Ask Rex Peterson, Truro’s newly-appointed Town Administrator, how he came to live on the Outer Cape, and you’ll hear a familiar story. Like so many wash-ashores, he drove down to Provincetown for a vacation one summer ... and liked the area so much he never left.
Born in Western Nebraska, one of five children of a small-town cattle rancher, he came East to school, earning a Bachelor of Science Degree at Northwestern University and a Master's Degree in Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. After that, though, he wasn’t sure what to do. So in the summer of 1987, he decided to take a break and drove to Provincetown for what was supposed to be a short-term change of pace.
Before the summer ended, he knew he was hooked.
“I always thought that I was a city boy at heart,” he remembers. “But when I found myself back in a small town environment, I realized how much I really liked it.
“I faced a common problem once I decided to stay, though. Originally I worked at the Mews during the summers, and drew unemployment when the restaurant closed. But I needed to find a full-time job.”
That job, and the launch of a career in public service, came in the town of Dennis, where a young town planner named Charleen Greenhalgh hired him as her assistant in 1993.
“Town government turned out to be a good fit for me,” he says. “I found the work challenging, and it played to my strengths. By nature I’m a collaborator. My strengths are organizing and leading teams and getting people to work together. I can communicate a goal and bring out the strongest skills of all the team members.”
Over the 19 years and four different positions that followed, Peterson gained a rich education in all the facets of small-town administration on Cape Cod. After three years in Dennis he moved to Provincetown, where he coordinated permitting in the Department of Regulatory Management and served as staff liaison to the town’s regulatory Boards. After three years in Provincetown he moved to Eastham, where he served as the Town Planner for two years. In 2001 he moved to Wellfleet, where he has served as the Assistant Town Administrator and the Interim Town Administrator, responsible for everything from finance and personnel management to collective bargaining and procurement.
Wellfleet has been his home ever since. He shares a house with his partner of twenty years, retired art teacher Tom Funk. Also, he serves as a Red Cross emergency volunteer and a board member of both the Eastham Arboretum and the Community Leadership Institute of Cape Cod.
“I love the Lower Cape,” he says, “the people, the pace, the informality. I like that you can get to know everyone, the people who fix your car or fix your furnace. And I like the pace of life here, both the excitement and energy of the summer season and the solitude and quiet time of the off season.”
Last March, when he saw the ad for applicants for the position of Town Administrator in Truro, he decided to apply. “It seemed like the next step for me professionally.”
The Story of the Search: And then there was one...
Back in March, when the search for a new Town Administrator began, the Board of Selectmen was clear in the charge they delivered to the newly-formed Search Committee. The Committee was to cast a wide net -- but only to recommend candidates they agreed were fully qualified to step into the position.
The appointed Committee is a distinguished and varied group. Along with Chair Brian Boyle, the editor of the Truro eNewsletter and the leader of the push for “Green Community” status, members include former Selectman Fred Gaechter; Truro Central School’s music teacher Mary Abt; current FinCom Chair Phil Smith; long-time FinCom member Linnet Hultin; TNRTA representative Dan Smith; and Bob Lawton, the retired Town Administrator from Yarmouth.
The Committee advertised nationally, announcing the opening through internet job sites, newspapers and professional journals, and personal contact by Committee members.
They had a clear sense of what a good candidate would look like. They asked the Board of Selectman to identify the issues and challenges a new TA would need to face. They interviewed town department heads about their challenges and used those interviews to create a priority list of characteristics and skills. Finally, they polled the community by using a survey through the Truro eNewsletter to identify the public’s greatest concerns.
The concerns of the BoS, the department heads, and the public were remarkably similar. The new TA, they agreed, would need to possess effective communication skills, a strong commitment to finance and cost control, and the ability to plan for the future. He or she would need to have strong organizational and problem solving abilities, along with a willingness to roll up shirt sleeves to tackle a myriad of day-to-day tasks.
Forty-five would-be candidates filed applications. But, based on their resumes, only 11 were considered to have the necessary educational background and relevant experience.
Those 11 were sent a list of written questions, and a final total of six candidates invited to meet the Committee for a face-to-face interview.
Face-to-face interviews cut the field down to three: Wellfleet’s Peterson, along with Jeff Repp from Cumberland, Maryland, and Robert Whritenour from Falmouth.
Three days before the interview was scheduled, Mr. Repp informed the Committee that he had taken another job, leaving just two candidates. Then, on the day of the interview itself, Mr. Whritenour accepted the TA’s job in Oak Bluffs, leaving only Mr. Peterson to meet and answer Selectman’s questions.
Peterson’s interview was a home run: he was thoughtful, knowledgeable, and genial, with the skills and temperament the BoS felt the Truro TA’s job demanded. Furthermore, he was well-known to most of the Board, who worked with him on assorted projects for more than a decade. But there was some hesitation about offering him the job as a single candidate. Would it make more sense to look further, the Board wondered?
TA Search Committee Chair Brian Boyle mustered the arguments in favor of Peterson, arguments that ultimately carried the day. “It’s unfortunate that we have recently lost two of our three finalists for the Town Administrator’s position,” he wrote. “One candidate remains. Fortunately, we believe he is also the best choice for Truro of all 45 applicants in the search process."
“The Search Committee’s members earlier chose not to reveal our ranking of the three finalists out of concern that doing so might bias your decision. Now that we have lost two of them, we believe it might be helpful for you to know that Rex Peterson was our first choice of the three – all of the Committee’s members ranked him first."
“You are now faced with a 'yes-or-no' decision with respect to Mr. Peterson, rather than a choice among candidates. But, you can decide 'yes,' knowing that all seven members of the Search Committee would make the same decision and that the end result, in our opinion, would be the same even if the other qualified candidates had remained in the running."
On August 25th, convinced that we had a candidate who would bring extraordinary professional and personal skills to Truro, the Board voted unanimously to offer the TA position to Rex Peterson, who accepted enthusiastically. Once contract details are worked out, he should begin work early in October.
For other candidates, as Chairman Boyle pointed out, Truro’s size and relatively isolated location were both negatives.
But not for Peterson, who sounds like many of us who have made the Outer Cape our adopted home. “I don’t think I would ever apply for a job that meant going past the rotary.”
Sincerely,
Curtis Hartman
Chair, Board of Selectmen
eNewsletter@truro-ma.gov
(508) 349-7004