Selectmen this week started hashing out a new job description for Southborough’s Town Administrator. Current Town Administrator Jean Kitchen will retire next month, and selectmen hope to strengthen the role of her successor by delegating as many of their day-to-day responsibilities as town bylaws will allow.
I wasn’t at the board’s meeting this week (bad blogger), but the Metrowest Daily News was. Here’s what they had to say.
During the discussion, selectmen discussed a desire to give the new town administrator broader authority over areas like collective bargaining, municipal budgets and chain of command.
“This is a good step,” (Franklin Town Administrator Jeffrey Nutting) said, noting that it will make the town administrator’s job harder because the process is new and will require some growing pains.
He said the stronger town administrator could be a bridge to an eventual town manager once residents have a chance to see the benefits of taking day-to-day responsibilities away from selectmen.
The discussion about the town administrator job description was not specifically called out on the selectmen’s agenda for the week. Instead, the discussion took place under an agenda item called “Goal Setting.” The MWDN asked for a copy of the job description discussed at the meeting, but was not immediately provided one.
You can read all the details in this article by the MWDN.
