Ellsworth finance director appointed city manager

ELLSWORTH – City residents will find a familiar face behind the city manager’s desk.

Councilors on Monday named the city’s finance director, Michelle Beal, to fill the post left vacant when Steve Gunty resigned in June. Beal has served as the interim manager since that time, a position she filled three years ago when City Manager Tim King left.

The council vote was “unanimous and very enthusiastic,” according to Council Chairman Gary Fortier.

“Councilors were more than satisfied with her abilities to run the city,” Fortier said Tuesday. “She’s done it two times already.

Beal, 43, has worked for the city since 1995 when she was hired as deputy treasurer. She was named finance director in 2000 when the council created the position.

“Every major project in Ellsworth has a financial component to it and she has been involved in all of them as finance director,” Fortier said. “She’s up to speed on everything going on in the city.”

An Ellsworth native, Beal said she was honored and excited about the opportunities facing the city in the next few years. She noted the various economic development projects now under way in the city and said the city needs to be aware of how those projects will affect the rest of the city.

“In the next five years, we’re going to be moving the city forward, making it more diverse, expanding the tax base and expanding the economic development,” she said. “At the same time, we can lose who Ellsworth is. We need to maintain and take care of what we have.”

One of the biggest changes in the city in the past five or six years, she said, has been the idea of planning.

“Ellsworth has become a place that is really looking to the future more than ever,” she said.

The city has started to develop an economic development strategy that will guide all phases of the city’s economic growth, stressing again the need to diversify that growth.

“We need to find ways to expand close to the urban area and to look at different types of economic development including professional and industrial.”

At the same time, she said, the city needs to pay attention to other issues important to the people who already live and do business in Ellsworth. The city already is working on beautification projects on High Street and the waterfront, and will look at ways to improve parking in the downtown area, and at bicycle and pedestrian areas. The anticipated retail and business growth cannot overshadow other issues such as housing and regional traffic issues, she added.

“I know some people are worried,” she said. “We have to remain aware of what we are doing and the effect it has on people.”

Beal said she did not apply for the job in 2004 because her children were younger and she did not feel she had the time to devote to the position. The four years has made a difference, she said.

“I feel like I have the time to put in the effort that I would like to,” she said. “And I feel much more prepared than I would have been four years ago.”

Beal is married and she and her husband Everett, who works for UPS, have two children, Evan, a freshman at George Washington University, and Kara, a junior in high school.

Beal began her duties on Tuesday, but the council has appointed councilors Matthew Foster, John Moore and Barbara Reeves to negotiate an employment agreement with the new manager. They will bring that agreement to the full council in October along with a recommendation for her salary, Fortier said.