Lucerne County Council Appoints Three Members of Manager Search Committee

This evening, the Lucerne County Council selected three citizens to serve on a committee looking for a new manager: Daniel Ader, David Fusco and Charles Schiandra.

In another issue, Council members Brian Thornton, Stephen J. Urban, Kevin Leskevage, and Kendra Radle provided the four votes needed to pass an ordinance that asks voters to overhaul the structure of Home Rule government. The ruling would require a public hearing and majority approval by the council at a subsequent meeting in order for the issue to be placed on the ballot for the May 16 primary.

Under house rule, the managerial selection committee must seek, screen, and interview candidates for the position of manager and recommend to the board the candidates it considers most suitable.

The Council held public interviews with six other citizens interested in serving on the Volunteer Committee – John Bonita, John Dean, Robert Fisher, Margaret Gushka, and former Council members Harry Haas and Linda McCloskey Hawke. Fischer and McCloskey Hawke were nominated but did not receive the required majority.

Ader, from Kingston, is a senior recruiter at a private consulting firm that conducts a national search for candidates for executive positions. During her recent interview, she told the board that she has almost seven years of hiring experience and believes her skill set can help in the search.

Fusco of Pittston is president and owner of the Mechanical Service Co. since 2005. He said he started working for the company he now owns in 1985 and has experience in interviewing and recruiting in the business.

Sciandra, from Duria, runs a consulting company that helps family companies with succession planning and strategic development, and is the chairman of the district transportation authority. He told the board he would “go deeper” to determine if candidates should move forward rather than relying primarily on resumes and interviews.

Study Commission

The ruling, unveiled tonight, will ask county voters to decide if they want to convene an elected seven-citizen committee to study the government.

Citizens interested in service will run in the primary at the same time, with the top seven voters taking office if the ballot is passed. These commissioners will have up to 18 months to review the current structure and decide whether they want to keep it as it is, make changes, move to a different structure, or return to the three-commissioner system, officials said.

Any change recommended by the commission must be approved by prospective voters for it to take effect, which happened before the county became self-governing in 2012.

Seven of the 11 board members said they favor proposing changes within the company rather than forming an outside committee, with some emphasizing they don’t want to risk the committee’s recommendation to abolish self-management. Members who voted against the ordinance tonight: Chris Perry, Gregory S. Volovich Jr., Carl Bienias III, John Lombardo, LeAnn McDermott, Tim McGinley, and Matthew Mitchell.

After the vote, Urban said that many “inexperienced” people drafted the charter that is now in force and said he was skeptical that a majority on the council could take the time to come to a consensus to address its shortcomings. He said he was not a self-rule advocate, but thought he had some “good qualities” that should be retained in the commission’s new recommendation.

“I got really tired of the black eyes in Lucerne County,” Urban said.

Bienias said there would be more discussion on the issue in the future, but wanted to point out that he was not prepared to risk going back to the old commissioner system and leaving recommendations to up to seven citizens when there was no way to know in advance which citizens would run. places in the study committee.

“It could go in either direction,” Bienias said.

Bienias said he has been talking to fellow board members about reasonable bylaw changes and intends to propose an initial round of amendments in a few weeks. According to him, if the members of the council fail to independently propose amendments to the charter, an argument can be made in favor of creating a commission.

“But we didn’t even try,” he said.

McGinley said the drafters of the current charter had worked very hard and were assisted by good consultants. It agreed that the council should be given the opportunity to propose improvements, with the option to bring the study group question to a future vote at any time if the council did not make progress.

Contact Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or tweet @TLJenLearnAndes.