Since I raised the subject of the Town Manager's annual contract extensions, I am surprised over the lack of concern on the part of the people on this list and from the members of the Board of Selectmen. Maybe people just don't understand the situation.
We are currently at the end of the third year with our town manager under the Town Manager Act. He was hired on a three year contract. His contract should now be expiring and subject to either renewal or dismissal. The disposition should be a decision of the BoS. But that decision is not going to happen. Here's why: At the end of the first year, his review was completed and rewarded with a one year extension to his contract. This gave him three years more. At the end of the second year, he got another one year extension thereby giving him another three years. Therefore after being employed for three years, he still has two years left on his contract. Next week he will be getting his annual review and the concern is that the Selectmen may vote again to grant yet another one year extension thereby extending his tenure for another three years. Some of the Selectmen originally got to be in their office because of the work done by their campaign manager, who is today the Town Manager. The point is not whether these extensions are legal - they may well be. Nor is the issue whether the TM is performing his job well or not. These extensions cause the Town to be locked (needlessly) into a contract which takes away our options. If, for some reason, this or a future Board of Selectmen wanted to hire a different TM, we would have to pay off the TMs employment contract. That would probably be a minimum of a quarter million dollars. Bottom line - we are effectively killing our ability to make a clean transition. Is this what good government is about? John Newman --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design softwareTo unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with body "unsubscribe frambors" (the subject is ignored).
