active board didn’t care to keep the searches going so they did a promotion, and left the assistant position open for a long time thereafter.
Before that, we had a TM that had worked in town all his life, and knew it inside out.
I appreciate the effort to cast the net widely and keep looking, though, for whatever it is they are looking for. : ) Perhaps a second choice from this 3rd round will work out? Or we start a 4th search?
perhaps its time to
ask ourselves if we need a mayor for this town!
I think a lot of people have
I think a lot of people have been saying that for awhile now. The governing body we have now doesn’t seem to work that well.
Out of Curiosity
When you asked yourself if we need a mayor did you get an answer?
Could it possibly be that the
Could it possibly be that the real estate taxes proved too high to make the move appealing? (LOL, I think)
I suppose it could just be a string of bad circumstantial luck but this does seem a little odd doesn’t it.
Yes, I did get an answer
and the answer was a for sure YES !
How about when you asked yourself?
OK, I'll do it.
I asked myself and the answer was qualified. If it was that I was to be mayor, then yes.
I’d be mayor for $50k a year and use of the mayoral mansion/apartment (TBD). I’d act as a goodwill ambassador for the town, celebrating a mix of the past and future. I wouldn’t concern myself much with day to day management, other than to walk around and check in with all employees to see if I could help them in any way. I’d put trust in those we hire and leave it to them, pretty much to them, as experts, to inform me. My role would be facilitating and connecting, with an eye on reinvention.
If someone else was going to be mayor, well, I’d have to think about it a bit… : )
What you have just described, Chris
is what is, roughly, known in government jargon as the Weak mayor system. The mayor is elected but largely for ceremonial purposes and some other things like presiding at council meetings. The Council hires the Town Manager who runs the town. The Council is elected, of course. The other of the two basic mayoral systems is the Strong Mayor who has most of the authority and power. However there is a Council too which has veto power. Montpelier is an example of the weak mayor system but the strong mayor system is most common. In New England a third system is the one we’re most familiar with, the Council-Manager system, or, as we call them, the Selectboard. It’s by far the most prevalent in small towns.
One of the primary ways the powers of a mayor is controlled is thru the amount of money they are authorized to spend on their own signature. A mayor that can spend a hundred thousand has a lot more power than one who can spend only ten. Charters very specifically name the powers of a mayor. They’re generally similar but most have some unique things. Often the unique things came to be because of particular (sometimes peculiar) problems that vexed a municipality. The biggest part of our own charter are three sections specifically describing the powers of the people, the powers of the Selectboard and the powers of the Town Manager. The Charter Revision Commission had tremendous debates on some of the items in those areas.
It would cost more
I wouldn’t want to be a weak mayor. That means you’d have to give me more money, and the mayoral mansion would need to be nice.
In that case, I’d want to appoint neighborhood councils to advise me to crowd source governing.