Phil Covelli served Naples for 2 years and seven months.
NAPLES – Town Manager Phil Covelli said he’ll be putting his sailboat in Sebago Lake this year.
It had been in Long Lake, but it’s time for a new home port.
Covelli will also be having a new port for business – Fryeburg, where he’ll become town manager on April 15.
He had been with Naples for 2 years and seven months and although he enjoys the area he said he is looking forward to a community that has a stable population year around.
Covelli said Naples’s population of 3,300 swells to between 12,000 and 15,000 in the summer.
“Come Columbus Day, the last restaurant around here closes for the season,” Covelli said.
Covelli, 47, is from New York City and worked as a court officer there for eight years. His wife at the time wanted to move and they chose Vermont.
“We had friends who owned a country store,” he said. “We visited them and liked it.”
He said he did what he had to in getting established in Vermont.
For a year he drove a school bus in the morning, went to his job as a paralegal and then took the kids home in the afternoon.
Covelli then was a town administrator in Warren, Vt., from 1998 to 2001. He divorced his wife and then met Maggie.
“I met my wife in Maine, moved here, took this job and got married,” Covelli said.
He sees himself as apolitical, which he said serves him well as a town manager with the community and selectmen making policy and the town manager implementing it.
“Part of the challenge is not getting caught up in politics,” Covelli said. “I play the devil’s advocate, present different options.”
He said he believes in networking with other administrators because it enables him to better stay in touch with what is going on in the profession. He also said the town manager has to play a visible role in the community and make sure the town is well represented.
“Fryeburg is a good opportunity,” Covelli said. “It’s more of a structured government in that it has a public works department and a police department. It’s more evolved, more complex than Naples.”
He said he and Maggie, who teaches school in the area, do not plan on moving.
Naples is a lot closer to Sebago Lake.
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