DIXFIELD – Selectmen on Monday decided to call a meeting of the Town Manager Hiring Committee to review the eight applications received.
They also decided to wait until a state Department of Transportation inspection of the Coburn Avenue Extension Bridge is completed before possibly petitioning the state to help pay for its replacement.
Tony Carter, chairman of the board, introduced the town manager issue after noting that John Madigan had been with the town on a half-time basis for about a month. Madigan is also town manager of Mexico, and the two towns had decided to try sharing one administrator on an interim basis after Town Manager Nanci Allard left for a similar position in Vermont.
Selectman Eugene Skibitsky wants to meet with the department heads before deciding whether to continue sharing one administrator.
“I want to know whether they think a part-time town manager is doable,” he said.
The board will discuss the administrative arrangement with the department heads at their Aug. 8 meeting.
The hiring committee, which includes members of the Board of Selectmen and several other residents, had decided to re-advertise the town manager position last month after the first round of applicants didn’t work out. That deadline was July 1.
Carter said most of the applicants from the latest round of advertising are from Maine, with others coming from Tennessee, Arkansas and Virginia.
The hiring committee will meet at 5 p.m. Aug. 3 at Ludden Memorial Library.
If Dixfield decides to stay with the shared arrangement, Carter said the Mexico Board of Selectmen must also agree.
Madigan believes the current arrangement is working.
“It may take longer, but it’s actually been fun, interesting and challenging. I feel it’s very doable,” he said.
Former Selectman Dan Mitchell said people he has spoken with agree. The town’s deputy treasurer, Charlotte Collins, also says she and other town office employees want the arrangement to continue.
“We want him,” she said.
Madigan works Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday mornings in Mexico, those afternoons in Dixfield, then all day Monday in Dixfield and all day Thursday in Mexico. With the sharing arrangement, he is paid $31,000 annually by each town.
Madigan said a meeting with a MDOT engineer last week revealed that the Coburn Avenue Extension Bridge is in worse condition than originally believed. He said estimates of about $200,000 have been made for its replacement.
If the bridge is replaced, the cost would be shared by Dixfield and Mexico because it is co-owned by the two towns and is the only access to three homes in Mexico. It is posted for eight tons, which is not enough to support emergency vehicles.
He said the two towns could petition the MDOT for help in paying for its replacement while adding that such funds have not been available for replacing town bridges.
In the meantime, he said he will look into possible easements from Leavitt Street in Mexico to the three homes on the Mexico side of the bridge.
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