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Photo Kaimi Rose Lum
Truro Town Administrator Pam Nolan takes a rare break at her desk in Town Hall where she is working on the warrant for the upcoming Annual Town Meeting. |
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New Truro administrator familiar with theatrics
Nolan sees town divided on issue of community center
Kaimi Rose Lum
BANNER STAFF
The new Truro town administrator, Pam Nolan, is a theater buff, which makes her perfect for the job. Between trips to Cambridge in her down time to see performances by the American Repertory Theater, she can watch what plays out on the meeting room floor at Truro Town Hall. Some small but curiously compelling human drama is always about to unfold there, whether it has to do with property taxes, harbormasters who won’t behave themselves or steeple-chimes that ring too loudly.
“I always wanted to write plays, and I may still someday,” confessed Nolan at her desk on Tuesday morning. “I was always going to call my first play ‘City Hall,’ and it’s going to be a three-story stage with the mayor at the top. I’ve got it staged. I haven’t begun to write it, but I certainly am learning a lot from this kind of job. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, it walks in the door. You just never know what’s going to happen next, and this job encompasses everything that happens in this town.”
Since she arrived at town hall three months ago, Nolan has been given plenty of material to work with. There was the dredging fiasco of January and February, which required beating down the door of the Dept. of Environmental Protection to get an extension on the deadline for dredging the Pamet Harbor basin and channel. There were labor issues springing from snowstorms that needed to be resolved. There is the continuing conflict over the town hall chimes and bells, which has dragged on since last summer. And there is an Annual Town Meeting to plan. It was from the latter activity that Nolan paused on Tuesday to share some of her thoughts and feelings on her new position.
The scope of it, she says, is one of the things she likes best. “I deal with everything from creating the budget to labor problems to water and sewage. It’s an amazing range. You’re never bored. There’s a lot to do in this job. Plus you have to balance the political spectrum, which is always difficult.” She says she is happily in her element here, even though it’s a much smaller town than she’s accustomed to. Prior to coming to Truro, Nolan served as town manager in Plymouth, town manager in Westerly, R.I., executive administrator in Weymouth, Mass, and chief of staff for the mayor of Rome, N.Y.
“What absolutely amazes me the most about my experience here was, it’s such a small community that I thought things would be different, but they’re not. Government is government, whether you’re working in a town of 60,000 or, like here, 2,000. You need all the same elements. You have all the same functions. There’s just less people to do them here.” She says she’s been impressed by all of the committees in Truro, which she describes as “truly functional.” The members may all be volunteers but “they’re experts now,” she says. “Here people are very invested in government. They take government very seriously. But that goes with the town meeting form of government, whether it’s big or small.”
Nolan’s hiring last November was precipitated by the sudden resignation of former Truro Town Administrator Bud Breault, who had been criticized from time to time by certain members of the board of selectmen for his allegedly rogue tactics. Nolan says she thinks she has learned how to negotiate the fine lines delineating where the town administrator’s responsibilities end and the selectmen’s begin, and vice versa. “I listen carefully to understand what the selectmen expect out of me. And I think that I know from years of experience in the town meeting form of government what to do on my own and when to get direction from the board of selectmen and follow their wishes. I listen very carefully.”
Understanding where the lines and fronts fall in the community is another ball of wax. Nolan has been gauging the situation with the community center, which was the topic of the first Town Meeting she attended in Truro. “I think I have enough experience to know that this community hasn’t really made up its mind yet whether it really wants a community center. I think with a town meeting form of government it’s not going to happen until the town decides it’s ready for a community center and that there is really a need. I think right now we’re in the beginning stages. I don’t seen any consensus. I really see a divided town on this issue.” She acknowledged that the seniors in the town definitely need a building for the Council on Aging.
She has traveled far in municipal government for someone who started out with dreams of being a college professor. Originally from upstate New York, Nolan studied English literature in college and graduate school, cultivated a love of Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf, and was pursuing her PhD when marriage and children set her on a different course. She went to work as a human resources director for her husband’s manufacturing company in Rome, N.Y., where she cut her teeth on labor negotiations with the Teamsters Union. Some time later she was chosen to be the campaign director for a candidate for mayor. The candidate won, and eventually picked her to be his chief of staff. She’s worked in town government ever since.
She says she likes the feeling of being on the Outer Cape, because it has a sense of distance from the continental U.S. that lends a certain tranquility to the atmosphere. But she is looking forward to the bustle of the summer months — and not just for the opportunities they present to theater goers.
“People say, you can wait. And that there’s an influx of traffic and all the problems that go with having some of these summer visitors, but I can’t wait to see this community in the summer. I think it’ll be another side to the community altogether.”
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Mar 10th, 2005