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Resident screening-committee member urges more specific qualifications, background checks for Danvers town manager search
Summary
Public commenter Coley Rybicki, a town meeting member and screening-committee participant, told the Select Board the posted town manager job description lacks explicit experience requirements and urged adding defined skills, municipal management benchmarks and mandatory background checks for finalists.
Coley Rybicki, a town meeting member and member of the town manager screening committee, asked the Select Board to strengthen the publicly posted town manager job description to specify required knowledge and experience and to confirm that finalist background checks will be performed.
Rybicki told the board he reviewed the job description posted on the town site and material on the search firm's site and found both weak on concrete qualifications. He proposed language to add to the public posting, including a bachelor's or master's degree in public policy or related experience with 10 years of experience; oversight experience of a municipality with about 300 employees and a $125,000,000 budget; experience with union negotiations; management of municipally-owned utilities; strategic planning and IT modernization work; and experience interfacing with state and federal authorities during a major municipal incident. He also recommended language requiring finalists to pass criminal, credit and education background checks.
Rybicki said the more specific criteria would help attract candidates with the right background and provide screening committee members clearer evaluation criteria. The Select Board chair responded that the contract with the search firm would be checked and that the finalists would receive background checks before appearing before the board.
No formal action was taken; the chair said staff would share Rybicki's suggestions with the screening committee and would confirm the search firm's contract provisions concerning background checks.
