Selectmen Name Mark Twogood New Winchester Town Manager

After being without a Town Manager , at Thursday night’s meeting, the board announced they had offered the position of to Mark Twogood and the position of Assistant Town Manager to Mary Ellen Lannon.

Both Twogood and Lannon accepted the position, but need to finalize their contracts.

Since July 1 of last year, ,while retaining her current position as Town Clerk. And over that same period, Twogood has been the Assistant Town Manager.

“The board feels this is in the best interest of the town,” said Selectman Forrest Fontana, who was appointed chair of the board in a unanimous decision at the start of the meeting.

Last July, the Board of Selectmen as Town Manager. Winchester has been without a full-time Town Manager since the summer.

“This management team knows the town,” said Selectman Jim Johnson. “I’m thrilled they’re going to be staying in place. They’ve made Winchester a better community than it was last year.”

But the newest member of the board, Doug Marmon, who was selected to the board in last week’s election, said the decision was made behind closed doors and without listening to the community.

“After dithering for a year the board acted in secret to preempt public input into the process of Town Manager,” Marmon said. "Mark is a fine public servant, “There will be doubts among the citizenry as to whether he was the best man for the job or the most convenient."

Fonatana disagreed with Marmon’s assessment of the situation.

“I take exception to some of the adjectives used,” Fontana said to Marmon. “We have four, three and two-term selectmen here. There was no dithering and it wasn’t in secret. There are leaders with experience who used their judgment. Residents elected us to make these difficult decisions.

“In the future I hope you do more research and analysis before you express your thoughts, opinions and concerns to this board.”

Selectmen Thomas Howley supported the board’s decision, saying that they were the best candidates for the position.

“It was unlikely that we were going to find people stronger than the people we had in place,” Howley said.

After originally planning on having a new Town Manager in place by the winter, the board decided to stop their search and focus its attention on the budget. According to Howley, the board was going to begin its search again in the spring, after the budget discussion.

“We felt we had a number of critical issues that we needed to address,” Howley said in a January interview. “We decided the best, most effective way to do that would be with the experienced team that we already had in place. It would take time for a new Town Manager to get up to speed.”

Howley explained at the time, that if the board searched for a new Town Manager it would impact how they would handle some of the town’s critical issues—the override, collective bargaining and the FY ’12 budget.

According to Fontana, Twogood and Lannon won’t officially begin in their new positions until either June 1 or July 1. Winchester will also need to find a new Town Clerk to replace Lannon.