STANDISH — Residents turned out at the municipal center Oct. 22 to meet the two final candidates for town manager.

Standish resident Terry Christy said that he is looking for a new manager who has “the town at heart, more than anything else.”

He also believes the new manager should be “friendly, outgoing, interesting and somebody who’s going to try to keep the tax rate down.”

Christy added that by chatting with the candidates, “you can tell that a person’s genuine or not and going to work hard. I don’t look at the politics, I look at the person and chat with the person.”

The two finalists for the job are Marian Anderson and Bill Giroux. The Town Council is expected to make its appointment next week.

Anderson has been the Wiscasset town manager since 2014. She previously was town manager in Richmond and has served in a number of other municipal roles.

Giroux was appointed as interim town manager after the Town Council fired Kris Tucker without cause in July. Giroux was the city manager of Bath for 11 years before stepping down in July 2107.

Resident Freeman Abbott said at the gathering that he is looking for a town manager who is “willing to work within ordinances and work on bringing in business to Standish.”

Julee Applegarth said she wants the new manager to “be very progressive, aware of our economic problems and aware that we’re a huge growth town.” She also hopes he or she will have an open door policy and will be “fair, just and looking toward the future.”

Christy, Abbott and Applegarth did not comment specifically on either of the two candidates.

Anderson said at the meeting that “there are a lot of similarities between Standish and Wiscasset: traffic issues, growth issues, jobs.” She said she would like to focus on traffic issues if selected to fill the position.

“We need to build a good relationship with the Maine Department of Transportation to work through those issues and also get a lot of feedback of what do the residents want,” she said.

She is excited about the prospect of moving to Standish because she has family nearby, so, she said, “for me, it’s an easy fit.”

Giroux said he believes that it is important to “try to identify what’s special about a community and try to improve that and what’s not so special and try to improve that without completely changing the character of the town.”

“I retired from Bath a year ago but with the intention that I’d take a year off – I traveled a lot – and that I would get back into it at some point. Standish is a good-sized town, and I always thought it was a nice place, and a job opened up, and here I am,” he said.

If chosen to fill the position, Giroux said he would first like to “kind of settle things down.”

“There’s been a little turmoil in the politics,” he said, “which I don’t know that much about, but just try to settle down and get the staff focused again on doing their jobs day to day.”

Jane Vaughan can be reached at 780-9103 or at jvaughan@keepmecurrent.com.

Interim town manager Bill Giroux, right, chats with new Town Councilor Greg LeClerc as Wiscasset town manager Marian Anderson, far right, talks with residents at a meet-and-greet Oct. 22 in Standish.