The recent hire of a planner in Ellsworth is the latest addition in a wave of new employees in city government, where the turnover over the past few years has been roughly 50 percent, according to the city manager.
Danielle Gift, who was publicly announced last week as the city’s new director of planning and urban development, is one of several people to start jobs as top managers in Ellsworth’s city government in the past year. Others include Deputy City Manager Sara Devlin, Economic Development Director Twila Fisher, and Roddy Ehrlenbach, who is the head of the new parks and recreation department.
Ellsworth City Manager Charles Pearce is also among those new faces at City Hall, having started in his position in early 2024, after Glenn Moshier, who generated controversy while serving in the dual roles of city manager and police chief, was terminated.
Pearce said that with so many city jobs having been filled since he came on board, he expects the rate of churn to slow down for at least the near future. He said he would like to spend less time on reviewing job applications and more of it on standardizing and streamlining operations in city government so that transitions are easier whenever the next bunch of departures might happen — though he hopes it won’t be for a while.
“It’s difficult” whenever there is a high rate of turnover, he said. “It’s not awesome when institutional knowledge walks out the door on an employee’s last day. But we’re moving away from a personality-based system.”
Better development and documentation of departmental policies and procedures are among Pearce’s goals for making Ellsworth’s city government more efficient, he said. Creating better job descriptions and a uniform performance review process for all city employees, and having job performance formally affect pay raises, should help with employee retention, he added.
Pearce, who held high-level jobs in Massachusetts’ state government before taking the Ellsworth post, said waves of departures and new hires are not unusual when there is a change of administration at any level of government. Not all the new hires in Ellsworth are a result of former employees recently leaving their jobs, he added.
The deputy city manager position, he said, had long been vacant, having last been filled by Tammy Mote — now one of three outgoing Ellsworth city councilors — before she took a private sector job in 2020. Roddy Ehrlenbach’s city job is a new one, combining several different duties and responsibilities that previously had been spread out among other officials and departments.
Fisher and Gift filled positions that were left vacant with the departures of former Economic Development Director Janna Richards and former City Planner Matthew Williams — who also briefly served as interim city manager between Moshier and Pearce.
Pearce said in addition to the new hires, several longtime city employees have been promoted in the past year to fill some vacancies and, in some cases, to take on new responsibilities as some operations have been reorganized.
Finance Director Nate Moore last year replaced Anne Laine, who had been the fifth person to head the city’s finance department, either on an interim or long-term basis, since 2018. Pearce said Moore has brought some much-needed stability to the department which, according to the city’s most recent financial audit, had deficiencies in its financial recordkeeping procedures because of the turnover.
Sue McLean, who worked in the city’s tax office for five years, now holds the dual role of tax collector and city clerk, replacing former City Clerk Toni Dyer, he said. Tina Vanadestine, who long ran the city’s general assistance program, is now the social services director, overseeing both city elections and welfare services. Troy Bires, a longtime veteran of the police department, was promoted to chief after Moshier left, and Mike Harris, who came to Ellsworth 20 years ago to be its wastewater superintendent, now also serves as its public works director, filling a vacancy created when Lisa Sekulich left for a state job in 2023.
Pearce acknowledged the city’s staff has grown in recent years, but said that most of that growth has been in the city’s public safety departments and has been fueled by the general development growth of Ellsworth. The police department moved to a bigger new station two years ago because it outgrew its former offices in City Hall, and the fire department has expanded as it has added emergency ambulance services to its operations.
The city manager said changes at City Hall reflect changes in Ellsworth overall. People are moving to — or in some cases back to — Ellsworth from out of state because of its affordability and the popularity of Maine’s coast, and as a result people with government experience elsewhere are vying for city jobs, he said. He said more than 100 people applied for the deputy city manager post, and more than 50 applied for the parks and rec director job.
At the same time, economic growth in the Ellsworth area is creating private sector jobs that can be appealing to city employees looking to get away from the frequent public scrutiny that comes with government work, he said.
“There’s a different tone,” Pearce said of the criticism public servants often are subjected to. But at the same time, there are ample ways city staff can have a positive impact on people’s lives and on Ellsworth’s future, he added.
“Yes it’s difficult, but you get to help people too,” Pearce said. “We have so much growth and opportunity.”
