Ellsworth officials have narrowed down their search for a new police chief to three candidates and hope to fill the position in the next few weeks.
The city also has narrowed down its list of potential new finance directors from 27 applicants to five “excellent candidates” and hopes to fill that position soon, City Manager Charles Pearce said. The open positions have been beset by turnover or instability in recent years.
The police chief post has been vacant since Glenn Moshier was fired from the job in March, after an investigation revealed he likely was drunk after he reported to work in response to a local officer shooting a man during an arrest in December.
Pearce said Monday that the chief opening was advertised in May and that 6 people applied for the job. Staff have reviewed the applications and given feedback to Pearce, who said he plans to make a recommendation this month to the City Council’s human resources committee, which is composed of councilors Casey Hanson, Patrick Lyons and Jon Stein.
It will be up to the council to decide whom to hire, which likely would happen in July, Pearce said.
The city’s finance director position has been vacant since late April, when Anne Laine resigned from the job. Whoever is hired to fill that post will be the city’s fifth finance director since 2018.
Despite Moshier’s firing in March, he had brought some stability to the position early in his tenure, before he came under scrutiny in 2021 for serving both as Ellsworth’s police chief and city manager. Moshier, who became the police chief in 2017, filled in as interim city manager after the departure of David Cole during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The council at the time then decided to offer Moshier the dual role of city manager and police chief, but the appointment proved to be unpopular with residents who said that the positions should be held by different people.
Both positions had been full-time jobs before Moshier assumed both and should have remained separate, critics said. The arrangement also blurred a traditional hierarchy in which the police chief is subordinate to the city manager.
Pearce was selected as Ellsworth’s city manager earlier this year after Moshier volunteered to step down as city manager, prior to his firing as police chief.
Moshier was Ellsworth’s second police chief in a row to leave under controversy.
His predecessor, Harold “Pete” Bickmore, abruptly resigned in December 2016, two months after being reprimanded by then-manager Cole for disclosing the “confidential personnel information” of another police department employee to a city resident. Bickmore, who declined to state a reason for his resignation, had only been the city’s chief since April of that year. He later was hired as Pittsfield’s police chief.
Bickmore’s departure from Ellsworth extended a two-year pattern of turnover with the position. John DeLeo retired as chief in April 2014, after having held the position for 16 years. Christopher Coleman, a 25-year veteran of Maine State Police, then held the post for about a year and a half before he decided to retire from law enforcement.
Don O’Halloran, the former police chief in Old Town, worked part time as the department’s interim chief for a few months in 2016, from February to April.
