SKOWHEGAN — A consultant has been hired to assist with the search for a new town manager.

The select board voted May 26 to pay the Maine Municipal Association $6,600 for its executive search services.

The municipal association, an advocacy nonprofit for municipalities statewide that also provides services like insurance and legal advice to its members, will help Skowhegan officials develop a job description, determine a recruitment strategy, establish a search timeline and interview process, review applications and assist with interviews.

According to a proposal the select board reviewed, the association’s services to the town also include a background check on the final candidate to whom the job is offered and assistance with contract negotiations.

Town officials, meanwhile, plan to assemble a search committee with representation from the public, interim Town Manager Donnie Zaluski said.

Select board member Amber Lambke said fellow officials have made recommendations of whom to include on that committee. The board anticipates finalizing its membership at a future meeting, Lambke said.

Officials have not yet established a firm hiring timeline.

Zaluski, also the town’s pollution control plant superintendent, said this spring the process would likely take at least six months. Zaluski, 40, of Turner, is splitting time between his two positions.

The town’s top administrative job has turned over multiple times in recent years.

Christine Almand, who was town manager for nearly a decade, resigned in 2023. Police Chief David Bucknam then filled in as interim manager for months.

The select board eventually hired Dawn DiBlasi, an attorney who was Somerset County’s administrator for 10 years. DiBlasi quit after one year.

A few weeks after her resignation, Nicholas Nadeau was hired in an interim capacity, initially splitting his time between Skowhegan and another interim job in Fairfax, Vermont. Nadeau, who held a doctorate in education, had held other municipal posts in Maine and his native Vermont, including a one-year stint as Blue Hill’s town administrator.

He signed a contract for a permanent position in Skowhegan in September, effective through June 2028. His salary was initially set at $120,000 per year.

In March, Nadeau, 32, died in what authorities deemed a suicide. After his death, the Morning Sentinel reported the Maine State Police Special Victims Unit had been investigating Nadeau in the weeks prior. 

The investigation included searches of his Winslow home and the town office for evidence of child sexual abuse material, search warrant documents show. While court records indicate police found some sexually explicit images and videos from devices seized from Nadeau’s residence in their initial analysis, Nadeau was never charged.

“Not pointing any fingers or anything, but the last three years that we have been through at this town — I’m telling you — it has made me become an old woman.”

Town Clerk and Treasurer Gail Pelotte

When past select boards hired DiBlasi and Nadeau, they did not engage the public in the search process or hire a search firm to consult them. 

Town Clerk and Treasurer Gail Pelotte, an elected official, said past town administrations have used the municipal association’s executive search services and were successful in finding a qualified candidate.

“Not pointing any fingers or anything,” Pelotte said, “but the last three years that we have been through at this town — I’m telling you — it has made me become an old woman.”

Skowhegan is not the only community to struggle to keep someone qualified in the top municipal administrative post.

The Maine Municipal Association has conducted 35 executive searches for municipalities in the last five years, according to Skowhegan’s consulting proposal.

The reasons for the high rate of turnover are varied. But experts and experienced municipal leaders interviewed in a recent Portland Press Herald report pointed to common factors including increasingly vitriolic discourse, a shifting political landscape, expanding job requirements and a widening generational divide.