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Date: 1/11/2024
SOUTHWICK — When Select Board member Jason Perron proposed using an “oral board” to help the board choose a candidate to replace retiring Police Chief Robert Landis, his fellow board members wanted to think about it before deciding.
And while that didn’t change when the board broached the subject again Jan. 2, board member Diane Gale pressed Perron for his reasons for proposing an oral board for the candidates, which is essentially a Q&A conducted by current or retired police chiefs.
“Jason, you want to start?” Gale asked Perron after board Chair Douglas Moglin started the discussion.
Perron said even police departments that hire internally have begun using “assessment centers” to evaluate candidates. He solicited a proposal from Norton-based Commonwealth Police Legacy Inc. to interview candidates for the Southwick chief’s position.
The CPL proposal provides an explanation of the process it uses to evaluate the competency of candidates by asking a series of questions in what it described as an “oral board,” which is what Perron requested.
According to the CPL proposal, it would use a panel of three chiefs of police to ask a series of questions that would look at the candidates’ competencies related to decision making, interpersonal skills, integrity, budget and fiscal responsibilities, perception, professional confidence and conflict management. Perron said he liked that the process compares “strengths and weaknesses of all the candidates we have,” and provides “a different set of eyes” for an outside perspective.
He said he had asked for proposals from other firms but had not heard back as of Jan. 2.
Gale questioned the price of the oral board, which CPL set at $2,950. Perron called it a “small price to pay” for the service.
She said she had been reviewing other police chief interviews in the state and other states, and that the questions the candidates were asked “are all the same I would be asking.”
“I’m not sure what we’d get out of this [and] I don’t know that this would provide us with what we aren’t going to [figure out] ourselves,” she said, adding again that she wanted to see other proposals from other firms.
Perron then reminded the board that when the town had hired the last two fire chiefs, an assessment center was involved. Gale responded that there is a distinction between an “assessment center” and an “oral board,” to which he agreed.
Moglin, who had stayed largely silent during the exchange between Gale and Perron, suggested going ahead and starting the search process and given there is time — Landis’ retirement is effective June 30 — and setting a deadline for applicants and “decide what the rest of the process” is going to be.