A Maine nonprofit’s finance director, a former Oregon community college president and a Texas city’s former manager are the three finalists vying to become Orono’s next town manager.
Clint Deschene, Chris Breitmeyer and Jack Harper are the finalists, respectively. The town announced their names publicly for the first time Tuesday night, and residents had a chance to meet the candidates at the municipal office.
The next town manager, to be chosen by the Orono Town Council, will replace Sophie Wilson, who was hired in 2011 and whose exit cost the town about $95,000 in payment to her and legal fees. The council approved her departure in October 2023. The chairperson at the time declined to say whether Wilson resigned or was fired.
The town is paying nearly $30,000 to Texas-based search firm Strategic Government Resources to find its next manager. Cornell Knight is serving as interim.
Dan Demeritt, the council’s chairperson, expects the town will announce its new manager within the next two weeks. It will consider feedback from staff, the search advisory committee and residents, who can submit comments online through 4 p.m. Thursday, he said.
Chris Breitmeyer, who is from Illinois, has spent the last 25 years in higher education. He saw an advertisement for the town manager position on a higher education website and realized that if the town is willing to consider someone with a nontraditional path, he was interested, he said.
“It seems like a place that is open and forward-thinking,” he said. “The fact that the town has a university attracted me, and it will keep me higher-ed adjacent. It’s going to be important to forge stronger relationships with the university.”
In his last role, Breitmeyer spent seven years as president at Clatsop Community College in Astoria, Oregon, whose population is similar in size to Orono. He announced in May 2023 that he would be stepping down from the position, The Astorian reported.
He began his career teaching biology at Yavapai College in Clarksdale, Arizona. He was also a dean and president of academic and student affairs at Saint Charles Community College in Cottleville, Missouri.
Breitmeyer’s ideas include reimagining Orono’s strategic plan and using it to guide the town, and hopes it can find solutions to its lack of housing and environmental issues and serve as a model for other communities.
“I get the sense that there’s an appetite for that here and a willingness to engage in those conversations,” said Breitmeyer, who enjoys hiking with his dogs, kayaking and other outdoor activities.
Clint Deschene grew up and currently lives in Presque Isle, where he works as director of finance for the Aroostook Agency on Aging. He lived in Orono in the early 1990s while he attended the University of Maine, and if he’s chosen for the role, he would move back with his wife and two children.
He began his career as a town manager in 1999. Deschene spent three years in Bradford, a decade in Hermon and more than two years in Auburn before moving home in 2014.
He was SAD 1’s assistant superintendent for business for six years before he began Ignite Presque Isle, a community development nonprofit that worked to turn a local hotel into a business hub. He resigned from the group in 2022.
The 51-year-old said he was impressed when the town took a few months to figure out what it wanted in a manager before advertising the position. The council has called for transparency, community engagement and a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, he noted.
“I want to set some processes in place to make those really take hold,” he said. “The town is on the cusp of something really exciting.”
If Deschene is chosen as manager, he would also work to fill vacant staff positions and build on the town’s relationship with UMaine.
Jack Harper was raised in San Antonio, Texas, and lives in the area. He has visited Maine multiple times a year since he was a child, has backpacked the Appalachian Trail and summited Katahdin twice, he said.
“I’m finally at a stage in my career where I’m ready to work where I want to work, which is a place with a high quality of life,” he said. “I had always felt for family reasons that I needed to work in Texas.”
He has worked in municipal government since 1993 and overseen cities with populations as small as 5,000 residents and as large as 1.2 million. He considers those with 10,000 to 20,000 people to be the sweet spot because they still feel personal, he said. Harper began working as a city manager in Stamford and later Hillsboro. Then he spent four years as assistant manager in Waco.
Most recently, Harper spent six years leading Fulshear, which more than doubled its population from 2020 to 2023. The city’s council unanimously voted to fire Harper in mid-February and did not disclose why, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Harper also teaches at Tiffin University in Ohio. In the past, he has taught public administration, political science and emergency management courses at schools in Texas. He is interested in teaching at UMaine, he said.
The 52-year-old would lead Orono in a way that is open and transparent to the public, and would push for a survey led by a third party because it’s a good way to learn what matters most to citizens, he said. The town cannot pursue many disparate projects because it would run out of resources and they wouldn’t be executed well, but it should look for ideas that are “weighted, ranked and rise to that level” of importance, he said.
“I believe with my 31 years of experience — 22 as a manager — that I have seen most things,” he said. “Because of my education, experience and love of Maine, it would be a good fit.”
