Norwich
“I try to facilitate stuff,” Durfee said in an interview. “I try not to be a ‘this is my kingdom’ kind of person. This is one thing I think the Norwich Selectboard picked up on — is I’m a collaborative person, I’m not someone who’s going to say, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’ ”
Durfee, who since 2013 has served as town manager in Fair Haven, Vt., will begin a three-year term in Norwich in May at an initial annual salary of $84,427, according to his contract.
He grew up in Burlington and attended the Holderness School, in Holderness, N.H., and later the University of Vermont, according to his resume.
Durfee, 54, spent most of his career in community development in the Twin States, serving as a planner for the Chittenden Regional Planning Commission for about a decade and as acting director in the summer of 1999.
He took a position as community director in Essex, Vt., for five years after that, and then founded Cellar Door Consulting, where as the sole proprietor he facilitated housing and mixed-use development, including the creation of affordable housing.
Bob Richards, the Selectboard chairman in Fair Haven, a town of 2,700 with a roughly $2 million annual operating budget, said Durfee will be missed.
“We wish him well,” Richards said. “It’s a good move for him; it really is.”
Durfee’s experience in planning, development and land use were a boon to Fair Haven, Richards said, especially when it came to communicating with Vermont’s bureaucracy.
“When we had to talk to state officials it was nice to have a guy on your side who could speak the language,” he said. “That’s a big help.”
Durfee used his experience to help Fair Haven revise its town plan and consolidate and organize many of its ordinances and policies, among other accomplishments.
He also instituted a periodic event he called a “cracker barrel” where residents could come to him directly to complain, socialize and hash out the town’s business — a practice he may continue in Norwich. The name refers to the barrels that townsfolk of yore would sit on when they came to the general store to jawbone about local matters, he said.
“You can come over and yell at me,” he said. “You can come over and shake my hand. You can come over and sit and enjoy a nice day.”
Now, in Norwich, Durfee is set to replace Neil Fulton, who resigned last year after clashing with some Selectboard members over his management style and the respective limits of selectboard-manager authority.
Richards said Durfee had successfully navigated his own town’s struggles to define the purviews of its chief executive and governing board.
“In the town manager form of government, selectmen tend to want to do more than they really are legally able to,” Richards said, “and he was good; he protected what was the town manager’s job and he was good in keeping that all separate. It was actually very helpful, because one of the things we’re always accused of … is a micromanaging style of business.”
In Durfee, the Norwich Selectboard appears to have picked a manager who it believes will defer to its vision for the town.
Asked, for instance, about the merits of a developing plan to create a high-density zoning district with affordable housing along the Route 5 and River Road corridor, Durfee deferred comment, saying he hadn’t fully absorbed the details.
“Again, I’m not going to come in and start imposing personal perspectives and changing things up,” he added.
Board members, said John Carroll, a member of the citizens’ search committee that helped narrow a list of scores of candidates to a few finalists, “want very much not to be surprised by their town manager and to be very sure that that person does not stray off the reservation.”
Carroll, a former state senator who was just appointed to the State Board of Education, said members of the Selectboard wanted their new chief executive to understand that the town manager’s role is not policy formation but policy implementation.
Durfee was “quite clear” during the search process about the difference between those roles, Carroll said.
“He’s just a very savvy guy, I think,” Carroll said, “and if anybody can navigate the sometimes stormy waters here, he can.”
Norwich Interim Town Manager Dave Ormiston, who helped advance a long-awaited renovation to the fire and police facilities, among other projects, will continue in the role until Durfee takes office later this spring.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or at 603-727-3242.