Newtown Council Narrows Candidate Field For Borough Manager

NEWTOWN BOROUGH, PA —The search for the town’s first borough manager has shifted into high gear.

Today, the borough council’s executive recruitment committee, made up of Mayor John Burke and councilors Tara Grunde-McLaughlin, Emily Heinz and Kris Baumann, is scheduled to hold its first round of interviews with five potential candidates.

The committee selected five candidates for the first round of interviews out of an applicant pool of 11 candidates who applied for the job. The deadline to submit applications was November 27 at noon.

The search is being conducted by the nonprofit Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government which the borough retrained in October to assist with the process of finding and hiring a manager.

The nonprofit center based at Lafayette College in Easton is being paid $110 an hour not to exceed $8500 to provide the borough with assistance in the search and ultimate hiring of a borough manager.

According to Heinz, Nicole Beckett from the Meyner Center has been to the borough twice to meet with the recruitment committee and with members of the incoming borough council who will vote on the new hire after being seated in January.

A second round of interviews by borough council and councilors-elect is scheduled for December 21.

Council voted in August to amend the borough ordinance to include the position of borough manager as an option. Up until November, the borough had been managed by a full-time treasurer and a full-time borough secretary with members of the unpaid borough council taking on oversight responsibilities.

For more than a decade, the council has debated the hiring of a borough manager, but it was the announced resignation in July of its longtime treasurer, Pat Ours, that brought the idea back to the table. Her resignation was effective Nov. 1.

At a special meeting in late September, council hired Gilbert, Wilson & Hunter, LLP, to handle the borough's bookkeeping and accounting services following Ours' departure. GWH has offices on North State Street directly across the street from the borough hall and in Oswego, New York.

The move is giving the borough time to conduct the search and hire a borough manager.

With more than half of council departing at the end of the year, any votes on salary negotiations and hiring will not take place until the new council is seated in January, according to Grunde-McLaughlin.