NORTHFIELD — A new town administrator likely won’t be in place until the latter half of October, but the process took a step forward this week when about 20 residents came to a public forum at the Dickinson Memorial Library to share opinions on what qualifications will be most important in candidates for the job.
The forum was moderated by Bernie Lynch, the principal of Community Paradigm Associates, the company hired by the Selectboard to do the search.
The information gathered Monday will be used to create a job profile, Lynch explained, to give candidates a deeper sense of the town and the position than a simple job description would.
“We want the right person coming in here with eyes wide open,” Lynch said.
Everyone at the forum agreed that the next town administrator must be able to help Northfield with economic development, but not in ways that would compromise the character of the town. There was a resounding “no” when Lynch asked if, for example, the town wanted a Walmart.
The campus of the Moody Center and the planned arrival of Thomas Aquinas College was brought up as an opportunity for economic development, but also as an example of why the town administrator will need to be able to communicate well with outside entities.
Bee Jacque, who mentioned that she lives near the campus, said that she and her neighbors have been concerned by the lack of communication on the part of the two entities at the campus.
A few weeks ago, Jacque said, the Moody Center released a newsletter mentioning vaguely defined plans for future development. It turns out that those plans, which included a large hotel and a housing project, are in their earliest phases and have not been investigated thoroughly, Moody Center President Emmitt Mitchell later explained for a Recorder article. But Jacque’s point was to show how failure of communication with the entities on the campus could lead to “one of those big conflicts we read about in the Greenfield Recorder.”
“I would like Northfield to be a destination,” Jacque said, referring to Mitchell’s stated goal to draw tourists to the area. “But I don’t want it to be determined by one entity in town.”
Others mentioned the need for the town administrator to be computer-literate. Electronic communication tools, like email and the town website, have been underutilized, Historical Commission Chairwoman Carol Lebo said, making it difficult to find information that could be easily accessible.
The primary means of communication in Town Hall is to leave paper letters in employees’ mailboxes, said Brian Brault, who is on the Electronic Communications and Cable Committee. “Which is great if you’re in Town Hall,” he said, “but if you chair a committee and you work during the day, you can’t get into Town Hall and you don’t know what’s going on.”
Many emphasized the importance of finding someone who wants to learn about Northfield and stay in town for a substantial amount of time. Lynch said that it would be reasonable to expect a town administrator to want to stay at the job for five to seven years.
Lynch said that he expects the candidates to be mostly in their 30s, probably without experience as a town administrator, but having worked in other town government roles and now looking to make “the next step.”
Lynch said that he expects 20 to 30 applicants for the job. Around the end of September or early October, the Town Administrator Search Committee, composed of seven Northfield residents, will review the applicants, then choose a few, probably three, for the Selectboard to interview.
The new town administrator will likely be in place by the end of October, Lynch said.
The Selectboard has extended interim Town Administrator Bernie Kubiak’s contract through the end of the December, to provide a period of overlap between the two.
Contact Max Marcus at 413-772-0261 ext. 261, or mmarcus@recorder.com.