Millinocket council to evaluate town manager

MILLINOCKET – The Town Council will meet tonight to finish evaluating and begin contract negotiations with Town Manager Eugene Conlogue.

The evaluation will begin in executive session shortly after the council meeting starts at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.

“We hope to finalize the evaluation and, if time permits, we’ll go into negotiations,” Conlogue said, “but I doubt we will have the time to do that.”

The evaluation process has continued, off and on, since the late summer, as other, more important business has continually come up, Conlogue said.

Although the evaluation forms have changed every time he was evaluated since coming to Millinocket five years ago, the areas of his performance that are examined have generally stayed the same, Conlogue said. They include his job knowledge, community standing, budgeting and financial management of the town, and his interpersonal and communications skills, among other things, he said.

Conlogue, who earns about $65,000 annually, belongs to several municipal and regional organizations. He is the vice-chairman of the Maine Service Center Coalition, chairman of the Maine Woods Coalition, is on the board of directors of the Eastern Maine Development Corp., and is a member of the Legislative Policy Committee of the Maine Municipal Association and a member of the board of the Millinocket Area Growth and Investment Council, he said.

His performance has been evaluated annually for four of his five years on the job, he said.

Conlogue was selected from among 22 candidates for the Millinocket job in 1999. He holds a master’s degree in public administration and a bachelor’s degree in secondary education from the University of Maine.

Conlogue was the town manager of Gouldsboro, Fort Fairfield and Washburn before coming to Millinocket. He worked for Gouldsboro for six months, resigning to work for Millinocket. He worked for Fort Fairfield for two years. Before that, he served as town manager for Washburn for nearly five years.