Lee Szymborski, left, and Joellen Earl of GovHR USA meet with the Williamstown Board of Selectmen on Wednesday morning.

WILLIAMSOWN, Mass. — The consultant hired to help the town find its next town manager said Wednesday that the process could take about 12 weeks.

 

The Board of Selectmen held a special morning meeting to visit with the owner and vice president of GovHR USA, the Illinois firm the town hired to help conduct its search.

 

GovHR owner Joellen Earl laid out the timetable for a process that got under way in earnest on Wednesday.

 

Step one: establishing a salary range to include in the advertisements GovHR plans to post next week. On Wednesday, the board decided to post a range of $105,000 to $125,000.

 

"I got feedback from Joellen [Earl], who surveyed a broad range of communities in Western Massachusetts," Selectman Thomas Sheldon said "I also talked to [retiring Town Manager] Peter Fohlin about not only his compensation but a couple of comparable communities in Berkshire County."

 

Sheldon and the other three members of the board at Wednesday's meeting voted unanimously on that dollar range.

 

Earl and GovHR's Lee Szymborski also used Wednesday's visit as a fact-finding mission to learn more about the needs of the community so they can better craft a brochure that they will post on their own website and others and distribute to candidates they've identified as a good fit.

 

"Once the text is written, we will get it to you for your approval over the next week or so," Earl said. "We'll advertise the job next week.

 

"We'll receive resumes in mid-April and then start the vetting process, which is very involved and will determine who we think most likely fits the criteria."

 

After about three or four weeks of vetting, GovHR will recommend a dozen or so candidates to the committee the Selectmen has created to screen the first wave of applicants. That process should yield a handful of candidates for the Selectmen to interview and make final decisions — likely in June.

 

Fohlin is set to retire on April 26. The Board of Selectmen has not discussed its plans for the administration of the town in the interim period between his departure and the arrival of a replacement.

 

In order to help focus the search for that replacement, Earl and Szymborski on Wednesday were meeting individually with members of the board, with personnel at Town Hall who answer directly to Fohlin, Williams College Vice President for Public Affairs James Kolesar and Fohlin himself.

 

"We're here today to talk to you and other stakeholders about the characteristics and traits you're looking for," Earl said.

 

"We will write the brochure for Williamstown, and that will have a lot of information about the community — the history, the organizational structure, the form of government, the attributes of the community.

 

"What is important to flesh out today is the challenges and opportunities of the town as well as the traits you're looking for in a town manager."