Steamship Authority Retains Executive Search Firm for New General Manager Position Vacancy
The Steamship Authority’s board of governors voted on Friday, March 21, to retain Faststream Recruitment to conduct an executive search for the organization’s next general manager.
During its meeting, the Steamship Authority board discussed requests to place a non-voting community representative on the general manager search committee, consisting of board and port council members.
“I’ve received a number of requests to have a non-voting member from the community be part of the search process, [and] I’m not sure exactly why people want that, other than they feel it might make it more transparent or more inclusive. Or perhaps there’s a sense that the board members are somehow ‘inside’ and perhaps not as open,” said James Malkin, the Martha’s Vineyard’s representative to the board, in a statement shared with the Vineyard Gazette.
Board member Robert Jones of Barnstable called the request “completely unprecedented [and] unorthodox.” He claimed that permitting a non-voting community member to participate would set an undesirable precedent for the future. The board voted unanimously to table discussion on the item.
In other Steamship Authority news, chief operating officer Mark Amundsen provided an update on the progress of three new freight vessels. He said that the new M/V Barnstable is running up to speed on the Nantucket route after initially running slower than expected. The Barnstable’s sister ship, M/V Aquinnah, is almost ready for sea trials and Coast Guard inspections before it will join the fleet later in the spring.
The last of the three identical vessels, M/V Monomoy, is still undergoing work at Alabama Shipyard, where Amundsen said the work is progressing at a respectable pace.
