Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Monday, October 19th, 2026 uh town council workshop.

Um, I'm gonna turn over to as you notice we have uh staff, different staff here for this meeting.

We do not currently have the assistant town manager or town manager because we're gonna be talking about our town manager search, and so we want to make sure that we are as neutral, you know, as as possible.

Um so instead we have our lovely human resources director, Jody here.

Do you want to uh was this meeting properly noticed?

It was.

Perfect.

Um currently we have all members present except for counselor Ecker, who is going to be joining on Zoom shortly.

So as you may or may not have seen, we this workshop is to talk about the town manager search process and to start to um get the lay of the land, brief everyone so you know what's going on and kind of make some preliminary straw polls so that way our lovely director here knows the direction to start moving in.

Um to level set with everyone to make sure we're all aware, our current town manager's end date is uh January 1, 2028.

So that means that we will be starting the search in 2027.

Uh in order to do that, we need to do some a little bit of legwork here just to kind of get you up to speed as to what's going on.

Um rest assured, uh since we I that was the first task uh as part of my group that came in.

I know Jamie was part of that group, and maybe Steve of choosing a new town manager.

So we've some of us have gone through this process already, um, and we're here to you know ensure that nothing gets missed.

But without further ado, I'm gonna turn it over to Director Dorisco.

All right, thank you for having me this evening.

What I've handed out to all of you is a town manager access executive search guide, which is meant as more of a resource for you to resort to throughout the search if you have questions about what we're supposed to be doing and when, but it's not really what I'm going to review this evening with you.

But just wanted to let you know it's additional resource as we navigate the next 15 months of this process.

I'm sure we'll need to jog our memory plenty of times about what the next step is and what questions we should be asking ourselves in terms of being prepared for the next decision in the process.

Um

before we get started, I just want to acknowledge how lucky we are that we have 14, 15 months advanced uh notice from the town manager so that we can proactively plan for this process.

That's not something that we have the opportunity to do with every single search.

Um so it does give us a unique opportunity.

It is an important leadership transition for the town of Brunswick.

The decisions we make about the search process, the qualities we seek in the next town manager, and the transition itself will influence the town's leadership and organizational effectiveness.

My goal is to walk through the major decision points, identify what council needs to determine and establish a realistic timeline so we can move forward in an organized

way.

Before we discuss the option, um if we can pull up our presentation and go to slide one.

Today is not about selecting a new town manager.

We do not need to resolve every detail of the recruitment process.

The objective is to establish the framework for the search.

There are several foundational decisions we need to

make,

such as does the council want to manage the search internally or engage an executive search form.

How do we divide responsibilities between council staff and a potential firm?

What do we want in our next town manager?

And how will we work backward from the anticipated transition date?

We should leave today with the direction on major issues and a clear understanding of which decisions must be made now and which can be developed over the coming months.

Next slide.

Hold on a second.

Do you have a question, Counselor Ellis?

Yeah, uh, just the concept that we're making decisions at a workshop.

Are we allowed to do that?

So the way that we won't be making any funding decisions.

We won't be making any we're so the director's gonna be looking for some direction.

We'll straw poll um is the way that it will work.

And then if there's so if we do decide to go with a firm or this council seems like a firm is the way to go, it's gonna have to come back to council to get approval anyways.

Um, same thing with any other um like job posting.

Yep.

So uh this is just kind of temperature checking, and then we'll have to in public make a actual decision.

And just to clarify, I wasn't looking to avoid decisions, it's just I didn't want to break the law and doing such.

Yeah.

So this will just give a temperature check.

So the reason we're having this decision now is because we have advanced notice.

Our current manager has indicated an intention to retire effective January 1, 2028.

Working backward from that date, we have approximately 14 to 15 months.

It seems like a considerable amount of time, but the executive recruitment involves several stages.

We need to define the position, leadership, profile, establish compensation and employment agreement parameters, determine our recruitment strategy, attract qualified candidates, evaluate finalists, negotiate an agreement, and plan for a knowledge transfer from one manager to another.

Starting now also gives us a better chance of reaching candidates who are currently employed in executive positions and may need to provide a substantial notice to their current employers.