Great Barrington — During a brief, nine-minute meeting held virtually via Zoom on Tuesday, October 14, the Selectboard officially hired Bourne, Mass., Assistant Town Manager Liz Hartsgrove to become the new permanent town manager.
The board approved the hire of Hartsgrove unanimously, and her contract with the town starts on Monday, November 3.
At the meeting, Selectboard Chair Steve Bannon said Hartsgrove’s contract with the town will pay her $165,000 a year and extend through October 31, 2028.
The town manager position was vacant for nearly 10 months after former Town Manager Mark Pruhenski left in January to take on that position for the town of Middlebury, Vt. Since Pruhenski’s departure, Town Planner Chris Rembold has served as the interim town manager. “It has been a pleasure to work with Chris,” Bannon said. “We’ve got to know each other even better, and he did a really wonderful job under difficult circumstances. And I’m looking forward to Liz coming on board and hitting the ground running, which I think she’s already started. Everything is looking up after the last 10 months of being difficult for everyone.”
In a biography sent to the town as part of the application process, Hartsgrove writes that she was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and was a professionally trained dancer with the Maryland Youth Ballet. She previously studied at the American Ballet Theater in New York City and the Joffrey Ballet Company in Washington, D.C.
According to her resume, Hartsgrove graduated from Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Md. She earned her master’s certificate in local government leadership and management from Suffolk University in Boston. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and her master’s degree in public administration from Suffolk University in Boston.
Hartsgrove’s professional career started in Provincetown, Mass., where she worked as a licensing agent from December 2002 to September 2006. She then worked as the executive assistant to the town administrator in Wellfleet, Mass., until June 2009. From June 2009 to August 2014, she worked as the executive assistant to the town administrator in Yarmouth, Mass.
Hartsgrove worked in several different roles during her time in Barnstable, including the consumer affairs supervisor from August 2014 to June 2018, assistant director of planning and development from June 2018 to March 2021, and the deputy director of asset management and licensing director from March 2021 to December 2022.
Hartsgrove began serving as the assistant town manager in Bourne, Mass., in December 22.
“My professional training and performance career as a dancer instilled discipline, creativity, and collaboration, qualities that have shaped my leadership in local government,” Hartsgrove writes in her cover letter. “Just as performance connects artist and audience, effective public service connects government and community. In Great Barrington, with its celebrated cultural and artistic heritage, I see a strong alignment between my foundation in the arts and my approach to leadership that is both strategic and deeply human.”
Hartsgrove writes that the challenges and opportunities on Cape Cod are similar to those in Berkshire County. “My experience on Cape Cod, like the Berkshires, has been shaped by the dynamics of a vibrant tourism economy, environmentally sensitive landscapes, and the need to sustain a strong, year-round community,” she writes. “I understand the importance of balancing seasonal demands with the everyday needs of residents, protecting natural resources while fostering economic vitality, and ensuring affordability so that local families and businesses can thrive. Great Barrington’s challenges of housing affordability, aging infrastructure, water system acquisition, and financial sustainability mirror the complex priorities I have navigated with success. I am committed to maintaining fiscal discipline while encouraging a culture of innovation, strengthening essential services, and protecting the character that makes communities thrive.”
Back at the Selectboard meeting on September 30, during which the board interviewed Hartsgrove for the permanent town manager position, she said that her first three months would be “all about fact-finding.” “It’s about analyzing, doing assessments, but not just for myself, but actually understanding how the community thinks, assessing how the community thinks and how the staff works,” she said. “I call it my ‘Triple A Theory’: You do an assessment, and then you try to figure out an alignment. So you can find the core values so that everybody is speaking the same language. So you can have clear expectations for the next phase, which is action. Before you can actually move forward with anything, we need to make sure that the [municipal] staff is aligned with the Selectboard and all of the elected officials.”
During the September 30 interview, Hartsgrove called herself “a very participatory type of leader.” “I think that comes from starting at the ground level in a small community such as Provincetown,” she said. “As an early professional, I learned the value of working together as a team for problem-solving. When you are in an isolated [area] such as Provincetown, you have only one municipal neighbor [North Truro], and you have the federal government as your other neighbor. You are literally living on your drinking water. You have all these dynamics, including the business guild, the chamber of commerce, and all of these passions and objectives. You have to figure out with a small but mighty team how to support a community that is aging very quickly, that is becoming much more touristy, much more seasonal, and how to make it more of a year-round community.”
The hiring of Hartsgrove ends the process of finding a new permanent town manager for Great Barrington that lasted for 10 months. The Selectboard formed a Town Manager Screening Committee back in January and hired Community Paradigm Associates of Plymouth, Mass., for the search.
The Selectboard interviewed two candidates in April, but the majority of the board decided to pass on both candidates.
In July, the board interviewed Newport, R.I., Director of Public Services William Riccio, and while the board voted to hire Riccio, he ultimately turned down the town’s job offer.
According to Bernard Lynch, founder and principal of Community Paradigm Associates, there have been 30 applicants for the position since it became open in January.
Click here for Hartsgrove’s application for the position of town manager.
Click here for the contract between Hartsgrove and the town.
