Ranks of managers dwindling

Some municipal leaders are calling it a "missing generation." Others call it a looming crisis. As the graying ranks of town administrators, finance directors, treasurers, and other top officials near retirement, communities are finding far fewer candidates to follow in their footsteps.

That void is forcing cities and towns to scrounge for qualified help, and some have had to offer higher salaries to compete with the private sector. As positions linger unfilled, already-swamped staffers say they are putting off projects that would improve efficiency so they can get the basics done.

In Ipswich, Rita Negri, the town's finance director-accountant, has been looking since early July for an assistant town accountant.

"We're getting applicants but they are not qualified," said Negri, 60. "They don't have government experience."

The field of municipal finance has become such a complex web of rules and regulations, Negri said, that a candidate with an accounting degree but no government experience probably would not be able to handle most jobs. As she has searched for an assistant, and done the job of two people, Negri has postponed long-range projects.

"We are looking to improve customer service and that's a project that takes time," Negri said. "You can't do it if you are doing the debits and the credits."

At any given time, the Massachusetts Municipal Association features more than a half-dozen ads on its members' website from communities seeking chief executives, finance directors, and candidates for other key positions.

"We see it as a challenge that will get larger as time goes on," said Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the association. "Communities don't have the resources to have the hire, or have a junior-level position to grow into the senior positions. They are thinly staffed now so they are not hiring and training that next generation."

It's not just a Massachusetts problem. It's a national phenomenon.

The International City-County Management Association found that 59 percent of municipal managers surveyed nationwide are 51 or older. In 1971, that figure was just 8 percent.

"It's all the people moving through [local government] and not being replaced," said Michele Frisby, spokeswoman for the city-county association.

In Newbury, officials searched for months last year to find a qualified candidate for finance director and treasurer-collector. They were seeking someone who could untangle the community's financial records, which were left in knots when 15-year-veteran Jim Cashman was voted out of office. Officials had discovered that Cashman failed to collect roughly $900,000 in excise and property taxes, some dating back more than a decade.

"Our first search came up dry," Frank Remley, chairman of Newbury's Finance Committee, said about the hunt for a new finance director.

Finally, the town upped the ante, from $75,000 to $90,000, and received resumes from some qualified candidates, Remley said. Finance director Chuck Kostro took over last October.

"You want somebody who is going to keep a heavy focus on cost-effectiveness and revenue collections," Remley said. "You have to be able to get the most out of your revenue base; otherwise, we are going to be continuing to ask for tax overrides year after year."

In Melrose, Mayor Rob Dolan, at 36, is a relative kid when it comes to suburban chief executives.

"There is going to be a crisis in the next 15 to 20 years finding treasurers, auditors, town managers, and assessors," he said. "I don't see a lot of people going into those fields."

Already, Dolan said, he has frequently turned to the municipal association's website to find candidates on an interim basis to fill key positions, such as auditor and chief building inspector.

Tewksbury Town Manager David Cressman, who also is president of the Massachusetts Municipal Management Association, said that even positions once considered easy to fill, such as public works director, pose challenges.

"Most are professional engineers and have management backgrounds," said Cressman, 54. "Your DPW superintendents today are not the road crew guy."

When Cressman started as town manager 20 years ago, he usually had 80 to 100 applicants, often from out of state, for openings in key positions. Today, he said, there is little competition and virtually none from out of state.

"The housing costs vs. the salaries vs. the pension system is not as attractive anymore," he said.

And yet, there are plenty of young people entering the field of public administration, said professor Michael Lavin, who chairs the public management department at Suffolk University in Boston. It's just that many of them are opting to go into the nonprofit and healthcare sectors, where pay for top administrators tends to be substantially higher, he said. There are many more choices today for students graduating with a master's degree in public administration than there were 29 years ago, when he first came to Suffolk, Lavin added.

Some communities are getting creative, offering tuition reimbursements, for example, as a perk to persuade younger employees to stick with them and rise through the ranks, Lavin said.

As many communities struggle, Lavin sees a silver lining.

"It's critical from a town's point of view," he said. "But from a supply-and-demand perspective, for our students, it's a market opportunity."

Kay Lazar can be reached at klazar@globe.com.