ORANGE — The Selectboard has packed August with scheduled sessions in hopes of picking its first town manager, now that a screening committee has chosen four finalists.
Residents voted 155-12 at a Jan. 12 Special Town Meeting in favor of an article pertaining to the adoption of a town charter to change and modernize the local government’s organizational structure and operation. Six and a half months later, Gov. Maura Healey signed into law a bill formally establishing the new form of government, and Orange’s charter went into effect on July 1.
The charter’s adoption creates a strong town manager role to serve as chief administrative officer and direct day-to-day operations across most of the municipal government structure.
A Town Manager Screening Committee was tasked in May with accepting applications and whittling down the candidate pool to recommend finalists to the Selectboard. Julie Davis, who chairs the Selectboard, expressed her gratitude to the committee members in attendance at the board’s July 29 meeting.
“Thank you so much to all of you for the work that you did, the time you put in,” she said. “And also for laying out what feels like a very strong framework for us going forward.”
Selectboard members were each asked to submit two interview questions to Human Resources Director Kristen Cormier by Aug. 3. Candidate interviews are scheduled for Aug. 15, with Selectboard deliberations set for the following day. These sessions are in addition to Selectboard meetings on Aug. 5, Aug. 12 and Aug. 26.
Tom Sexton, who chairs the Town Manager Screening Committee, said 31 applications for the town manager position were received by the July 10 deadline. There were initially five finalists, though one failed to respond to an invitation for an interview.
Sexton said all applications were sent directly to the Human Resources Department and were kept confidential. He explained that the candidates were ranked using the committee’s evaluation criteria.
Scores for each candidate were tallied, and their qualifications were discussed during the committee’s July 15 executive session to decide which ones would proceed to interviews.
Sexton announced that the four finalists are Orange’s current Town Administrator Matthew Fortier, former Greenfield Mayor Roxann Wedegartner, former Hubbardston Town Administrator Nathan Boudreau, and Stephanie Hirsch, a former Eau Claire, Wisconsin, city manager who is relocating her family to Massachusetts.
Orange had previously operated under an established set of town bylaws, practices and procedures, and according to applicable general laws and regulations, with a town administrator who works on behalf of the five-member Selectboard to coordinate across municipal departments and operations.
The charter stipulates that the town manager will have the authority to hire, discipline and terminate town employees (with specific exceptions that relate to employees under the jurisdiction of the library trustees, water commissioners, airport commission, housing authority and school committees).
