Dalton Select Board Hires Consultant for Town Manager Search
DALTON, Mass. — The town has hired Municipal Resources Inc. to conduct a thorough search for its next town manager.
During the Select Board meeting last week, the consultants Reginald "Buzz" Stapczynski and Robert Mercier introduced themselves and outlined the recruitment process.
"I think it's a consensus of the board that we would like to have someone on board for a two-week training period, on or about mid-September," Select Board member John Boyle said.
Interim Henry "Terry" Williams III said his training period was invaluable to him so having one for the new town manager would be beneficial.
Municipal Resources is a local government management consulting firm that has been in operation for over 30 years in New Hampshire, Stapczynski said.
It offers various municipal consulting services, including recruitment, special police investigations, assessment centers for police and fire chief promotions, municipal assessment, and special projects such as staffing and reorganization studies for municipalities, he said.
Both Stapczynski and Mercier have experience as a town manager and have been in the industry for several decades. The organization typically conducts three to five searches for town managers annually.
"We've done a lot of towns. I've watched your meetings. Civility is present in Dalton. I can't say that about some towns we've done in the past. So, congrats to you folks. It's important for us, and I think it helps in any search," Mercier said.
"I know Terry is filling in for you folks, and we knew [former Town Manager Thomas Hutcheson.] Stability helps. It helps your recruitment. It helps us in finding potential candidates because nobody wants to walk into a train wreck, to be honest, and you're not that, so that's going to help us."
As part of the process, Municipal Resources will conduct individual interviews with the Select Board, search committee members, and key department heads.
The organization can establish an email address so that community members can communicate with them about the traits and characteristics they would like to see in the next manager, Stapczynski said.
It will develop a detailed community profile, highlighting what the community wants in a town manager and issues or projects happening or in the pipeline that applicants should be aware of.
With this information, they will develop a job ad which will be published in professional publications including The Mass Municipal Beacon and other municipal associations in New England, Stapczynski said.
The town can also consider whether it wants to put the ad in the New York Association of Towns and the International City Management Association newsletter, which gets worldwide coverage, he said.
The consultants intend to publish the job advertisement by mid-July and it will have to be up for 30 days, as that is what most of the posting platforms require, Mercier said.
The board will need to discuss salaries given the competitive market for town managers in Western Massachusetts, he said.
"We've done some towns that are a quarter of a million dollars in salaries, but you guys aren't there, but you're moving up," Mercier said.
"We saw what you advertised for 2026. We think we need to talk to you a little bit about that."
Dalton is not the only town in the Berkshires and surrounding area looking for a new Town Manager, including Adams and Hadley, Stapczynski said.
"Your location, I think our thoughts are, is going to be a little bit restrictive in terms of the recruitment territory," Mercier said.
The good news is that MRI doesn't just work in Massachusetts but also in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and other locations, he said.
"We recruit people from those areas, and a lot of it's revolving around folks who moved up there for various reasons, and now want to come back to Massachusetts. So, we've got that base of folks that not a lot of people reach, but we have some databases built on candidates that have applied in a lot of those communities," Mercier said.
"So we think we have some people we're going to be interested in. The question for them is relocation. And, hopefully, and we've seen it happen, some people want to come back … And by the way, you've got a beautiful area to attract people."
Board discussions surrounding the candidates must be held in open session; however, the screening committee is eligible to hold an executive session to review candidates, Stapczynski said.
"We'll bring candidates to the screening committee, and we'll tell them everything we know about them. They'll get their resume, their cover letter, and then our folks in our office are very diligent about doing background checks, [and] Google checks," he said.
"This is not a reference check, but we will find out quite a bit of about the candidate that you can get from from a deep dive into Facebook or Google or whatever, and we will tell them the good, the bad and the ugly about the candidates, and they will then decide who they want to interview. They'll interview folks, and at the end of the interview process, we ask them to decide who they want to send forward to the Select Board."
The Select Board must decide how many applicants they want to move forward and interview before making a final decision.
Tags: search committee, town administrator,
