WELLFLEET — Two months into his tenure as Wellfleet’s interim town administrator, Tom Guerino has reached a tentative agreement to take the helm as the town’s permanent administrator. At an April 16 meeting, the select board voted unanimously to offer Guerino a three-year contract.
The details of the contract were to be hammered out with Guerino and his lawyer during executive sessions on April 18 and April 23, according to board chair Barbara Carboni. But Guerino’s lawyer could not make the April 23 meeting. At the Independent’s deadline this week, the contract negotiations were still unfinished.
Guerino is being paid $198,000 per year as interim administrator, with an additional $750 per month stipend for housing and $300 per month for travel expenses.
“I am just thrilled the board sees my qualifications as dovetailing what the town needs right now,” Guerino said at the April 16 meeting. “I like it here. When I come to work in the morning, I come up to the gas station and I know I am getting closer to work, and I am smiling as I come down the hill.”
Guerino began as interim administrator at the end of February following the departure of former Town Administrator Rich Waldo, who left on Feb. 9 after 18 months on the job. Assistant Town Administrator Silvio Genao, who was with the town for three months, followed in Waldo’s footsteps after backing out of his appointment as interim administrator.
Guerino comes to Wellfleet from Vernon, Vt., where he lived while serving as director of the Greenfield, Mass. Housing Authority and interim municipal manager of the town of Putney, Vt. He also served for 14 years as town administrator in Bourne as well as executive director of the Mass. Rural Development Council.
At the April 16 meeting, select board member Ryan Curley wondered whether the town had fulfilled its charter obligation to advertise the job.
The town charter requires that the position be advertised in a professional publication and at least two newspapers with statewide or regional circulation. Executive Assistant Rebekah Eldridge told the Independent that the permanent administrator position was advertised during the board’s hiring process for an interim administrator in February.
Eldridge said that Guerino’s experience in municipal government “will be a breath of fresh air for the town.” Select board member Mike DeVasto said that a three-year contract would bring much-needed stability to a town that has experienced high turnover in recent years, with Guerino coming in as Wellfleet’s seventh administrator in the past decade.
“There is a lot of focus on the complications the town has experienced over the last several years,” Guerino told the Independent. “But there are so many positive things going on here.”
Guerino told the select board that he is most impressed with the “quality of departmental leadership” in Wellfleet. “You don’t have a departmental leader that isn’t willing to put in whatever hours that are necessary to get the job done.”
Guerino said that his top priority would be to bolster internal systems in town hall in line with the Dept. of Revenue’s recommendations to the town last year, including bringing departments out of silos. The town’s finances, he said, are in “pretty stable shape,” but “we aren’t out of the woods yet.”
Systems are now in place for the town’s budgeting process, said Guerino, thanks to the work of Eastham Finance Director Rich Bienvenue, who worked as a consultant in Wellfleet to develop this year’s budget.
Once his contract as permanent administrator is signed, Guerino will be looking to find an assistant administrator — and a place to live closer to work. Guerino has been commuting every day from the home of acquaintances in Middleborough. “My wife told me not to sign a lease until I sign a contract,” Guerino said.
“We have been very impressed with Tom’s assumption of this job during what is still a very difficult time,” said Carboni, adding that things are “decidedly less difficult since his arrival.”
“It is obvious that he is someone who relishes a challenge,” the board’s vice chair, John Wolf, said at the April 16 meeting. “If going forward is anything like the past two months that he has been here, we can confidently say we are turning a corner.”