Town Manager Job Description and Profile Released

Applications to fill Foxboro's town manager position are now being accepted. The draft of the job's profile was approved by the selectmen 5-0 on Oct. 29.

Applications will be collected by the Collins Center during the month, with candidates to be presented to a screening committee in December and preliminary interviews to be completed by Early January.

Final interviews by the selectmen will take place in January with a new town manager to be named in late January.

The Ideal Candidate:

• The Foxborough Board of Selectmen seeks a Town Manager who is a seasoned manager in an environment of similar complexity and sophistication who possesses strong organizational, communication and community leadership skills. This is not a learning position.

• Foxborough seeks a Town Manager with the skill, energy, creativity and experience to execute the vision of Selectmen in achieving the Town’s goals.

• Foxborough seeks a Town Manager willing to commit to a tenure long enough to build a multi-year approach to ensuring the sustainability of the Town’s service levels. The new Town Manager must consider regional solutions when that is in the Town’s interest, as well as foster volunteerism and private contributions as a partial solution to sustaining service delivery. Foxborough needs a Town Manager who can help set the stage for community-wide approaches to addressing the Town’s needs, approaches that produce sound outcomes and avoid polarization.

The next Town Manager needs to be:

• Able to demonstrate unquestioned integrity in interactions with officials and citizens.

• Able to communicate effectively and build consensus among all elements of the community. A diplomatic approach to communication is required. 

• Able to work cooperatively with the Board of Selectmen on the establishment of annual goals and objectives for the Town and its departments, update the BOS and staff on progress and actively participate in the annual review of results and operations.

• Able and willing to play a highly visible role in the community. The ideal candidate must participate broadly across the leadership structure of the community and region and be a champion of the community.

• Comfortable engaging directly with residents. The Town Manager must have sufficient direct engagement with the civic community so that he/she can gain thorough understanding of the Town’s culture. Through formal and informal interaction the Town Manager’s concern for the Town’s residents needs to become evident.

• Able and willing to work openly with community groups and employees. A direct, collegial, facilitative style that fosters joint problem solving is needed. The Town Manager can have no agenda beyond being professional and ensuring that service delivery meets the community’s standard for customer service.

• Able to be a vocal and positive spokesperson for the Town in all public forums. The successful candidate must be able to use the status inherent in the Town Manager’s position to advance the Town’s interests.

• Able to assume a strong organizational management role. He/she needs to delegate, while maintaining strict accountability. The successful candidate must be direct, facilitative, and clear.

• Able to create and sustain a goal-oriented environment by establishing, maintaining and promoting effective policies and initiatives. The Town Manager will be a genuinely inclusive leader who is capable of exerting influence and direction in a manner that shares successes with elected officials, professionals and volunteers.

The Town Manager must be:

• An experienced leader of a comparable organization with extensive professional experience in finance, capital and operational planning, expenditure management, labor relations, public facilitation, and staff development. Excellent public and interpersonal communication skills are essential, as is skill in forging a management team.

• A committed and creative management professional with a record of tenure and consistent career growth.

• Able to demonstrate a background in guiding the development of a shared strategic vision for the community. The ideal candidate must be a coalition builder, equally at home with private sector and community leaders. The ideal candidate must be able to exercise leadership within the organization and within the community.

• In possession of the skills and interest to identify and promote opportunities for diversified tax base expansion.

• Able to delegate to a highly competent cadre of Department Heads while maintaining strict accountability.

• Both strategic and tactical. He/she must be experienced in working effectively in a political environment providing seasoned and impartial guidance to elected officials to identify and address the long-term strategic needs of the community and the short-term tactical steps necessary to sustain service delivery.

• Capable of keeping elected officials comprehensively informed, while staying detached from the political process and ensuring that staff maintains a similar detachment.

• Familiar with highly participative local government environments with dynamics similar to Foxborough’s.

• Comfortable working with and managing an organization in a political context often characterized by vigorous debate among well-informed citizens who are active in local decision-making. Key decisions made by the Board of Selectmen and Town Meeting are sometimes closely decided.

• In possession of a Bachelor’s Degree and at least seven years of experience as a Town or City Manager or other executive position that oversees the operations of a complex multi-function public entity governed by a policy body that makes decisions in public. A person who has served as an Assistant Town Manager in a complex environment will be considered. Professionally trained and experienced managers of complex organizations from the private or non-profit sector who have substantive familiarity with the operations and decision-making processes of a town government will be considered.

• Possess a track record of professional behavior consistent with the ethical tenets of the International City Management Association. Obtaining membership in the ICMA will be a condition of appointment.