In March, the Board of Selectmen commissioned and appointed a search committee to help the Board of Selectmen find a Town Administrator (TA) successor.

Members of that committee are:

  • Brian Boyle, chair
  • Fred Gaechter, vice-chair
  • Mary Abt
  • Bob Clayton (retired Yarmouth Town Administrator)
  • Linnet Hultin
  • Dan Smith
  • Phil Smith

The committee has met several times already to get ready for the task of helping to select for candidates. Once candidate resumes are received will come the task of reviewing and screening them.

The criteria will not be simple, just as Truro's challenges are not. Health care,  retirement benefits,  energy bills ... the cost of running Truro keeps going up.  But our revenues are unlikely to keep pace. The current budget task force is a good start.  But improved financial control will depend on the TA who can imagine, and implement, more strategic approaches.

One difficulty for a TA in Truro is that there are always dozens of issues that need to be dealt with.  So the TA has to differentiate between the urgent, the important, the immediate, and the critical ... then address them all.   Ideally the TA would be able to anticipate some of the issues before they bloom into critical problems... and propose solutions.

Conventional management solutions won’t solve the town’s problems, anymore: they are too complex and intractable.  So the next TA will need to develop imaginative management strategies.

The new TA has to challenge his/her team to improve individual and departmental performance, and make sure they have the skills, training, and incentive to do so.

It’s not enough to have an open door, although that is a necessity.  The new TA has to adopt a proactive stance on communication with the Board of Selectmen, employees, and the town at large. 

You too can help in defining the criteria for the new TA by completing the short Truro Citizen TA Survey.

Final selection of candidates will be made by the Board of Selectmen.

Interested candidates should send their confidential resume to the Town Administrator Search Committee, c/o Truro Town Hall.