Millville to search for new town manager
Committee chairman says process could take up to 3 months
MILLVILLE – The selectmen are getting ready to kick off the search for a new town administrator to replace former administrator Jennifer M. Callahan, and will start the process by holding a workshop Nov. 5 to discuss enlisting members of the community to serve on a town administrator search committee.
The search committee will hold the same number of seats as the previous eight-member panel, which at that time included Gerry Finn, Paul Ouellette, Richard Crivello, Tina Landry, Brian Faulkner, Judy Monroe, Norman Thuot and Claudette Barrett.
Selectwoman Jennifer Dean Wing said some of those former members as well as other town residents have expressed an interest in sitting on the new committee.
Like the previous committee, the search panel will interview candidates and forward three finalists to the selectmen, who will conduct their own interviews.
Selectmen Chairman Joseph Rapoza said the entire search process could take three months, which means the town could have a new administrator on board in February.
“At this juncture I think the town really needs to consider having a strong administrator form of government,” Rapoza said, “but the issue we’re facing right now is that we have to figure out how we’re going to pay this individual. Between this time and the last time, the going rate in that field has increased significantly. Small towns are now paying town administrators and town managers in the area of $130,000 a year.”
When Callahan was hired in 2016, the salary offered by the town was about $70,000.
Paying an administrator $130,000 or more could be a challenge for town, which is trying close a massive $300,000 structural deficit and balance the town operating budget.
Callahan resigned to start a new job as town manager in Oxford, Mass. on Sept. 23. She has, however, agreed to
make herself available to her former bosses in Millville as a consultant through October so she can help the town with ongoing projects and its efforts to close the deficit.
Callahan was appointed in June 2016 as Millville’s first professional town administrator after town voters agreed to create the $70,000-a-year position. For years before that, the town had an executive secretary that assisted the Board of Selectmen.
The selectmen had been mulling the establishment of a town administrator position for the past few years, and it was one of the main recommendations in a financial management review drafted by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue’s Division of Local Services.
During her tenure as Millville’s administrator, Callahan was been credited with helping the town secure millions in state and federal grants, including a $1 million MassWorks grant for the town’s proposed $1.3 million Central Street Improvement project, an ambitious year-long construction project that will include new roadway reconstruction, sidewalks and drainage improvements and better connectivity to the town center for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Callahan was also instrumental in the project that re- furbished the American Legion Hall on Main Street into a the town’s new town hall after the existing Longfellow Municipal Center on Central Street was shuttered in the summer of 2016 because of serious structural issues.
She also introduced a strategy to crack down on tax scofflaws and more aggressively collect delinquent taxes and set the wheels in motion to demolish one of the town’s biggest eyesores, the Mug Pub on Main Street.
It was also Callahan who sounded a warning about the town’s longtime practice of balancing the town budget by relying on one-time reserves like stabilization, free cash and surplus, which is a practice frowned upon by the state. Faced with a massive deficit next year, the town pitched a $1.8 million property tax override to voters back in June, but it was rejected at the polls. As a result, the town has eliminated town trash service, closed the senior center and has turned off many of its street lights to cut costs.