Kudos to the Greenfield Town Council for drilling deeper into Mayor William Martin’s plans to hire a well-paid chief for a municipal internet system.
It’s not that the council doesn’t agree with the concept or the need to have someone competent to manage the effort. The idea of providing a cost-saving broadband internet service through a municipal program is an attractive alternative to what is now available commercially.
But when the mayor proposed to hire Daniel Kelley, who has been the acting manager of Greenfield Community Energy and Technology since July, for the permanent post, the Town Council acted appropriately in seeking more justification for a five-year contract at $150,000 a year, a salary that would have made Kelley the highest-paid employee in town.
This isn’t a question of whether Kelley can do the job. As Martin points out, the principal of the Kelley Management Group has been on board with the project from the very beginning, offering both input and oversight. Why then wouldn’t Greenfield want Kelley to see the project through to its completion?
Maybe the town would. But the mayor hasn’t provided enough information — about a high-paying job that wasn’t advertised to attract other potential candidates — to win the trust of councilors or the citizens they represent.
“I’m not saying (Kelley) is not the most qualified, but you don’t know who else is out there and who would be willing to move to our town to start a program like this,” Precinct 8 Councilor Ashli Stempel said. Based on salary alone, other councilors asked how could the town not conduct a public search.
“I don’t know how we would justify not having a search for a person who is going to be making the largest salary in Greenfield,” Council President Brickett Allis said. “I don’t know how we could do it for any department head, no matter how much they’re making.”
Going through a public search process would allow councilors and residents to hear about not only the qualifications of applicants but also the need for paying that kind of money.
Simply accepting the mayor’s proposal wouldn’t have built the kind of public trust necessary — in the mayor, his plan or the Town Council, which is expected to keep an eye on the purse strings.
In the end, Martin opted for a strategic retreat, bringing back to the council a two-year contract for Kelley at $120,000 per year. In approving this, the council found it to be a palatable compromise. After two years, it is expected that the five-member Municipal Light Commission will be overseeing the town’s internet system, including future general manager hirings. But that, too, as Councilor Mark Maloni said, should be something the council keeps an eye on.
We agree with those councilors who want to make sure the hiring process and other aspects of the internet system is transparent.
A new municipal broadband system will introduce a handy tool for townspeople to communicate. But the mayor must remember, as councilors have just reminded him, that no communication system can work without transparency and the trust it breeds.