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Interim administrator candidates vetted

Date: 5/27/2015

EAST LONGMEADOW – The Board of Selectmen interviewed five candidates for interim town administrator at its May 26 meeting, including individuals with work experiences ranging from public administration in Worcester to Alaska.

Greg Moyer, who previously served as interim city manager of Bethel, AK, interviewed with the board via Skype.

Moyer said the three most important qualities for a town administrator are “providing direction,” sticking to core values when hiring staff, and a motivation to succeeded as well as a willingness to go “out and about” to visit departmental staff.

He added that he considers his greatest accomplishment to be a two-year interim city manager assignment in Galena, AK. Ninety percent of Galena was destroyed after the Yukon River flooded in 2013 due to river ice jamming the body of water.

“There it took more than policies and procedures and job descriptions and staff meetings,” Moyer said. “Then it took on some leadership in terms of rebuilding that town and actually responding to the flood.”

Moyer, a resident of Tulsa, OK, where he and his wife live, said he has a great love for interim public administrator jobs.

“The interim excites me,” he added. “It’s something I’m very good at. I’m somebody who can jump in with two feet, still do what I’ve done for the last 25 years, working with the employees, [and] working with the board.”

Derek Brindisi, a former director of public health in Worcester from June 2000 to February 2015, said a town administrator’s duty should be as a “facilitator of information,” a person who can work with staff to reach accomplishments, and to be a collaborator outside of the municipal environment by reaching out to local businesses, universities, and nonprofit organizations.  

“I think we all have a like-minded mission and so how can we collaborate and how can that help to lower the tax rate or try to mitigate the burden on our taxpayers by working with local businesses and have them play more of a stronger role in the community?” he added.

Brindisi said one trend municipalities throughout the Commonwealth are likely facing is paying other post-employment benefits.

“They’re trying to grapple with some of the financial constraints,” he added. “Moving forward, [this] is something I would pay close attention to early on. One of my strengths is financial management.”

Strategic planning is another aspect of his work that he would bring to the table if chosen as the interim town administrator, Brindisi noted.

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do no matter what organization I’m working for,” he added. “Really think about, ‘Where do we want to be in five years from now?’ [You need] to gather that input, engage department heads, line staff, elected officials, appointed boards and commissions to really get a better sense about where we see the community in five years and then prioritizing what we can afford and what we can’t afford. We know we can’t do it all.”

Willie Morales, a 2015 graduate from the University of Northern Iowa with a master’s degree in public policy, said the primary responsibility of a town administrator is to communicate “difficult objectives to the layman,” as well as accountability by the community and the town administrator, and knowing how to ask for help.

“If you don’t know how to ask for help you will fail because you can’t please everybody,” he added.

Morales said trends that the town should take notice of is a population increase and growth of size for neighboring municipalities such as Springfield after the MGM casino opens its doors.

“Are you going to freeze a tax revenue?” he noted. “Are you going to incorporate an abatement program? You have to look at what’s happening around you and then think about what it means to you.”

Morales, a native of Queens in New York City, said he was attracted to East Longmeadow in part due to a childhood experience in Western Massachusetts, where his family’s car ran out of gasoline and a local police officer helped them.

“That’s something as a big city person you don’t really think exists, but when you find it, it shakes you up a little bit,” he added.

Morales, who also has experience touring Italy as a tenor opera singer with Opera Noire of New York, said the reason he decided to get a master’s degree in public policy was to protect the public interest.

“I don’t like people falling by the wayside because somebody didn’t take the time to explain something to them,” he explained.

Robin Bennett, the former town manager of Brandon, VT, who resigned on March 23 following a paid administrative leave prompted by Brandon’s Select Board on March 9, said she considers a key aspect of managing departmental boards to be communication.

“That’s at the top of the list,” she noted. “One of the first things I do when I come into open meetings is I sit down and meet with each of the elected officials on a board or council. I also do that to everyone who reports directly to me and that sort of starts the basis of our relationship.”

She added that in Brandon there was a “struggle” to pass municipal budgets, well into the fiscal year.

“It takes its toll,” Bennett said. “It takes money away from other things that you could be doing, which is one of the bigger goals.”

Federici responded to her by stating that East Longmeadow’s fiscal year budgets typically pass without dramatic changes.

Bob Rooney, the former chief operating officer of Newton, said three important roles of a town administrator are accountability to staff, implementing polices of the Board of Selectmen, and insuring fiscal responsibility.

“In the city of Newton, I had spent almost 12 years there and I had a short stint at the state and so the reason I spent 12 years there is because I really enjoyed it and accomplished a lot,” he added. “There were some very aggressive goals and the chemistry of the staff was such that we were firing on all cylinders.”

He added that Newton’s annual budget was approximately $50 to $60 million and he was “personally responsible” for the community’s capital plan.

As of press time, the Board of Selectmen had not selected a candidate for the position.