CLAREMONT — The City Council will have to search for yet another city manager after the fourth person to hold the full-time role in the last 10 years tendered her resignation.
Nancy Bates, who began as city manager in January after a seven-month interim period, resigned on Monday, the city announced.
She will remain in her role for between 60 and 90 days, and has offered to assist the city after her departure to “ensure a smooth and orderly transition,” the council said in a message on the city’s Facebook page.
Messages left for Bates were not returned.
In her one page resignation letter, Bates explained the primary reason for her decision.
“A major factor in my decision is the extraordinary demands placed on me over the last two years, as recruitment and retention continue to be an issue for the City, and as the City has many areas in need of modernization and attention,” Bates wrote. “The intense workload and constant shift in focus have taken a substantial negative toll on my health and quality of life. I cannot continue to sustain the pace or carry the load of multiple roles without risk of further negative impact on myself.”
Bates also said “pressing matters” in her personal life needed her more attention than her workload allows.
She thanked the council for the opportunity and praised city workers as “a tremendous group of hardworking and dedicated employees and I will miss them.”
In addition to being city manager, Bates has continued to have a hand in running the finance department, which has been without a director since Bates, who was in that position, became city manager.
Mayor Dale Girard said he could not comment on the specific reasons for Bates’ resignation. While surprised by her announcement, Girard said he did not think Bates was “enjoying the position as much as she thought she would.”
Girard said the council will meet on Tuesday to consider an approach to finding a new city manager.
Bates’ departure follows the firing of Yoshi Manale in April 2025. Before Manale, Ed Morris resigned to become town manager in Enfield, and his predecessor, Ryan McNutt, was fired.
Councilor Chris Irish predicted that unless council members adhere more to their role and abide by the city charter, the next city manager will also have a short-lived tenure.
“In my opinion, the reasons the last long-term city manager (Guy Santagate) was successful was because the council allowed him to do his job without interference, and he didn’t allow individual members of the council to even try to micromanage him,” Irish said in an email.
If an individual councilor attempted to direct Santagate on policy, he would “throw them out of his office,” said Irish, who served on the council during Santagate’s 15 years as city manager.
In December 2016, following Santagate’s retirement, the city hired McNutt, who previously was the town administrator in Lancaster, Mass. The council fired him in January 2019 in a 7-2 vote.
McNutt said later in an interview he believed he was terminated solely because councilors were angry over an issue in summer 2018 involving the disclosure of a tax abatement and reduced assessment for the Topstone building, a commercial property on Mulberry Street that has contamination issues and had been discussed publicly for several years.
The resolution to terminate McNutt said he failed to provide councilors with advance notice on issues of concern to the public. The tax forgiveness angered some residents and McNutt’s relationship with the council soured.
McNutt was not obligated to seek council approval or inform it of the lower assessment and abatement, which he said were granted to spur private development in the former mill building.
In July 2019, the council voted to hire then-Weathersfield Town Manager Ed Morris, who left at the end of 2021 to become the town manager in Enfield.
During the tenures of both McNutt and Morris, the council voted to hire John MacLean, a former Keene, N.H., city manager, to “coach” them on improving their communication skills. MacLean also served as interim manager after McNutt left and again after Morris resigned.
In May 2022, the council rejected all four finalists for the city manager’s job that were recommended by the consulting firm Municipal Resources Inc.
It then hired former Portsmouth, N.H., City Manager John Bohenko in an interim capacity.
In October of that year the council hired Manale, who had served briefly as city manager of Brattleboro. Like McNutt, Manale was fired, in a 9-0 vote by the council in April 2025.
When it terminated Manale, the council cited concerns about “honesty, lack of information in council packets, lack of follow-up communication with the council, and lack of departmental control and accountability.”
Bates, who was finance director at the time, was appointed as interim manager last July.
The city has not been able to hire a new finance director since elevating Bates, Girard said, so she also had to continue to keep an eye on that department.
“Whether it’s council overreach, council interference, lack of support for leadership and staff or the condescending attitude toward the city manager at times, the council continues to set each city manager up for failure,” said Irish. “And that environment will continue until the council decides to respect the charter and stop trying to get involved with the day-to-day operations of the city.”
Girard said Tuesday that he did meet regularly with Manale, but met infrequently with Bates.
“Nancy and I speak rarely,” Girard said. “When I do speak with her, I am very careful. If she asks me something I will answer, but otherwise I don’t offer. It is not my job to give my thoughts. She is the CEO of the city and deserves the ability to make decisions.”
First-term Councilor Chris Cogswell agreed with Irish that there has been some micromanaging of managers by the council. He was also concerned about the atmosphere in public meetings with staff.
“We are supposed to ask tough questions, but there is a way to do it constructively that does not put a city employee or the city manager in a bad position,” Cogswell said Tuesday by phone. “City employees should not dread coming to council meetings.”
Unless the next city manager has some ability to push back against councilors without fear of retribution, Cogswell worries that person also will be in the role for only a short time.
“It will just keep happening,” he said.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
