By Shari Phiel
Berthoud Recorder

The Town of Berthoud continues to make progress on bringing in a new Town administrator as well as rehiring economic development consultant Stephanie Salazar to help manage the Berthoud Economic Resource Team.

Interim Town Administrator Gary Suiter was recently tasked by the Berthoud Board of Trustees to look into bringing Salazar back on board.

“We had an initial meeting two weeks ago where they said to go ahead and initiate contact, negotiate a contract and bring it back the board. That’s the process that we’re in,” said Suiter.

After confirming that Salazar was in fact available, Suiter met with Salazar on Wednesday, Aug. 12 to start that process.

Suiter said he “had several of the BERT committee members there with me to help define a scope of work and then we talked about expectations.”

The next steps will be to finalize the agreement between the Town and Salazar that will go to the trustees for approval. “Stephanie is going to be getting me a draft contract by the end of this week, and then we’ll need to negotiate that contract,” noted Suiter.

If contract negotiations are finished by the end of next week, as Suiter expects them to be, he will then bring the agreement to the Board of Trustees on Sept. 8 for approval. All of which will allow Salazar to return to working with BERT and the trustees sometime in early September.

Search for Town Admin Narrows
The Berthoud Board of Trustees are also working to find a replacement for former Town Administrator Jim White who left the position July 20.

According to Mayor Tom Patterson, Berthoud received 118 applications for the position opening, and even a couple more once the closing deadline had passed.

“The town board has individually gone through each one and picked out those they felt were in the top 10,” said Patterson at the Tuesday, Aug. 19 trustees’ meeting.

From there, trustees reduced the number of applicants by joint agreement to a total of 10 applicants, who where then each interviewed by conference call for approximately one hour.

The field in now down to three finalists. “We’d like to be bringing them back to the community and engage the aid and assistance of both staff and community groups to help us make our final decision,” added Patterson.

Town staff will likely make an official announcement today as to who those three finalists are and what the next steps in the hiring process will be.