BLANDFORD – At the Annual Town Meeting on Monday night, the future structure of the town government will be decided, at least for a year. Residents will be voting on Article 6, a Citizen’s Petition submitted by town resident Don Carpenter, to see if the town will vote to fund the Town Administrator salary line at $1 for fiscal year 2018.
Blandford town administrator Angeline Ellison. (Photo by Amy Porter)
Currently, the position of town administrator is held by Angeline Ellison of Sturbridge. Ellison started on the job in September, 2016, at a part-time salary of $40,000. Her salary is in the FY18 budget for the same amount. Passage of Article 6, however, would effectively eliminate her position.“Yes, the passage of the article would leave us without a TA effective the start of the fiscal year,” said Board of Selectman chair Adam Dolby on Friday. Both the Finance Committee and the Board of Selectmen recommended that the town take no action on the article.
Dolby went on to say that the position of TA is critical to Blandford, “because essentially every position in town is part-time (save four guys on the Highway dept.).There’s just too much that falls through the cracks when everyone has very limited hours to do things. You need someone that is in town hall, empowered to make decisions, and it’s their job to do so, not a pet project or volunteer gig.”
At an all-department meeting on January 4, which coincidentally took place one day after the announcement by Attorney General Maura Healey of the indictment of former tax collector LeeAnn Thompson on charges of stealing more than $150,000 from the town, Dolby spoke about some of the changes taking place, many due to the hiring of Ellison in September. Dolby said that Ellison had been put in charge of groups that the Board directly supervises, and was putting in place controls, hours and changes of contact. At the meeting, he asked that those groups go through Ellison on questions for the Board.
Blandford Select Board chair Adam Dolby. (Photo by Amy Porter)
Friday, Dolby explained that prior to hiring Ellison, management responsibilities fell to the selectmen, which meant that staff had three managers who could only make collective decisions once a week in open meeting, and who all had full-time jobs. Dolby said that situation was untenable, so the board at the time moved to assign liaisons to various positions that would be able to make suggestions and report in to the Board.
The town’s budget included a part-time town administrator position as early FY 16, but they were unable to hire that year due to an increase in the Gateway allocation to Blandford and a shortfall in FEMA reimbursement due to irregularities in the contracts that were awarded. At a Board of Selectmen meeting in November of 2015, Selectman Andy Montanaro asked that the process of hiring a town administrator begin. “I’m as anxious as I was to recruit a town administrator,” Montanaro said at the time.
Blandford also underwent a financial management review by the Department of Revenue (DOR) in August of 2011 that made twenty specific recommendations, and admonished the town for poor financial practices and a lack of oversight. Among the recommendations were to convert the collector and treasurer from elected to appointed positions, and to hire a town administrator.
The last town administrator in Blandford was Matthew Kerwood, who served the town from July 2007 to December 2008. Since he left, Kerwood has served as town administrator for the town of Richmond, Mass.
