ISLESBORO, Maine — The Islesboro town manager has resigned one month after signing a two-year contract to extend his position.
Jeffrey Grossman has been the town manager for the island since November 2009.
Islesboro officials said Wednesday that Grossman will leave his post at the end of this month. The town has not selected anyone to replace him.
Town clerks Wednesday would not speculate about why Grossman left, but the Village Soup newspapers suggested he had difficulty getting along with the town’s new board of selectmen.
This is a common problem with many town managers. You really can’t follow your own ideas in governing the town, the selectmen have the control, and if you don’t like it you resign.
Spoken like a Selectmen for a small community. I was clever enough to get a bunch of people to vote for me now its my way or the highway the **ll with what is best for the community or the citizens.
Sounds like the standard governing formula at all levels of government.
it will be interesting to follow the new board and see how long they last, and if the people they represent will continue to support them.
The only managers who do not have this problem are the ones who assume the position without the education that should always be required to hold it, therefore they just do as their counsel tells them-legally or not. The majority of selectmen in Maine’s towns do not have any education in regard to public policy, laws, political science, let alone management and they do not and are often unwilling to listen or admit when a manager is correct in doing something and they are not. They are often focusing on false attributes of a subject that were created in the minds of unknowing citizens that should not even be part of an equation, causing more and more problems. They attempt to micromanage an area where they have virtually no expertise or knowledge themselves. For the life of me I will never understand how anyone would want this for a career when this is what you have to deal with and you could make 5x the salary in the private sector. If you don’t become a manager in a larger city where the elected officials actually are an asset as opposed to a hindrance then you end up with nothing but stress.
hmhhh Bucksport must have finally narrowed down the search to replace Roger.
Town managers deal with uneducated selectmen just as superintendents of school deal with uneducated Boards of Directors. Both groups think they know how to run mutimillion dollar businesses just because they have been elected to the positions. However, most have no real understanding of how either a town or school district should run.
Select-persons and School Boards are elected community residents and therefore have been chosen to represent their constituents. Superintendents and Town Managers are hired by those community representatives, and are answereable to them, just as the Board and Select-persons are answerable to the electorate. You seem to believe Superintendents and Town Managers should be answerable to no one except who they want to. That is ridiculous.
sounds like stgeorger was saying that the new selectmen, who dont know much about the business of running a town, should have taken some direction from those who have been. at least until they had a clue what the issues are and how they have been dealt with in the past.