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Photo Mary Ann Bragg
Provincetown Town Manager Keith Bergman in his office in Town Hall |
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Bergman takes a bow
By Mary Ann Bragg
Banner Staff
PROVINCETOWN — The chances of the Proposition 2 1/2 override passing at Tuesday’s election may have improved this week.
Town Manager Keith Bergman, whose popularity with residents has waned noticeably in the last several months, announced on Monday that he does not intend to request an extension of his employment contract next May.
At Town Meeting in April, at a recent candidates’ night and elsewhere in town, complaints about the town’s fiscal health, which has prompted the $350,000 override request for the current fiscal year, has mingled with criticism of Bergman’s job performance overall and particularly of his public searches for new positions, most recently in Ipswich, Lexington and Amherst.
In a rare move, a member of the Board of Selectmen, David Nicolau, told a group gathered for a candidates’ night forum last week that he would not renew Bergman’s contract next year.
At the same forum, resident Brunetta Wolfman, calling herself a disillusioned citizen, said that Bergman, in her opinion, had created divisions in town government, created antipathies and artificial crises, manipulated the town’s finances and played one group against the other. Her comments elicited clapping and yelling from the crowd of about 120 people.
Bergman has been the town manager here for sixteen years. His three-year contract would expire on May 6, 2007, and he is paid in the range of $102,000 annually.
Some in and around Town Hall believe the timing of Bergman’s announcement is partly personal and partly strategic, a way to separate voter disaffection with him from the override request itself.
The override, a first for the town, would pay for expenses incurred for the town’s Cape End Manor nursing home, whose transition to a health care campus is one that Bergman has been committed to for the last several years. The override would also allow the municipal government’s operating budget to be met next year without significant personnel cuts.
Bergman said on Tuesday that he and his wife, Margaret Carroll-Bergman, had made the decision some time ago to move on once his contract expired. “We were looking for an appropriate opportunity to share that information,” Bergman said.
The exact timing of Bergman’s departure will depend on several factors, which he and others delineated, including the arrival of a successor, his finding a new position, the progress of the Seashore Point project, the sale of his house and other factors.
The selectmen will begin discussing a transition plan on Monday, May 8.
Bergman gave the selectmen notice on Sunday evening in an e-mail stating that he would not seek the contract renewal. He announced his decision at a selectmen’s meeting on Monday as well, citing two anniversaries on the horizon — his 50th birthday and his 25th year in town administration — as opportunities for making changes in his own life.
(To read the full text of this story, see this week’s Banner.)
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Community center voted down again
In the News
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Apr 27th, 2006