10 Minutes With Heather Harper

Heather Harper, Falmouth's Acting Town Manager since November, sat down with Patch yesterday for a few questions about her job, the town and its future.

Q: How did you come to be Acting Town Manager?

A:  I've been with the town for over 15 years. It's actually a fun story of how I came here. I observed them creating the position of Assistant to the Town Manager while watching Town Meeting. I must not have had anything more interesting to do! But I remember the discussion on Town Meeting floor and the prior Town Manager, Peter Boyer, talking about the need for creating a management team within the town, as well as his personal responsibility to create professional development opportunities for young people in the field of management. So ultimately they created the position of Assistant to the Town Manager, and I applied for it. It had to be 18 months later that I ended up getting an interview for it. It was quite a long time from the time of the town meeting to the time that the job was created. And I succeeded through the interview process. My first office was in the mail room!

I'm actually not from Falmouth. [When I moved here] I was living in Falmouth and I was commuting to the Vineyard, working for the Regional Planning Commission. I have a Master's in planning, so my training was more in the field of community development and planning. But I really had an interest in local government and the Town Manager's office, and thought this would be a great stepping stone in terms of my career. At the time, I never could have imagined I'd be in Falmouth 15 years. But I'm here and it's been a terrific experience. I feel that I've not only benefited professionally, but that I've contributed strongly to the town in the time that I've been here. 

In the recent past, obviously I was promoted to the position of Assistant Town Administrator. There was a little change in the form of government and I became the Assistant Town Manager, so I have grown as the community has grown and changed. And I think it's been a good fit for both of us for at least the last 15 years. More recently, the prior Town Manager [Robert Whritenour] resigned. The Town Charter is very clear on what the responsibilities of the Assistant Town Manager are in the absence of the Town Manager, so I'm taking on that responsibility on an interim basis until the town decides how it's going to recruit the next Town Manager.

Explain the distinction between what the Board of Selectmen do and what the Town Manager does.

The distinction is that the Board of Selectmen's executive role is to develop the big picture of the community and establish policies and procedures by which the town operates. The budget policies are a really good example, where [the selectmen] establish global goals in terms of what the town's budget might look like in the next fiscal year, and they establish some specific performance standards on the budget. Then, in developing the budget for recommendation to the selectmen, I would use that policy to work with all the departments and let them know that these are our priorities for the year. Then I put the package together, trying to meet those overarching goals but still carrying out the work of the town. So it is a good relationship, and it's important that we kind of stay in our roles. They do overlap a little bit. But it's part of the Town Manager's role to recommend to the selectmen where there may be policy areas where they need to focus on, and guide them on how they develop their policies. 

But you wouldn't describe the job of Town Manager as a political position. 

No, in fact, it's specifically an appointed position. Obviously it's a political environment, but the Town Manager's position is to carry out the legislative and executive decision-making. And Town Meeting is a great example. As we make recommendations to Town Meeting, some of them are adopted, some are not, and you just pick up the next day and carry on with what the direction of the town is.

What's the extent of your interaction with the public?

It's varied over the years. Right now, and for the last couple of years, my role has been very internal. Which is fine; I've spent a lot more time working with our departments and with the unions and with the [selectmen] on specific issues. But in the past I've had a much different, more external role. It really depends on the Town Manager and the Assistant Town Manager, and who those personalities are, and what's the best fit for that. And so there was a time when I played more of an external role. I'm fairly comfortable doing both, but you can't do both at the same time. It's just too much to try to take on both the operational piece with some of the external. So that's definitely one of the shortcomings of having just one person here, is that you can't do both effectively.

What does the future hold for you? You can't hold down both jobs forever.

The [selectmen] are clearly going to do a full recruitment process, which I fully and completely endorse. I think it's important that the board look to a professional manager, and that they look to our professional associations — both the Mass Municipal Manager's Association and the International City Manager's Association — for candidates who embrace being professional managers, and who are non-political professionals who have a lot of experience in executive management roles. I think they'll have a Town Manager that meets those standards, and I'm looking forward to whatever the future holds.

Are you interested in being Town Manager?

I'm slowly beginning to reveal what my intentions are, but I've been in this work for a long time. I know what it takes to be the Town Manager, and I can tell you that I have a young family. I have two children, a 7-year-old and an 8 1/2-year-old, and that's really my priority right now.

What do you see are the big challenges Falmouth is facing right now? 

I think organizationally we have some internal challenges. The last three years have been really challenging for us to drive toward providing the services that the community wants, and at the same time keeping the sources of funding at a point where the community can tolerate it. And I think we're really getting to the breaking point where the town is no longer going to be able to provide the services that our community expects [while] keeping the revenue sources at the same level. That's going to be illustrated in any of the issues we confront, whether they're educational programs, public safety programs or water quality programs. Those are all going to require some really significant prioritization and soul-searching in the community, and identifying what the trade-offs are. In the 2012 budget, there are going to be reductions in services. It's just a fact. We can't sustain a level-funded operation and provide the same level of services. 

Anything else you'd like to add?

I'm hoping that there's a place for some more positive messages [in the media]. I think that Falmouth is really a wonderful community, and there's a lot of terrific people doing a lot of good work. But we tend to focus a lot on smaller pieces of business, and I think the big picture is that this is one of the greatest communities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There's really no place like it. It really is unbelievable, and I'm not talking about the local government. The local government is the local government, but as far as the the community as a whole and the part that local government plays, it's really a special place.