Town Manager Scott Lambiase appears ready to leave for a similar role in Kingston, prompting the Abington Select Board to start the process of finding a new chief administrative officer.
The board has scheduled a meeting for Wednesday at 10 a.m. to formally announce the vacancy, discuss and possibly vote on an interim Town Manager, and start to form a search committee to find a permanent replacement.
The Kingston Select Board voted unanimously recently to select Lambiase as its next Town Administrator. The hiring is dependent on both sides agreeing to a multi-year contract.
Lambiase could not be immediately reached for comment Monday.
Board chair Roger Woods declined to speculate whether the interim Town Manager would be an internal candidate.
“I expect a discussion and vote for an interim on Wednesday 12/3 per the posted agenda,” he said in an email to Abington News.
Lambiase — a former selectman in Whitman and director of municipal services for the Town of Duxbury — was appointed Town Manager in April 2020 and took over just as the global pandemic set in.
“Scott joined us at a very difficult time and made a rather seamless transition,” former selectman Tim Chapin said in a Facebook post. “He dealt with many trying situations, and although a good manager will never make everyone happy, I very rarely heard people talk bad of him. He will be missed.”
Under Abington’s “strong Town Manager” form of government, Lambiase was in charge of hiring and firing personnel, preparing budgets, and managing the day to day operations of the town largely outside the oversight of the Select Board.
His personnel decisions can be found in nearly every municipal department: Lambiase is responsible for hiring the town’s current fire chief, police chief, council on aging director, veterans services director, health agent, finance director, treasurer/collector, town planner, and accountant.
During his tenure the town also managed millions of dollars in federal pandemic-era aid, launched a significant capital spending program, prioritzed seeking out millions in state and federal infrastructure grants, broke ground on a new fire station and public works complex, launched a new website and digital outreach initiative, and finished each fiscal year with a budgetary surplus.
“We had a great working relationship and I wish him the very best,” former selectman Alex Bezanson said. “Kingston is lucky to be getting him.”
It hasn’t all been rosy. The town is on its fourth building commissioner in five years, and third police chief. Efforts to redevelop the Center and North Schools remain stalled. Police staffing levels are just starting to rebound after years of high turnover. Private investment in the town’s business centers and commercial corridors remains absent.
The town, like many around it, is also wrestling with a projected multi-million dollar budget deficit next year.
The Town Charter, which Town Meeting updated in 2023, says the Select Board will appoint a “qualified Town administrative officer or employee, or other individual, to perform the duties of the office on an acting basis.”
The temporary appointment can be for up to six months, with the board able to extend the appointment for another six months.
The interim Town Manager’s powers are also curtailed under the charter, being “limited to matters not admitting of delay” including the ability to make “temporary, emergency appointments or designations to Town office or employment but not to make permanent appointments or designations unless specifically so authorized by the Board of Selectmen.”
The charter also requires the appointment of a search committee to create a job description, conduct preliminary interviews, and recommend three finalists to the Select Board, who will make the final decision.
The search committee will consist of seven members, including one member of the School Committee (selected by a vote of the School Committee), one member of the Finance Committee (selected by a vote of the Finance Committee), and five residents appointed by the Select Board.
In a notice posted on the town website, the board wrote that the search committee “will best operate in daytime meetings, either during the week-day or week-end depending on members schedule.”
According to the Town Charter, the Town Manager “shall not have served in an elected office in the Town of Abington government for at least (24) months prior to his/her appointment” and ‘shall not hold any other elective or appointive Town office, nor shall the Town Manager engage in any other business unless such action shall be approved in advance in writing by the Board of Selectmen.”