LEVANT – A selectman who recently resigned has been hired as the new town manager.
Scott Pullen, elected to the board in 2000, will begin work Jan. 1 as a part-time manager, interim Town Manager Suzanne Cole confirmed Thursday.
Pullen was approved 3-1 at a Dec. 22 selectmen’s meeting. His appointment was made public after he signed a one-year contract Wednesday night.
David CoWallis, chair of the Board of Selectmen, voted against the hiring. CoWallis did not return several calls for comment.
Pullen resigned from the board before the Dec. 22 vote in order to be eligible for the manager’s position. A special election will be scheduled next month to choose his replacement.
A financial consultant who has lived in Levant all of his life, Pullen begins work at the town office Saturday.
“I’m looking at this job to better the town,” Pullen said Thursday. “I just care about the people in the town of Levant.”
Pullen replaces former full-time town manager Derik Goodine, who resigned from his seven-year post in September to become manager of the southern Maine town of Naples.
“I think it will be a seamless transition,” Pullen said.
Pullen will be paid $20,000 a year with no benefits to work 20 hours per week in the position, which in previous years has been a full-time job. The change will represent an annual savings of about $35,000 a year for the town, he said.
More time may be needed during busy weeks, but Pullen said he plans to work from home for no pay if necessary.
“I think it’s doable,” he said.
Pullen applied for the position because he wants to have more ability to resolve town problems, some of which generate more discussion than solutions, he said. He cited as one example a proposed lease with a cellular telephone company that fell through two years ago.
No one ever followed up to encourage that provider or another company to build a cell tower in town, Pullen said.
Those local issues matter to a town of Levant’s size, and will consume much of his time in a position he applied for out of a sense of civic duty rather than career ambitions, Pullen said.
“We’re not necessarily still a little, tiny, small town,” he said.
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