Kari-Jean Krug stepped in as Passadumkeag’s clerk last June, ending the small town’s two-month shutdown that meant residents could not register their vehicles or pay their tax bills after the previous clerk abruptly resigned.
She is also the town’s tax collector and registrar of voters. The workload is especially heavy during elections and tax bill season, and Krug, who had never worked in a municipal office before this job, has to fit it into 16 hours each week.
Krug likes interacting with residents and has another job at the redemption center in Lincoln. But she can understand how people might be turned off by a municipal position in a small community, where the hours and pay are limited and much of the work can be tedious.
Passadumkeag, located about 30 miles north of Bangor and home to roughly 350 residents, is one of many Maine towns grappling with dysfunction in recent years. Local governments in the state have long been short-handed, but a recent onslaught of vital staff departures — and vacancies being filled by people unprepared for their roles — has shuttered towns, sometimes for months at a time.
Those who know the inner workings of Maine municipalities say the recent dysfunction is part of a nationwide shortage of workers and retirements of longtime officials. Some said the state lacks training for local government jobs, while others pointed to the demands, like working in a hyper-partisan environment, which might make them less desirable.
The initial onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic obliterated state and local government jobs, and that part of the labor market is only gradually recovering, an economist and professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston wrote earlier this year.
“This is a profession that over the last decade or so hasn’t attracted a younger generation, and we’re quickly aging out,” Kate Dufour of the Maine Municipal Association said.
While municipalities big and small are struggling with vacancies, it’s easier to recognize in a tiny town where one or two people run the show, Dufour said. When one of them leaves, it looks devastating to the community, she said.
After seven years with 11 different town managers, the Aroostook County town of Limestone in June hired a man with no prior government experience. Two months later, he left the job. That came months after the nearby town of Perham was found by Maine Revenue Services to have missing records and inconsistent tax bills.
And in Woodland, the town shuttered for two weeks after two clerks abruptly resigned early this year. When business resumed, it was discovered that the town’s bank accounts weren’t balanced and records were unaccounted for.
The midcoast town of Unity temporarily closed its office this summer after its administrative assistant left to take a job in Waldo County’s finance office. A new person stepped in about two weeks ago.
And in the Hancock County town of Sorrento, the select board fired the town clerk Aug. 23, two weeks after suspending her over a dispute about her personal legal fees. The clerk claimed her working conditions were made difficult despite her efforts to expose the fire department’s poor fiscal management, and in the case of one former firefighter, using town funds to fuel his personal vehicle.
When cities and towns do not have employees trained to step in when a major retirement or resignation happens, it can signal that trouble is coming, said Carolyn Ball, a retired University of Southern Maine professor who taught courses about local government and is now a select board member in Southwest Harbor.
“One of the dilemmas is there is no robust pipeline,” she said. “Towns need to think beforehand whether there is a person in their office who they can develop and mentor into a town manager or clerk or code enforcement officer.”
Towns can struggle to build a career ladder when they have multiple vacancies, Ball said, which is evident across the state.
Ball was once the graduate director of public administration at the University of Maine at Orono, but she was laid off when the program ended in 2011, primarily due to low enrollment. She was transferred to the University of Southern Maine.
The graduate-level program at USM is focused on policy, planning and management, making it more general than what the Orono flagship campus once offered, she said.
That program, with undergraduate and graduate degrees in public administration, was considered robust and the “go-to program” in the state, said David Leach, who oversees public administration at the University of Maine at Augusta.
“I feel that the closing of both programs has had a detrimental effect on the level of training for city and town manager positions,” he said.
The dysfunctionality that some Maine municipalities are seeing is due to “a cacophony of reasons,” he said. That includes being a town manager or clerk who wears multiple hats, like also being the animal control officer.
Managers face burnout from long work days, which extend into the evening for council and select board meetings, and responsibilities like building budgets. Clerks typically take minutes at these meetings and handle elections.
Another factor is the divisiveness of politics, which can quickly spread on social media and get residents riled up, Leach said. Even though a town manager works under the direction of a board or council, their name might appear in a news story or social media post when there is a controversy, Ball added.
To address the employment cliff, Leach is designing an Early College course that would take high school students and others through the major parts of local government, he said.
“We are having difficulties, but it doesn’t mean the end of the world is coming,” Dufour said.
“There are solutions that are going to take time to implement.”
