Group narrows manager search

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on November 11, 2005

The Select Board said Sunday it could identify eight or more semifinalists to succeed Barry Del Castilho as town manager as early as this week and no later than Thanksgiving. A first round of interviews with them will be set for the weekends of Dec. 3 to 4 and Dec. 10 to 11.

Of the 38 applicants, only two are women, the Select Board revealed.

Board members said they do not know whether the ethnicity or race of the any of the applicants, except what they could gather from their names. Only one of the applicants sent a photograph, member Gerald Weiss said.

Weiss said most of the applicants learned of the job through trade journals in which the town advertised the manager's position rather than through the Boston Globe or New York Times. He would not say whether John Musante, the town's finance director, is one of eight semifinalists identified so far, in answer to a question from the Citizens Advisory Committee charged with helping the board select a new town manager.

Del Castilho, who has been town manager for 23 years and earns $125,421 a year, retires this spring.

The citizens committee, at its meeting Sunday, voted to support the Select Board's decision on whether to proceed to the next phase of the search with the eight semifinalists or add two or more to the list before reviewing all of the semifinalists' names.

The committee members will see the resumes for the first time sometime before Thanksgiving, Select Board members said.

The board tentatively plans to conduct a second round of interviews with finalists in mid January and identify the new town manager in mid-February, member Anne Awad said.

Members don't plan to do reference checks until they have identified the finalists, Awad said.

The next meeting is set for Tuesday, Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. at a location to be determined.