WELLFLEET — Millis resident John Bugbee began work as Wellfleet’s assistant town administrator on Dec. 4, filling a key staff position that had been open for nearly a year. A native of Sandwich, Bugbee has worked in town governments off-Cape for much of his career, including in Tisbury, Franklin, and Wayland. He told the Independent that returning to Cape Cod is “a win-win for me.”
Bugbee’s hiring comes after years of high turnover in Wellfleet’s town offices. When Town Administrator Tom Guerino started in that role last spring, he became the town’s seventh administrator in a decade.
Wellfleet’s government has been plagued by financial issues and bookkeeping discrepancies that built up over years and eventually caused the state to withhold three years of the town’s free cash — an issue that was finally resolved during Town Administrator Rich Waldo’s tenure in April 2023.
That wasn’t the end of administrative turnover, however — a group of town staff wrote a letter to the select board in December 2023 criticizing the lack of support they were receiving from select board members, an issue that Waldo also cited in his resignation letter later that month.
Bugbee’s immediate predecessor, Silvio Genao, began work as assistant town administrator in October 2023 but resigned only three months later. Bugbee is the fifth assistant town administrator in the last six years; his starting salary is $151,777.50, according to his employment agreement.
The town’s hiring committee included Guerino, Police Chief Kevin LaRocco, Dept. of Public Works Director Jay Norton, Conservation Agent Lecia McKenna, and Human Resources Director Christine Ezersky. The town received more than 20 applications for the assistant’s job, Guerino told the Independent.
Bugbee served most recently as assistant town administrator in Wayland from 2020 to this past August. Before that, he was chief procurement officer in Franklin from 2014 to 2020 and town administrator in Tisbury from 2004 to 2012.
Guerino said that Bugbee’s experience in small communities, especially with procurement and project management, were reasons the hiring committee selected him. Guerino said that Bugbee will be able to assist with a number of projects he thinks deserve more attention, including the marina’s finances, working with the new harbormaster, and the town’s developing wastewater plan.
“In his first few weeks here, he has been well received and well liked,” Guerino said. “He’s fitting in very nicely.”
Bugbee told the Independent that he got his start in government as a student at the University of Rhode Island, when he was an intern for Rhode Island state Sen. Tom Coderre. He liked the way that success in that position was measured by improving constituents’ lives, he said, rather than by money.
Bugbee then worked as a legislative aide to Mass. state Rep. Kevin Finnegan, as a data analyst at the Mass. Bay Transportation Authority, and as a mayor’s aide in Newburyport before being hired as town administrator in Tisbury on Martha’s Vineyard.
Securing a state “green community” designation for Tisbury was a priority during his nearly nine years there, Bugbee said. The designation, which all four Outer Cape towns have also earned, gives towns access to state grants if they adopt plans to reduce energy consumption by 20 percent, acquire only fuel-efficient vehicles, and adopt energy-efficient construction rules known as the “stretch code.”
The construction codes were the heaviest lift, Bugbee said. “It took a lot of meetings, a lot of convincing that this was good business practice, good for the environment, and a benefit for all involved,” he said.
Bugbee left his job in Tisbury at the end of 2012, six months before his contract was set to expire. He told the Martha’s Vineyard Times that year that “boards change and priorities change,” adding that “sometimes the chemistry isn’t there” with a select board.
He then worked as chief procurement officer in Franklin before being hired as assistant town administrator in Wayland, where he met one of the biggest challenges of his career, he said. While he was serving as interim town administrator from November 2022 to February 2023, a vandal scrawled racist graffiti at the community pool directed toward Wayland Public Schools Supt. Omar Easy, who is Black. At subsequent community meetings, residents said racism was a broader problem in Wayland that needed to be addressed.
The town undertook staff diversity training, appointed a resource officer at the police dept., and brought in a consulting group to help with a town-wide equity assessment, Bugbee said. Wayland’s select board is still discussing whether to hire a diversity, equity, and inclusion officer, he said.
Bugbee said he hopes his arrival in Wellfleet can give town administration more bandwidth to tackle day-to-day issues. So far, his aim has been “listening and learning,” he said.
