Woodstock municipal manager Eric Duffy is one of three final candidates for the city manager post in Montpelier, Vermont’s capital city, and for the town manager position in Winchester, Mass., a community of 23,000 residents located nine miles north of Boston.
The Monpelier City Council announced Duffy’s status in a news release on Wednesday, Dec. 3. The following day, Dec. 4, the Winchester News in Massachusetts reported that Duffy is one of three finalists for the town manager post in the suburban bedroom community.
Contacted by email, Duffy declined to comment on his finalist status for the Montpelier post and did not respond to a Standard query about whether he was seeking jobs in other municipalities.
Duffy is the only candidate among the Montpelier finalists who is presently serving in a municipal management post in Vermont or New England. The other finalists for the Montpelier leadership role are Kelly McNicholas Kury, a local government professional who presently chairs the Pitkin County Board of Commissioners in Aspen, Colo., and Kelcey Young, a local government leader with more than a decade of public service in Texas, California, and Oregon who most recently served as the city manager of Pinole, Calif.
Speaking on her own behalf in a phone conversation with the Standard last Thursday, Seton McIlroy, the chair of the Woodstock Village Trustees, said she was “recently made aware” that Duffy was seeking the Montpelier leadership post.
“My comment would be that if Eric decides to take another job, it would be a major loss for Woodstock, but I’m certainly supportive of Eric’s decision to decide what is best for him and his family,” McIlroy said.
In a subsequent phone conversation with the Vermont Standard, Woodstock Selectboard chair Ray Bourgeois said that he, too, had only learned about Duffy’s candidacy recently.
“I think it would be a loss for the town, but he [needs to] do what’s best for himself and his family,” Bourgeois commented, echoing McIlroy’s sentiments. “Anyone that’s ever left a job — it’s no different than if you went someplace or I went someplace — for sure, you do what’s best for yourself and your family. That’s always the bottom line,” the selectboard chair concluded.
Now Montpelier finalists Duffy, McNicholas Kury, and Young will advance to the next and final stage in the recruitment process: a full day of events on site in Montpelier that will include meetings with city staff, conversations with department leaders, and a tour of city facilities and active projects. The day will culminate in public forums with all three finalists. As of Tuesday afternoon, Montpelier officials had not yet set a date for when the three finalists will visit.
The Winchester selectboard will interview the three finalists for the town manager post in the Massachusetts town next week. Those interviews will be conducted in public sessions, allowing residents to appraise the candidates and offer comments to local officials, according to the Winchester News report. Duffy’s competitors for the Winchester post include Joseph Domelowicz Jr., the town manager in Hamilton, Mass., and Christopher Senior, the former town manager in Cohasset, a town on Massachusetts’ South Shore.
For more on this, please see our Dec. 11 edition of the Vermont Standard.
