SOUTHBRIDGE – The Town Manager Search Committee Monday night selected Mayor Daniel M. Knapik as one of three candidates who will be interviewed Thursday for appointment as the town manager of the 17,000 resident community on the state’s border with Connecticut.
Shaun Moriarty, chairman of the Southbridge Board of Alderman said Monday night that Knapik brings a range of experience which will benefit residents of Southbridge if he is selected Thursday night.
“We like his track record and the fact that he has served as both mayor and a City Council member in Westfield,” Moriarty said. “We look at Westfield as not being horribly different from Southbridge, although we are not a college town.”
Knapik gained support within the search committee to advance to the final interview and selection process Thursday. The salary range is up to $142,000 a year.
Moriarty said that the Southbridge budget is about $52 million.
“It’s a smaller budget than Westfield’s, but Southbridge is not without challenges and complexities for whoever serves as the next town manager,” Moriarty said.
Moriarty said the nine-members of the town council sets goal and objectives for the town manager and is the town’s appropriation authority.
“We use a city form of government where the town council is the legislative branch and the executive branch duties are split between the council and town manager,” Moriarty said.
Knapik said this morning that he applied for the town manager post because Southbridge has “some serious challenges and if they were just looking for someone to keep the seat warm, I wouldn’t be interested.”
“Their situation is very similar to that of Westfield when I took office, a community filled with hope and potential, so there are a lot of similar style challenges,” Knapik said. “I was able to accomplish some of the city’s goals in Westfield during my tenure and hope to do the same in Southbridge. They have a very comprehensive master plan that I’ve been reviewing for several weeks now.”
Knapik said that his experience as chairman of the city’s School Committee will also be an asset in Southbridge where the schools are underperforming.
“We had similar problems in Westfield where we were able to put the right people in the positions to make good decisions that have benefited our school system and students,” Knapik said.
Knapik said that while he plans to become “part of the Southbridge community” if named to the post, the town does not require him to relocate his family to that community, a factor in his decision to seek the job.
“It’s just down the (Massachusetts) Turnpike, so I’ll be able to commute,” Knapik said.
The other two finalists for town manager are Michael E. Embury, manager of North Kingstown, Rhode Island and Hanson Town Administrator Ronald S. San Angelo, according to the The Worcester Telegram.
Seven semifinalists were interviewed.
Embury has been manager of North Kingstown since January 2007. The town has more than 28,000 residents, and its recently passed budget was more than $99 million. Both are significantly larger than Southbridge.
Embury wrote that he has had a very good working relationship with his local chamber of commerce, and pointed out that North Kingstown has a business park that has been an economic engine.
He added that he has been able to successfully negotiate several concessions from town unions while providing them with fair settlements for wages and benefits.
Embury recently wrote a letter to the North Kingstown Patch addressing “a chorus of claims” that the town had been mismanaged, “despite the fact that the community continues to enjoy an enviable bond rating and fiscally sound reputation within the financial community.”
He was also town administrator of Middletown, Rhode Island, from 1989 to 2003 before taking a job in the private sector for four years.
San Angelo, town administrator of Hanson, which has a population of 10,000 and a budget of more than $22 million, both smaller than Southbridge, served four years as town administrator for the borough of Naugatuck, Connecticut, which he said had an $85 million budget.
