Editor’s Note: There was a delay in receiving Mayoral Notes for this week; hence, the column did not make it into the Oct. 17 edition.
At our last Council meeting, Assistant Mayor Bergeron read the latest memo (dated October 12) from Alan Gould, President of MRI. I thought I’d share that with you in the event you hadn’t attended the meeting or seen it on CCTV. Alan Gould wrote:
“After sending the last update, we processed one more resume bringing the total to 37 candidates. These resumes were received from candidates in 18 states, and one from an Air Force Base overseas in the UK. There were 6 candidates each from VT and NH; 5 from VA, 4 from FL, 3 from MA; and 1 each from ID, GA, NJ, TX, WV, WI, WA, CT, NY, OR, AZ, IL. Of these candidates, 2 have a Juris Doctor & Master’s degree, 3 hold a Juris Doctor and Bachelor’s degree, 27 have Master’s degrees, and 5 candidates have Bachelor’s degrees.
The resumes were ranked by the MRI team and essay questions were distributed to the top tier of candidates, which in this case, was 16 candidates. One of those 16 candidates has withdrawn because he has accepted another job. The essay responses are now being reviewed by the MRI team. We are also doing some very preliminary background work in preparation for our phone interviews. Those phone interviews should be completed by the end of next week. We expect that a few candidates may be eliminated due to issues we identify in our preliminary background work or for weaknesses identified in our phone interviews. As soon as those candidates have been screened out we will send the submittals of each of the remaining candidates to the Screening Committee for review.
The Screening Committee met for the first time on October 4th. The 13-member committee is charged with reading candidate applications, meeting with Municipal Resources Inc (MRI) which is the company conducting the search, and sitting in on a full day of interviews. It is anticipated that the Committee will spend approximately 20 hours completing their work which will begin in earnest after meeting with Mr. Gould this week.
Once the Screening Committee has reviewed the submittals from MRI, it will meet with Mr. Gould in order to reach a consensus on which six candidates will be invited to the panel interviews. Each of those candidates will be interviewed separately by the Screening Committee, facilitated by an MRI consultant, and by a panel of MRI public management specialists. The Committee and the MRI panel will then meet to discuss the interview results and come to a consensus regarding the top three candidates.
Upon consensus, the Committee will bring forward the top three candidates and the Council will interview each candidate. It is anticipated that the Council will make its final decision in November.
Charlene Lovett is the Mayor of Claremont. Please email questions, comments or concerns to her at clovett.ccc@gmail.com or char_lovett@hotmail.com.
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