The city of South Portland has lost four department heads and an assistant city manager in the past five months. However, those defections are not a cause for concern, City Manager Jim Gailey said this week.

Since July, South Portland has lost Assistant City Manager Jon Jennings, City Clerk Susan Mooney, Fire Chief Kevin Guimond, City Assessor Elizabeth Sawyer and Parks and Recreation Director Rick Towle.

Jennings left after two years in South Portland to become Portland’s city manager. Mooney, Guimond and Sawyer are all longtime city employees with decades of service to the community.

Towle resigned last week after being on paid administrative leave since Dec. 1, and Sawyer also announced her retirement last week. Her last day on the job will be the end of the month.

Guimond resigned in mid-November to take a job in the private sector and Mooney resigned without any specific plans for the future, other than not sitting behind a desk, she said.

The reasons for Towle’s departure are unclear. No one in the city would comment on it, and he could not be reached for comment.

Although Gailey admitted that with the loss of longtime employees, the city departments affected lose an incredible amount of institutional knowledge, he also said the remaining staff members are always “prepared to quickly fill the gap until a replacement is found.”

Mayor Tom Blake said that while he “appreciates and values” the benefits of institutional knowledge, particularly in terms of what’s been tried and works or what’s been tried and failed, he also sees the turnover as a new opportunity for the city.

“Bringing in new staff with new ideas and a fresh perspective can be beneficial,” Blake said this week, adding that he’s excited about “looking far and wide to get the best person possible” for each opening.

He also said that the city has always taken the time and effort to “train the backups,” and “we have hundreds of well-qualified staff” ready to step in until a hire is made.

Blake also doesn’t believe the loss of department heads will affect the ability of the City Council to do its work, since “we all go through the chain of command” – meaning that any question they may have or a constituent may have goes through Gailey.

Overall, Gailey said, the number of department heads stepping down is “just the cycle we are in as employees are looking to retire. All have different reasons for moving on.”

Blake agreed and said it’s “just a quirk” that South Portland has lost so many department heads. This is his third time as mayor of the city and he said in the prior eight years there was very little movement in the top spots.

“Now it’s just happened all at once,” he said.

While both Gailey and Blake are unconcerned, former longtime South Portland City Manager Jeff Jordan told the Current this week that department heads do “build up wisdom and knowledge that’s hard to replace.”

But, Jordan also praised Gailey for taking “a very proactive approach” to the issue of succession, particularly with the recent creation of a leadership academy, which operates in cooperation with Southern Maine Community College.

Gailey said one reason the leadership academy idea was put into place was because city leaders “saw this (trend) coming” and wanted to start “preparing for the transition.”

“We have invested in employees,” he said, “and made sure directors were being more inclusive with what was going on in (each) department.”

Gailey added, “We also have graduated 45 employees from our annual Leadership Academy over the last two years, (which) has prepared employees to step in and carry the workload while we have a vacancy.”

And, he said, “These employees have also positioned themselves as candidates for the vacancy. We are prepared and we are continuing to move the city forward in a positive manner.”

Whenever there is a vacancy in a top job in South Portland, the city doesn’t seem to have much trouble finding a replacement or in attracting a qualified pool of candidates.

So far, Emily Carrington has replaced Mooney, and Josh Reny, the former town manager in Fairfield, has replaced Jennings.

Gailey said this week he’s already advertising for Towle’s position and the city’s Civil Service Commission is “putting together a test and interview questions for the fire chief position.”

South Portland and the city of Westbrook have been sharing assessing services, so Gailey said deciding what to do there will be a longer conversation involving Westbrook officials, as well.

In terms of drawing candidates for open positions, Gailey said:

“We have created a positive culture in the city as being a great place to work. We provide our employees the tools to do the work (and) we invest in them for them to succeed and grow.”

He said South Portland has been “fortunate that this culture has been widely broadcast throughout the municipal world and we have been very fortunate to attract some excellent candidates for our positions. This has allowed us to continue to have a strong employee base.”

Gailey is a long-term employee of the city himself and he’s sad to see other longtime employees move on.

Jordan, who ran the city for 20 years, said, Gailey is “absolutely loved and respected by his staff,” adding that “Guimond and Mooney, in particular, were very well-respected department heads” statewide.

He said the retirement of long-serving employees is not just an issue for the public sector, but for the private sector, as well, as more and more baby boomers reach retirement age.

All employers are “facing a large exodus of baby boomers,” Jordan said.

“I give Jim credit for creating a culture” of encouraging lower level managers to step up, he added.

Eric Conrad, the director of communication at the Maine Municipal Association, said when the economy is good there are “lucrative opportunities” out there for municipal department heads who are proven to be “smart, self-directed and well-educated professionals used to dealing with the public.”

Conrad said that’s why department heads are often “highly sought after by businesses, nonprofits and (others) in the public sector.”

While municipal government jobs typically offer good benefits, he also said “with layoffs, benefit cuts and pay freezes in many Maine towns, cities and schools in the past decade, the advantages of public-sector work aren’t what they used to be.”

The pay scale for municipal employees also tends not to keep up with the private sector, he said.

Conrad said that one of the most important jobs for any community leader and governing board is to engage in “succession planning,” which he said is becoming “a big issue in municipal government, as many people who lead our towns and cities, including elected officials, are nearing, or are at, retirement age.”

Conrad said it’s difficult to tell if “there are young people in the pipelines.” In some cases, he said, there are, but the question is whether there are enough.

“Looking at the big picture, this is a problem for all of Maine. We are the oldest state in the nation and, as such, Maine needs a strategy to attract and keep young (professionals),” he said.

That’s partly why the Maine Municipal Association provides a Municipal Literacy Curriculum to 70 Jobs for Maine Graduates programs at high schools across the state.

“We have found that some students overlook the good municipal jobs that are right here, right at home,” Conrad said. “Being a police lieutenant, city clerk, code enforcement officer or public works supervisor aren’t easy jobs, but they are good jobs (and) we want to get that word out.”

Conrad also praised South Portland for instituting the leadership academy with Southern Maine Community College.

“As an example of how to train and motivate staff, South Portland has been very pro-active (and is) a leader in the state in this regard,” he said.

Sawyer told the Current this week that after almost 30 years of public service, it’s simply time for her and her husband, the assessor in Windham, to retire.

“I want to try some Florida winters and perhaps some consulting when I return. I loved the job very much, but it is time for us to wind down a bit and just enjoy some free time together and be able to visit with our grandkids more,” she said.

Sawyer called South Portland and Westbrook some of the “best places to work,” in southern Maine, especially because of the “diversity of the tax base, from malls to paper mills, industrial to retail development and residential growth – it has all provided a very stimulating environment for me as the assessor.”

She added, “I am very proud of the collaboration with Westbrook and feel that my staff and I have provided an excellent service to both cities – it was really a unique arrangement that was later modeled by others.

“It’s interesting that many taxpayers in both cities are not even aware that South Portland provides assessing services to Westbrook – and I count that as a huge success. It means that what we do has been seamless and can work for others.”

What Sawyer will miss the most is the people she’s worked with, including the public, a sentiment shared by nearly all of those who have left employment in South Portland recently.

Overall, she said, “I really enjoyed the opportunity to be the assessor in South Portland. I have had a rich, full and rewarding career and wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.”

When Jennings left South Portland to become the city manager in Portland, he told the Current that South Portland is “an incredible place to raise a family, create a small business and be an integral part of a terrific community. I will miss South Portland tremendously.”

And, after 28 years with the South Portland Fire Department, Guimond said, “I feel I’m leaving this department in a better position than when I took over, and I am proud of the men and women I serve with.”

He added, “The fire department is currently in a great position and ready to move forward with exceptional leadership in place. I have had the honor and pleasure of serving a great city with the best firefighters and paramedics in the business.”