After Successful First Year, Orleans Town Manager Looks Ahead To The Future

ORLEANS – Last month, Kim Newman walked in the Fourth of July parade through downtown Orleans, almost a year to the day from when she started in her role as town manager.

“At the parade, I had people saying to me ‘Do you have any idea what you’ve accomplished this past year? It’s incredible,’” she said. “And truthfully? No. I’m on to the next thing, I’m on to Cincinnati.”

That eye on the ball approach makes sense, especially coming off a busy first year on the job. On top of working through her first budget cycle and navigating her way through annual and special town meetings, Newman has busied herself over the last 12 months on everything from addressing housing and infrastructure issues to overseeing significant staffing changes in town hall.

But while the demanding schedule of a town manager doesn’t offer a lot of time to stop and reflect, the select board last month made clear their satisfaction with Newman’s work to date. On July 27, the board awarded Newman a near perfect score on her inaugural performance review.

“When you get a 4.8 out of 5, I don’t know what else I can say,” select board chair Mark Mathison said.

The select board reviewed Newman’s performance across 10 categories including individual characteristics, professional skills, her relations with members of the board, policy execution, reporting, citizen relations, staffing, supervision, fiscal management and community. She registered perfect scores in the areas of citizen relations and fiscal management. Her lowest score came in reporting, where she was given a 4.3.

Year one in the town manager’s office was marked largely by organizational change for Newman, who assumed the job after John Kelly’s retirement in December 2022. Kelly had held the position since November 1996.

Newman’s first days on the job found her meeting with various boards, committees and department heads, as well as other local groups and organizations. But she said it soon became apparent that operational changes were needed at town hall.

“I started carrying that with me in the background,” she said. “‘How am I going to navigate this?’”

New Faces At Town Hall

Specifically, Newman’s first year brought significant changes on the staffing front. Some came by way of retirement. Tom Daley and Cathy Doane both retired in November from their respective posts as public works and finance director. In December, Newman hired Rich Waldo, the former town administrator in Wellfleet, to lead the public works department. Meanwhile, Jennifer Mince, who started work as town accountant in April, is in the midst of transitioning toward becoming the town’s new finance director (she currently holds the title on an interim basis).

But those hires were only the tip of the iceberg. The town has also brought in a new recreation director (Tom DiSiervo), assistant town manager (Mark Reil), building commissioner (Davis Walters) and a new sewer program coordinator (John Nelson). Liana Surdut, the town’s former assistant town manager, moved into her new role as human resources director. Most recently, the town welcomed Elizabeth Jenkins in July to the role of assistant planning and community development director.

Michael Solitro, who was hired in April 2023 as assistant town planner, has moved into the new role of special projects coordinator, where he will liaise between the town manager’s office and various projects being undertaken throughout town. And in September, Amanda Converse, the outgoing CEO of Love Live Local, will join the ranks as the town’s new economic development coordinator and public information officer.

Putting the right people in place for the right jobs took what Newman called some “aggressive” recruiting. Jenkins came to Orleans from Barnstable, while Walters left the town of Brewster to take the same job here.

“You want talent, you want expertise,” she said. “There’s a lot of talent on the Cape right now. Let’s go get them.”

But while there’s been a lot of change over the past 12 months, it’s what the select board signed on for when they hired Newman back in April. Newman was a finalist for the job next to Brewster Assistant Town Manager Donna Kalinick, setting up a choice between someone familiar to the Lower Cape and someone coming to the region from the outside. Newman previously spent nine years as town manager in the town of Mendon.

“You don’t know what you’re getting,” she said of the process of hiring a new manager. “You don’t. And this community is really invested in who they bring in to help them. There’s a deep love and respect for the history of this community, and bringing somebody in from the outside seems kind of scary.”

But over time, suspicions around the new manager faded as Newman began to win the confidence of residents in the community. The select board, meanwhile, never wavered in its support, she said, even amidst a year heavy with change.

“When all of this turnover was happening, it gets bumpy. It gets rocky. The board was incredibly supportive.”

But while her first year has been deemed a successful one, the work of a town manager is multi-faceted and incessant, leaving Newman little room to look back and reflect. It’s on to year two, and she said there’s still plenty more to be done.

More Staffing Changes To Come

While much time and effort has been given to situating the town’s various department heads, Newman said the town’s numerous positions and job titles that fall underneath them need reevaluating. In an effort to be “conservative” with staffing, many town employees over the years have assumed additional responsibilities that don’t fall under their job titles, she noted.

“There are [workers] in this community that are basically doing multiple jobs under one job title,” Newman said. “So the employees, to their credit, kept taking on more and more and more things under titles that might not even match the work that they’re doing.”

One of Newman’s priorities this year will be to sit down with employees to better understand their current roles and to see how they align with what the town needs going forward.

Mentorship and training are also on Newman’s mind heading into her second year. The town continues to advertise openings, including for an assistant town accountant. But with fewer people trained for and seeking out municipal work these days, Newman is turning an eye toward training and elevating people into vacancy positions in-house where possible.

“I’m big on building a network and mentoring and building,” she said. “There aren’t enough town managers, so I’m huge on mentoring. Honestly that’s the best part of doing any of this work.”

Housing Remains A Critical Issue

While hiring personnel is important, it’s equally important to be able to retain workers. But as the cost of housing continues to climb out of reach for many members of the local workforce, the need to find solutions to the ongoing housing crisis remains at the top of every town manager’s list of priorities.

For years, the talk around the need for housing has centered upon the creation of affordable units. But in recent years, the need has grown to include those residents who make too much to qualify for affordable housing but not enough to afford housing at market rate. It’s an issue that continues to impact the most critical areas of the town’s workforce, among them police, fire and public works personnel. And without a solution, Newman said the problem is only going to get worse.

“It’s gone from ‘Who is going to work in your grocery stores’ and ‘Who is going to work in your hotels in the summertime’ to ‘Who is going to police your town?’ There’s a real problem coming,” she said.

The town has made headway in creating housing in recent years. Two projects at the former Cape Cod 5 headquarters on West Road and the former Masonic Lodge at 107 Main St. will soon bring 76 units of housing to town. But those projects took years to see through to a groundbreaking, and Newman said more immediate solutions to the housing problem are needed.

“You are going to need people here to fix the roads and drive the ambulance,” she said. “The idea of there not being enough is not that far away. It’s happening now, and we don’t have a plan around that.”

Exploring Regional Solutions

Orleans continues to face pressing infrastructure needs, including the need for a new fire station. There’s also the question of what to do with the aging Orleans Elementary School. Conversations about the school’s future have included discussions about regionaling resources in the face of declining enrollment. But talk of regionalization has been met with backlash from some in the community who fear that the approach might ultimately result in closing the elementary school.

Town officials have stated that there is no intention to close the school, but Newman said the topic of regionalization needs to at least be explored. The state has already invested millions of dollars to explore options for school regionalization across Massachusetts due to declining enrollment, Newman said. In the years ahead, the need to share and regionalize resources could prove to be a way for Cape towns to successfully move forward together, she said.

“I’m not making a decision in a vacuum,” she said. “We need to have honest conversations, though, about what’s going on and what we actually want to protect and what we want to do, and see if there’s a solution in there.”

Reporting And Communication

Better reporting to the select board is another of Newman’s priorities, especially in the wake of an annual town meeting in May in which there was some confusion from voters on articles put before them.

Newman and Reil together reworked the town meeting warrant in an effort to make information clearer to residents. But overall, she said, there’s still more to be done to improve communications between the town and residents.

“When I see people getting frustrated on the floor because they can’t understand what we’re talking about, to me it’s like ‘Fail,’” she said.

But improvements in reporting and communication won’t be limited to town meeting. Going forward, she said that all boards and committees will be assigned a staff liaison to help bolster communication between boards, the town manager’s office and ultimately the select board. The addition of Converse, who starts in September as public information officer, will also hopefully streamline the town’s communication efforts, she said.

“I want constant types of communication coming out of here at a professional grade,” she said.

Speaking to the select board July 27, Newman raised concerns about the potential for a “sophomore slump” in her second year. But Mathison said the groundwork that she helped lay in her first year leaves him with little concern about what lies ahead.

“I would just say kudos,” added select board member Mefford Runyon. “It’s been an amazing year.”

Newman said she and her staff spent a lot of time “grinding” last year, and she acknowledged the need to slow things down to a more sustainable pace. But at the same time the work doesn’t stop, and she said she’s ready for it.

“It’s my inclination or personality type to sort of be obsessive and work obsessively anyway,” she said. “Let’s face it, that’s part of the job. I’m in it all the way.”

Email Ryan Bray at ryan@capecodchronicle.com