good evening welcome to the board of selectmen meeting for sick kember eighteenth two thousand and twelve if we could is every rise for the pledge of allegiance pl i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic just stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all if every would remain standing like to do a moment of discuss the interview the candidates themselves but also is before we get into that when i'd like to talk about and go through for the audience's benefit as well as the people on at home that may be watching of five was charged with bringing back the boy a candidate with some with qualifications and the qualifications that were outlined for them whereas that graduate degree in public administration of  closely related field seven to ten years a local government management experience the willingness and the ability to commit to the position for five or more years a strong finance an analytical skills hands on experience with human resource administration a history of still a successful collective bargaining experiences strong public speaking presentation and promotional skills experience with downtown revitalization experience in main street community the ability to organize in manage people strong public at that a big picture orientation in the ability to create strategic long range plans i demonstrated skills as a consensus builder in respect and appreciation for broad and diverse opinions and added in attitudes so that's was the charge of the committee the committee did not interview seven folks there was also another committee three panels was set up it was the consultants the search committee as well as an employee committee they went through and evaluated everybody and the highest ranking were passed on to the board of selectmen the shop challenge that the board has tonight is that we  have three candidates that all have multiple years of experience as tom manages and it's probably not going to be an easy decision to make the board well you know we'll go through that and discuss it but i also management tell managers and things because it was an article in one of the papers that referred to the candidates as retreads and that you know in my own opinion was not a good characterization and unfair characterization of town managers in general you know so what i'd like to do at this time is bring on mr johnston from masts resources  relevant that would help the board tonight would be appreciated your first kind of the global picture is that the profession is and has been for years kind of a global profession nomadic in ten year up until two years ago or three years ago when the housing market got really tight the average tenure for a professional manager was under conclusions about managers tenure and the number of jobs that they've had particularly older managers who have been in the profession a long time you can expect to find people that have four or five or even six positions it doesn't necessarily mean that they have not performed well there are lots of reasons that managers move on in addition to moving up you'll see early on in a career managers will tend to start in smaller communities where they will learn the business and then move up beyond that every community has the issue associated with changing some elected officials say and so you know and your situation is a good one you have five selectman  who today may decide on a specific individual three years from now a majority of you may not be on the board that because you the left it not to run or because you've been defeated and  a new majority of the board may decide that there's a new direction set you want to go in many managers have for actually all managers probably have different strengths and weaknesses some managers tend to be very strong from an administrative and policy perspective some are very strong financially operationally some managers are change agents who will go in and restructure an organization  some managers are strong in economic development but if a community changes direction or the situation in a community whether it's political change or economic change occurs it's not unusual for a manager to move along since so i would encourage you not to be to the place too much emphasis on the fact that all of the candidates you've seen have had four or five positions in the past five all you can take a lot of solace in the fact that the three candidates that you have are all longtime members of c m a which is the international city and county management association it's a very strong and very professional organization that has a very very strong code of ethics and it  polices that code of ethics very very aggressively any citizen can file a complaint against a manager and a team will investigate that  it's held up against the code of ethics which is very strong and it's not unusual for a manager who violates the code of ethics to be censured none of the managers that you are seeing have had complaints filed against them or have been censured by the profession for from our perspective that's very important for all of them have advanced degrees and all of them have fairly extensive experience and so we believe that you can be very comfortable that any one of those candidates as long as the fit the personality the style the attitude fits with the community that they can successfully manage  don before i turn it over to the members have any questions for you can you also talk about the contract and what we have services that you have we have an option to with your still there ye contract is assistance with developing a conditional letter of offer which which normally will articulate the offer and establish conditions those conditions usually include a physical exam or proof of physical capability that there are no debilitating diseases present and a full in depth background investigation and will also i'm sorry i'm only hearing part of ok that's better maybe that is better better let me ask you as you are winding up to talk with the candidates  do any work yesterday to get a sense of the profile of skills and talents that you thought the town should should look for are used to big pictures open for everything and see what we have learned anything in or what we looked at it we tried to take a look overall at the challenges in the issues that that face the community over the next five years and how did you decide how when you were doing it how did you do design those challenges then ok well we look who wanted somebody who understood the the business who under who knows how to manage him in a small organization who understands the structure and the operational issues associated with it so we're looking for somebody with a graduate degree seven to ten years of local government experience a willingness to commit to a lease five years in the community strong finance and analytical skills hands on experience with managing human resources including labor relations collective bargaining both the bargaining side and the contracted  ministration it's a strong public speaking in presentation skills because of the representative town meeting process that you have experience with downtown revitalization  and ideally a person who has experience with a main street community that has been either in decline or has been stagnant the ability to organize and reorganize operating departments somebody with with indisputable public ethics someone with a strong big picture orientation and the ability to create a street a strategic long term plan and develop a consensus around that to get community buy in and departmental buy in someone who who is comfortable and who has demonstrated ability to develop skin census and someone with a broad appreciation and respect for diverse opinions and attitudes and so when we arrived at those things in large part from discussions with members of the committee community online research discussion of public with public managers in massachusetts that we have worked with in the past to get a sense for the the personality the challenges the issues that the community is faced we were sensitive to the fact that you know there was a fair amount of controversy surrounding the police issue that occurred a few years ago and the impact that that would the community self image and the image that it would have in the surrounding area don't mean detail but just the overview of the steps you thought we needed in terms of the process we started we started out with an advertisement we had advertised nationally through the international city management association i c m a there are only about four thousand members nationally so a relatively small universe but we advertise there we advertised in the globe in monster dot com which gets a lot of throughout the northeast we want as far as pennsylvania new jersey so we posted it on those on those sites we then receive the resumes and we we have a professional panel who reviews and ranks the resumes against the criteria that we just listed has somebody how long is somebody bet in the profession what what level of education have the achievement have they been to for instance the kennedy school  public administration there's a there's a mid career program that a lot of managers go to there's a similar program down at the university of virginia and so have they been there have they have the communities that they've worked in been reasonably comparable in size or at least the last three to five years have they worked in communities comparable size to your community have there been their labor relations  experience have they had has has it been a community with a with an active or potentially active downtown as opposed to more rural has it been metropolitan the metropolitan area  close to a city similar to boston as opposed to something that might be smaller and we reduce that down to something typically i think we had close to close to or maybe a little over sixty applications typically we see somewhere in the vicinity of thirty to fifty percent of those meet the initial criteria for in your case we were very close to that i think we had twenty eight candidates that we then sent out a written essays we'll have some folks withdraw i think we lost eight candidates between the time that we sent the essays and those that kicked that responded so we may have sent out twenty eight and only twenty folks responded out of those we picked thirteen candidates we did telephone interviews with those candidates where we discussed their background their experience what their interest isn't in  stoughton circumstances surrounding their interest in leaving their current position or the position that they most recently held whether or not there are any skeletons that we're going to uncover and if there are what are the circumstances associated with them that's the other thing that that's unusual in this profession especially since the advent of the internet people can disparage character and personality or professionalism without responsibility on the internet so we try to find out and sort out how much of any  controversial information you might find on the internet is substance to it and then we're in the story versus you know kind of the typical character assassination that you find with blogs and anonymity on the internet for from the from those telephone interviews we then did employment verification zz and reduce that down to the seven candidates who were interviewed by three separate panels one was your selection committee fund other was a professional panel of current and past flic administrators and the third was a group of your employees in each of those groups was facilitated by one of our people set the end of that process we reported the results to the selection committee foo with the field down to the three that we have provided you if you know the static it's not there are here can you hear me now yes in the first group of professional screeners or the panel that worked with the sixty or so to winnow down to twenty six or twenty  eight what's what can you tell us what the profile is of that group down you know where they town administrators are they select men are they they were let's see there was a retired police chief you it's just in terms of experience you know we have done probably a hundred and twenty recruitments over the last twenty two twenty three years all over new england including pennsylvania well new england and pennsylvania and new jersey but our primary market is snowing with one of the managers has held positions in new hampshire massachusetts and connecticut another one in i was i've only been a manager in new hampshire and the other one was in connecticut  and massachusetts so we've got an you know abroad and another one was from maine so we've got a broad representation of managing in various knowing when states with all always tell meeting some with all right go ahead the pool of candidates was about what we've come to expect in the last four years which is about ten percent smaller than it was last wednesday where it was an exceptional feel that was the it was the best we've seen since nineteen or since two thousand and eight  we're frankly we're assuming that it has to do with the fact that you're close to metropolitan boston the winner is a very attractive area the closer to boston you get typically the more attractive it is i think because of the number of educational institutions and the medical facilities so knowing them tends to be very popular with the tale of because of the housing issue not so much for many years the challenge was finding people who could afford to move into new england where the cost of housing tends to be higher the last three years or four years we've seen a tail off because people don't think they can sell their home where they  live because as bad as the housing situation is here in new england it's much worse in other parts of the country but we were we were reeling encouraged by the public and it's we're currently doing a national mass where we're probably six weeks behind you with a national and then we're seeing a similar equality in the pool of candidates so we're beginning to have some hope that people of either reconcile themselves to the fact that they're going to have to sell their house their houses for less than they thought they were worth in order to relocate or the housing market is improving elsewhere because housing has been really the only impediment to applications here in the wingless in spite of our weather it's a very popular place to be we see a lot of people who have left knowing one after ed after getting education and go into management in other parts of the country and who want to return unless you can hear me yet you know you can you can never say that you know that the say the ideal fish you know is not will be below the boat and you know you just didn't put the hook in the worm in the right place but generally speaking i would say that the first time that you advertise is when you get the most applications you need to i think you had a very good pool typically if you read the quality of the pull the kleins because people assume that something's wrong and with all due respect to the the fact of the matter is that if you google stoughton you don't have to dig too deep to get back to the issues of controversy in the problems that you had in the police department which which frankly taints the community particularly outside of the region and  so i would tell you that i think you you probably you probably would not improve the quality of the pool but you know it doesn't come with any guarantees you know i have no idea who might be available today that wasn't available when we advertised  thirty days ago or sixty days ago you go first but i'm the junior member i should have to go last year your idea  not at this time so i thought and i do i appreciate this to help break down the process so that we know what we're doing and what we're looking at and what we're looking for i've been struggling with the struggles around the word sorting through the skill set along the three we've got because they're not interchangeable each of them brings different things to bear and i was hoping we could start kicking around or i'll start kicking around what i think is the dominant need to fill in the management structure of the town and then and then go from there and to put it in in a nutshell what i think  my analysis of has developed on these candidates is for a focused professional he hands  looking and making all of our systems work together officially productively and that some of the image or p r issues that we tend to talk a lot about will settle out if we get the basic management issues to work well and one of my big peeves is capital in financial planning because my own belief is that if we can get that right a lot of the flare ups that we have in public discussion gets smoothed out because it's some direction and so those are the really the two primary skill sets that dominate where our needs are at this time for a town manager real familiar to some of real familiarity with how to make the systems work and strong  budgeting and and financial management skills to complement that because i don't think one can work without the other and that's that's just how i'm looking at that matching up these three candidates against the job ok excuse me i guess i would say this the the job description that we laid out at the very beginning and you know i don't have to repeat those criteria but i thought that we were pretty clear about what we were looking for i think mr johnson was pretty clear about his understanding of what we were looking for he saw that in the candidates that they interviewed on the phone the candidate that they interviewed the through their five answers to the essay questions he got that down to seven i think that the search committee that we put together did an excellent job of carrying out their mission they worked cooperative with this the consultant i think the thing that's really important understand is that you had three very distinct groups all professional in their own way vet seven candidates extensively over a six eight ten twelve hour period and essentially those three independent groups understanding what the criteria is that we set up and then putting their own spin on what they think we need meaning you know our own management team and our search committee and then of course the professionals essentially everybody came down to the same three candidates so i feel confident that the people that we were given those three individuals that we interviewed the other night that all three certainly could fit the bill and i think in any organization you have a different personality and a different style and different skills that sort of fit the bill at different times and i actually think with all due respect to mr johnson and i think we've made tremendous strides i don't think that the police issue  to my mind is something we have to be concerned about at this point i think we were fortunate that we had judge crimmins at a time when we needed to create some stability some credibility within the organization get everybody rowing in the right direction i thought he did a terrific job of war ghanaians ing managing and creating a very clear culture of transparency accountability integrity i think he left because i believe he felt he had done all he could do i think right now we probably need somebody who can sort of steady the wheel and keeps the thing moving somebody who has a lot of municipal experience somebody that i would describe as someone who can do the blocking and tackling if you will the day to day monday not the pretty stuff but the stuff that keeps us moving in the right direction continues to focus on transparency integrity accountability so you know there is a candidate that i think in my mind might be better than the other two after all the analysis i did and so at this point i'm not prepared to share that because i think it's only right that the other folks have the opportunity to speak but i i think we've got a three guys that can  this is the third time that i've picked a tell me a juror and we've done it this will be the third way it's been done but it appears to me that we've got what we paid for i don't  reason in my mind to abrogate the process that we've already gone through there are of the three candidates there was a candidate that withdrew in the past that i would have liked to year now are actually since i got on the board the second time we we need a professional manager and we need someone who knows how tom meeting works and how town government works and time management is different than city management think two of the candidates have town manager experience one much more extensive than the other  but i do think that it's a skill set that at least two of the candidates have so that i don't feel that this process has been an expensive waste of time there is that has to be a leap of faith there are no guarantees we're not hooking somebody up to a lie detector machine to see if they fit all of our qualifications or if there's a problem one of my issues is that one of the two that i would find acceptable listed as a previous salary one hundred and ninety eight thousand dollars and that's not the salary range we advertised obviously and  hopefully because that was a much larger community that expectations are not four hundred ninety thousand dollars and so that would be where i would equivocate on that particular wasn't happy with the process and i'm not happy with the cost i really can't argue with the results thank you so if you jo maybe committee ended up on the final interview on the municipal resources i believe we had three good candidates with three distinct or what would mind i do have one individual in place higher than the other two just based on my own analysis of what we've been one of us what i think would be a good fit a good i think the direction we gave certainly everything we gave the criteria was met i believe the process was quite extensive and as i said right from the beginning and i repeat it now my main down to three of the three finalists just in case somebody hasn't doesn't know or as of now is kenneth fields michael from he was from florida michael hartman from canton and paul's shoe from franklin and one of the things we you know as we move forward and you know the suggestion is that we come up with a candidate to move forward with on a background check and  do some some additional work on in back in investigation on before actually before we actually commit to a contract or whatever moving bringing this back to the civil resources and continuing on and maybe have one of two board members work with them through the background checks and bring it back to the board for final consideration  at the end of that it may be we are looking to do a job offer it could be we could be looking at another one of the candidates or we could end up going back to starting over so you know  of this building doesn't have one would be dealing with a way to look at it is there are h r department for purposes of this and we have the supervisor who says you know make an offer for twelve dollars an hour and then they come back and say just didn't want them taking over the contract part of it you know and town council and i and don had a conference call this afternoon and so i think we're on the same page in that we had to work out some of the things that were being recommended and make sure we don't violate any laws about others but it's already started drafting a contract and some of the things based on some of the conversations we've already had previously about you i mean we had a motion for us