Great Barrington’s last town manager was Mark Pruhenski, who stepped down in January after five years to take on a similar role in Middlebury, Vermont.
At Monday’s selectboard meeting, consultant Bernard Lynch of Plymouth-based Community Paradigm Associates said the final two candidates to replace him were whittled down from a pool of 15.
“We discussed their leadership and management style and their level of collaboration and ability to work and build an effective municipal team," he told the selectboard. "We discussed collaboration and consensus building. Particularly in almost every community now, we all are going to run into situations and issues in which they may not be total agreement. We wanted to get a sense from the individuals that we were interviewing as to the how they go about building that collaboration and building consensus to move a community forward.”
Other topics covered included attitudes and approaches to government transparency, building faith in local governance, municipal finance and capital planning, and other leadership qualities.
Angie Ellison is the first of the two finalists.
“Angie has her graduate certificate in local government, leadership, and management from Suffolk University," said Lynch. "She has a Master of Arts and American Studies from UMass Boston, and a BA in Political Science from Southeastern Massachusetts University. She served almost three years as the town administrator of Fairhaven. Fairhaven is a community down the southeast coast. It's still going through some growing pains, if you will, with a new charter that they put in place several years back.”
According to a report by South Coast Today, Ellison left Fairhaven before the end of her contract due to tensions with the town’s select board. The Fairhaven Neighborhood News found that she had accepted a $350,000 separation agreement with the town to leave in October 2024 as opposed to April 2025. Ellison, who began working in Fairhaven in March 2022, was the subject of a since settled wrongful termination lawsuit from her former assistant. The suit included allegations that Ellison violated her subordinate’s civil rights and asked for $430,000 in damages.
“Prior to that, she served as the chief administrative officer in North Adams, serving with the mayor there," Lynch continued. "And prior to that, she served as the town manager of Uxbridge and encountered some financial issues there with some things that had happened prior to her coming on that she had to face and grapple with, and she will be willing to talk about that in her interview. Most of her experience- She'd also served as a town administrator of Blandford for a short period of time. She has served in elected office in her hometown of Sturbridge, but most of her professional experience is in higher education, working for universities here in the commonwealth.”
Ellison left Uxbridge just over a year into her three-year contract over what the Worcester Telegram & Gazette described as “sharp criticism” by the town select board in 2019.
The second candidate is Marc Strange.
“He has a law degree from Western New England University School of Law, a BS in marketing from Syracuse University," said Lynch. "He's currently the town administrator of Ludlow, Massachusetts. Prior to that, he'd served as the Director of Planning and Community Development for Agawam. He did that for about seven years, and he was in private practice in his own law office for just about a year on his own. Prior to that, he'd served as a, working for the state, for the unemployment division, and had some other experience related to his law degree.”
In October, Strange expressed frustration to BuisnessWest.com, the business journal of Western Massachusetts, over an unsuccessful effort to change Ludlow’s charter and system of government.
Lynch says the candidates will interview with the selectboard on April 15th.
“I believe the plan is to have the board make its selection on the 22nd," he said. "We would recommend, and we'll recommend at that time, that any selection that you make is made contingent upon successful negotiation of a employment agreement and any additional background checks as required, and then, upon that vote, you would enter into negotiations with the choice of the board to work on an employment agreement, and I would anticipate that you would have someone on board probably 30 to 60 days following that that vote.”
Per the terms of his last contract with Great Barrington, Pruhenski made $162,000 annually as town manager.
