FENWICK ISLAND – A subcommittee will soon begin vetting applicants for the position of town manager.
During a report at last Friday’s Fenwick Island Town Council meeting, Mayor Natalie Magdeburger presented an update on the search for a new town manager. She said the town has received 40 applications to fill the roll currently held by Pat Schuchman, who will retire in April.
“We have started our search,” she said. “We have gotten approximately 40 applications of interest, and we are going to start by inviting those candidates that we feel are sort of the top of the class back for an interview session with a subcommittee of the council.”
Magdeburger said the interviews would begin in early January.
“The interview process will be both a sort of oral exchange of information and ideas,” she said. “And we are also going to have a written exchange of information as well that will help us discern a lot of different things – how we communicate, how we write and what our management style might be.”
Magdeburger said the top candidates would then advance to an interview with the full town council. She said she would keep the community informed as the search process continued.
“Hopefully we will have candidates that we decide we want to bring back to interview with the entire council,” she said. “Then after that we will be in a position to make a recommendation.”
In October’s meeting of the town council, Magdeburger announced Schuchman’s retirement.
Schuchman began working for the Town of Fenwick Island in January 1997 as an administrative assistant. And in 2000, she became the town’s building official, interpreting and enforcing the town’s building and zoning regulations and reviewing permit applications.
“During this time, I worked on many different aspects of governing the town as building official and code enforcement officer with a working knowledge of the town code and charter as well as a variety of position requirements of other staff members,” Schuchman said in a statement last month.
In 2021, following the resignation of former town manager Terry Tieman, Schuchman was appointed. She came into the role with more than 40 years of administrative experience and more than two decades of service in municipal government. Prior to joining the Town of Fenwick Island, Schuchman worked for 17 years as an executive secretary for Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
During October’s meeting, Magdeburger said Schuchman will be assisting the town in finding her replacement.