Acting Town Manager Looks to Secure Job Full Time

Former Town Clerk MaryEllen Lannon has been Winchester's acting Town Manager, alongside Assistant Town Manager Mark Twogood, for the past 14 months. Now, she is hoping to secure the role in a full-time capacity.

“I've been acting town manager for 14 months. My experience is almost 20 years in public service. I am just passionate about the work and extremely interested in continuing my work in the town manager realm,” explained Lannon. “I have a lot of creative ideas I've been putting into play over the last 14 months. The thing I'm most interested in is the ability for me to lead, a person to make decisions, someone who is a consensus builder, someone to call meetings together, bring a different point of view, bring to the Selectmen the information to have important decisions be made in a timely manner.”

Lannon is a self-proclaimed “talker and visionary” who has lived in Winchester for the past six years. Lannon grew up in Cambridge, and after starting her family in Connecticut, moved to Winchester to be with part of her extended-family.

“Winchester is my home, I'm one of the tax payers, my children are in the school system, I want to do the best work here because it's my home town; I feel it, I touch it, I know about it,” Lannon said.

Lannon spent some time talking about the importance of working with many different members of the community and why she sees herself as the right person for the job when she said, “one thing that is important for me is that we have so many volunteers that come to the table on all our boards and commissions. I know I have to have the expertise to evaluate whatever the issue is, to get advice from the community to put that plan into play. I'm a hands on leader, I set a time line, build a team and am able to get the job complete. I know in my 14 months, I have done that for the community. I have been able to settle all the union contracts and health care concessions. I put into play the operating reserve policy which has made us conservative in our spending which helped keep our fiscal AAA rating which gives stability to the community.”

Lannon continued to describe some of the projects she has spear-headed during the past 14 months and other projects she is excited to continue working on.

“One big one was putting together the GASP-45, an unfunded liability of retiring health care benefits," she said. "Many communities have pay-as-you-go programs [...] I helped in putting together a team of volunteers made of town officials in order to evaluate the situation for the Fall town meeting. Pay-as-you-go, paying retirees everyday, I said to myself 'are we going to keep doing it the old way or start to put money aside for the future?'”

Lannon also mentioned a grant through the Smart Growth Alliance to revitalize downtown Winchester as one of her key successes in order to, “keep downtown at the level our business community deserves.”

Other services Lannon is currently working on include: gearing up for Town Meeting , helping the Board of Selectmen with their Work Plan, and budget talks for FY2013.

Lannon left Patch with the following sentiments regarding her work for the town and reason why she is the best person for the job of Town Manager, “I've continued a relationship between the schools and the town under my leadership. When I was Town Clerk, communication was just different. It's just who I am, I'm a talker and visionary. I came to this position and said, 'you know, we need to talk to the schools more often.' I wanted to have a more open dialogue. If you don't have the ability to trust and interact with the schools, that's a big part of your budget. I'm proud I can keep things so open between the different parts of town.”

Town officials will be making the final decision of who gets the job as Town Manager in the upcoming weeks.