Great Barrington — The search for a permanent town manager continued on Tuesday, September 30, as the Selectboard interviewed three candidates at a special meeting.
The position was left vacant in January after then-Town Manager Mark Pruhenski left to take on that position for the town of Middlebury, Vt. Since Pruhenski’s departure, Town Planner Chris Rembold has served as the interim town manager.
The Selectboard formed a Town Manager Screening Committee back in January and hired Community Paradigm Associates of Plymouth, Mass., for the search.
The Selectboard interviewed two candidates in April, but the majority of the board decided to pass on both candidates.
In July, the board interviewed Newport, R.I., Director of Public Services William Riccio, and while the board voted to hire Riccio, he ultimately turned down the town’s job offer.
At the beginning of the September 30 meeting, Bernard Lynch, founder and principal of Community Paradigm Associates of Plymouth, Mass., told the Selectboard that there have been 30 applicants for the position since it became open in January.
According to Lynch, the town has received 13 applications for the position since Riccio turned down the offer.
The first candidate the Selectboard interviewed during their September 30 meeting was Jonathan Elwell.
A native of Brattleboro, Vt., Elwell most recently served as the general manager of the Electric Department of the Town of Lyndon, Vt., from March 2022 to February 2025. He previously served as the village manager for the town of Enosburg Falls, Vt., from September 2004 to February 2022.
“I would like to help this community move itself forward and try to make it become an even better version of itself than it is now,” Elwell told the Selectboard in his opening remarks. “I know that you guys probably have a lot of plans that you have discussed over the years. I just looked at your master plan to see some of the things that were discussed, and I would take it as a great honor if you ended up selecting me to do my very best to help the community move forward.”
Selectboard member Garfield Reed said he is concerned that Elwell spent less than three years working at the Electric Department in Lyndon, Vt. “I also noticed that you had many hats and you had many different jobs there,” Reed said. “I was wondering about your length of time [at the department]. If you started something here, would you see it through to the end?”
“I would be committed to fulfilling the agreed upon contract between myself and the Selectboard, whether it is three or five years—whatever you guys want to do,” Elwell responded. “Municipal management is where my heart is; that’s what I studied specifically for. That [Electric Department] job was a really great experience for me, and I have nothing bad to say about the community. It was a really good experience, but now I’m looking to come back into municipal management as a whole, and not looking specifically at just a department.”
“Can you speak to an instance where, in any part of your career, where you’ve come into a new position, went through a process of learning and understanding, and then decided that you needed to make a specific change in a policy or a protocol?” Selectboard member Philip Orenstein asked Elwell. “And that change may have been met with some objection, but you nevertheless decided to go through with that?”
“There was a municipality that I worked for that, when I first started there, they were not doing annual evaluations of employees or any evaluations of employees,” Elwell said. “I am a strong supporter of doing that. I think it’s important for the organization and the employee. Even if they are a little resistant to it at first, employees need to get feedback from their employer about how they are doing, both good and bad.”
Elwell said some of the employees for the municipality, which he did not name, were “not very keen on this idea.” “It took a little bit of time to push this idea forward,” he said. “I told people, ‘Well, it’s coming. I’m not going to force it on you immediately, but I’m telling you it’s coming, and we are going to do this.’ After about two years, I got people warmed up enough [to the idea] and I decided, OK, everybody has been warned. In the end, I was able to convince [the employees] that in the long run it was going to be a good thing for everybody, including union members. We got [employee evaluations] built into the next set of union contracts.”
The next candidate interviewed by the Selectboard was Buzzards Bay, Mass., Assistant Town Administrator Liz Hartsgrove, a native of Washington, D.C.
Hartsgrove has served as Buzzards Bay’s assistant town administrator since December 2022. She previously served in several roles for the town of Barnstable, Mass., including its consumer affairs supervisor from August 2014 to June 2018, the assistant director of planning and development from June 2018 to March 2021, and the town’s deputy director of asset management and its licensing director from March 2021 to December 2022.
“I’m kind of at a crossroads in my life and as well as my career,” Hartsgrove told the Selectboard. “I’ve gone as far as I can on the Cape in the current spectrum. There are only 15 towns on the Cape, so that means there are only 15 opportunities for people. It’s very hard for me to have an opportunity for a town manager role. My husband just recently retired, and we are becoming empty nesters in a few months, so my husband is basically now portable. We’ve decided that this is a great opportunity to reimagine our next chapter in our life, and this position is a really wonderful fit for me.”
Reed asked Hartsgrove whether, if she were hired, “this is something you are going to enjoy for a while then move on?”
“If you do hire me, you will find that I’m very honest and transparent with my conversations, and you’re asking me to actually forecast something that I don’t know yet,” Hartsgrove responded. “However, I am here to commit to Great Barrington. I would not apply if I was not ready to commit, and I would not waste your time applying [for this position]. I don’t see this as a stop-gap [position] in any way.”
Selectboard member Eric Gabriel asked Hartsgrove how she would keep morale and motivation high and how she would build teams for town employees if she became the town manager.
“It’s vital, and I see it as a missing component from a lot of town managers,” Hartsgrove said. “I’ve worked with about 15 different town managers, and I have assessed the pros and cons of their skill sets. A lot of [the town managers missed skills in] team building, morale, paying attention to your staff, and understanding that you have a responsibility. Your responsibility is to keep the culture in check, making sure that everybody is lined up, and making really tough decisions that many disagree with in your staff, as well as some of the community members. If the Selectboard is instructing me and voting to guide the staff in a certain direction, we have a responsibility to follow through with that. The participatory component of it is very vital.”
As an example, Hartsgrove cited her time in Barnstable where she “was instructed to overhaul the [town’s] complete parking division.” “It has 20 individuals in the department, and an additional 12 seasonal employees,” she said. “It oversees 500 miles of road in the 76 square miles of town. It issues over 10,000 parking tickets a year. Anything to do with public safety or enforcement has a negative connotation. How can we shift that towards a positive? That was my instruction when I came on to Barnstable, and I involved the entire community for that before I made any decisions.”
The last candidate interviewed at the meeting was West Stockbridge Town Administrator Marie Ryan.
Great Barrington resident Ryan is the only candidate from the Berkshire County area. She has served as the town administrator, assistant town clerk, and assistant town treasurer for West Stockbridge since July 2019. She previously served as Great Barrington’s town clerk from June 2007 to August 2019 and from May 2024 to August 2024. She has also served as the town clerk for Richmond from April 2017 to August 2019 and for Monterey from December 2018 to May 2019.
In her opening statement, Ryan said that she was on the Town Manager Screening Committee two times this year. “As we kept going through those interviews and trying to get good candidates, the more we did it, the more I kept thinking ‘You know, I think I should do this,’” she recounted. “There are so many things in common [with being the town administrator for West Stockbridge] that I felt would be helpful for a transition.”
Ryan added, “I’m very much a people person.”
Selectboard member Gabriel asked Ryan about her strategies in building teams and boosting employee morale.
“I really like to have meetings, but I don’t have them as much in West Stockbridge because a lot of [employees] work part time,” Ryan responded. “But I do meet with everybody at least once a week. Recently, I had to have the Police Department do something that they really didn’t want to do. But I said, ‘We’re a team. We all have to work together. You have to help me on this because it’ll help the town, and I think it will make them look better as well.’ I really want to stress the team thing because you look better, you want to look good, and you want the community to see your office running smoothly and being supportive of the community. The only way to do that is to get along. You don’t want to come in and hear people fighting and arguing with other departments and saying, ‘That’s not my job.’ I would encourage [employees] to be collaborative and communicate.”
The Selectboard is scheduled to hold a meeting on Monday, October 6, at 5 p.m., to discuss the candidates and possibly vote on selecting a candidate.
Click here for the candidates’ full resumes.
