WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday moved forward on several of the candidate searches confronting the town this spring, picking a headhunter firm for the permanent town manager search, agreeing to some parameters for the interim town manager search and naming an advisory panel to help find an interim police chief.

 

That advisory group will help guide outgoing Town Manager Jason Hoch, who is the hiring authority for all department heads in town government, including the Williamstown Police Department.

 

After nearly nine months of turmoil surrounding the Police Department which led to the departures of both its former chief and Hoch himself, he made it clear this winter that he wants the advice of a diverse group of residents before hiring a temporary replacement for former Chief Kyle Johnson.

 

Select Board member Anne O'Connor reported to her colleagues that 22 residents submitted letters of interest to serve on the advisory panel. From that group, O'Connor and Hoch selected: Barbara Carr, Aruna D'Souza, Hugh Guilderson, Ralph Hammann, Wade Hasty, Erin Keiser-Clark, Jay Merselis and Natalia Romano Gehlot.

 

"These eight selected were selected, as much as possible, to reflect diversity and a range of voices in the community," O'Connor said.

 

"The goal of the first meeting will be to review the goals and aspirations each volunteer has for the interim chief and review the job description before it gets posted. … Given that the goal is to find candidates with executive experience in policing, there's a fairly small group of professional mailing lists and websites most visible to candidates of that type."

 

Hoch said he expects the candidate pool to be somewhat small, and his hope is to bring all candidates to the advisory panel with some information on candidates' backgrounds.

 

"I think if we define our pool even smaller, it will be more challenging," Hoch said. "I'd rather be able to just have that conversation with the committee: Here's the pool, here are the tradeoffs, are we OK with these or not?"

 

The other big hole to fill in the town's management structure is the seat currently held by Hoch, who last month announced he would is leaving his position at the end of April.

 

On Monday, the Select Board agreed to use HrGov, the same search firm the town used to find Hoch in 2015, to help find the next town manager.

 

Andrew Hogeland vetted potential headhunters, presenting his colleagues with three options on Monday night. The quotes for services ranged from a low of $20,500 (Community Paradigm) to a high of $32,000 (HrGov).

 

Several of the current Select Board members were on board for the last town manager search, and the experience with HrGov was positive.

 

"As someone who has gone through painful senior executive searches, I appreciated that they did a lot of the really hard administrative work where they could come back and give us references," said Jane Patton, drawing on her professional experience outside of municipal government. "They had staff on site when we were going through this. I personally valued that very much. They took a lot of the grind out of it, and we were also able to come back and ask questions.

 

"Six years later, I still have positive feelings about the work they did."

 

Hoch said he had direct experience with two of the three firms on the table and had heard good things about the third from colleagues in the field.

 

"I found the process HrGov used interesting and slightly different than what I had experienced with any other firm," he said. "I had an early pre-interview prescreen with them. That was an interesting and useful piece for them to not just have paper prescreening. Their reference check was early in the process, not late in the process.

 

"Often you're reference checking once you've landed on who you want, and it becomes an echo chamber. … I heard from one of my references that it was a pretty rigorous conversation they sought to have. I liked that approach."

 

Hugh Daley said the work plan laid out by HrGov was a good fit for Williamstown's needs.

 

"I'd love to see these firms with a more survey-driven approach," he said. "I'm not sure if that's what these have. It does look like HrGov does the most upfront work, but it does cost significantly more.

 

"I think that getting the front end of this right is going to help a long way at the end."

 

The Select Board talked a little about the search committee it plans to pull together for the permanent town manager search. In addition to accepting volunteers, as the board did for the interim police chief search, Hogeland said he wants to recruit community members with management experience for the town manager search panel.

 

The search committee will do the initial screening and recommend finalists to the Select Board for final interviews and selection, likely sometime in the summer.

 

In the meantime, one of the board's priorities is finding an interim replacement for Hoch who can "keep the lights on" at Town Hall while the permanent search progresses.

 

The board announced a couple of weeks ago to handle that interim search on its own. 

 

But it agreed Monday that it wants to give residents an opportunity to participate in the expedited process.

 

Hogeland announced that the board will accept through March 15 questions that members of the community would like to pose to interim town manager candidates. Those questions can be submitted through next Monday to selectboard@williamstownma.gov.

 

Also on Monday, the Select Board agreed that it wants Hogeland and Daley, who are reviewing applications that come in to Town Hall, to recommend a couple of finalists after they have had a chance to meet (virtually) with representative members of the town's staff and provide feedback to the search group.

 

It also agreed, on advice from Hoch, that a part-time interim town manager who did at least part of the job remotely would be a workable solution to the town's short-term need.

 

"I think given the window of time you're looking at, part-time is a possibility," Hoch said. "We are now in the most intense part of the municipal schedule, the town meeting lead-up. … In a non-COVID year, the period from when the warrant is put to bed and through the summer, the volume is different.

 

"The caution would be to leave yourself a check-in if your permanent [search] process slows for any reason. While part-time is feasible through September, once you start getting back through the end of that period, the intensity will need to pick up again."

 

Jeffrey Thomas said he was concerned about the idea of a part-time manager if that meant the person in that position worked a set number of defined hours and would not be available if a situation arose outside that timeframe. Daley and Hogeland agreed to clarify that with candidates they screen.

 

Hoch agreed.

 

"My first pass recommendation would be consistent availability," he said. "Nothing in this job happens neatly Monday through Friday between 11 and 2."