By CRAG FREILICH

POTSDAM -- The Village Board has hired a consultant to help find a replacement for Village Administrator Everett Basford.

Basford “has been wanting to leave for a while,” said Trustee Eleanor Hopke. “Now we’re searching for a replacement.”

She said that John Wicke of Personé Staffing has been retained to advertise for applications and resumes from people who would like to serve in the position.

The action was taken at the board’s meeting Tuesday, July 5,

The board also approved a new schedule of fees for building permits.

Applications are due by Aug. 19. The village hopes to have someone in the position by Oct. 1.

Basford told the board that he will stay until his replacement has ben appointed and has had some time to settle into the job.

Wicke will “screen candidates for village administrator,” Hopke said. “I hope we have good candidates to choose from,” she said.

The board has expressed the hope that a local candidate can be found.

The advertisement for the position says the village seeks a candidate with a bachelor’s degree in public administration, business or a related field, and preferably a master’s degree as well.

The administrator will manage more than 50 village employees, so the preferred candidate “must be able to competently create and manage budgets, have strong project management skills, oversee and develop personnel, provide visionary leadership to the community, village committees and staff, and be committed to economic development.”

Current Administrator Basford’s salary is $84,391 a year plus benefits.

Basford said early this year he was making plans to leave the position in part because of a disagreement over procedure.

He said at the time that his decision to leave was prompted by a member of the Board of Trustees who gave village staff instructions in the absence of official policy debated and adopted by the board in an open meeting.

“If board members have a discussion and make a decision on a policy or an item” outside of the regular open meeting process, such as when members talk on the phone or through email without an official meeting and a vote on the record, “and that employee is notified of the decision, that is a violation of the Open Meetings Law,” Basford said, without going into specifics.

The mayor, he said, derives authority to direct the administrator through the votes on policies and programs of the board as a whole.

“A trustee’s position is as one of a board. A trustee does not have the power to direct staff,” he said. That power belongs to the mayor, he said.

The new building permit fees the board approved have been changed only slightly, at the top tier of the schedule.

Code Enforcement Officer Greg Thompson said that Trustee Steve Warr and Mayor Ron Tischler asked him to examine the established residential building permit fee to see if it could be lowered.

“They asked me to propose a possible fee adjustment in an attempt to be a little more construction-friendly,” Thompson said.

That was apparently at the behest of the builder of a $1.2 million home on Drumlin Drive for his elderly mother.

The current charges are a minimum fee of $40 plus $8 per thousand dollars of estimated building cost above $5,000 with no cap on the total fee. The proposal changed that to set a cap of $800 on residential building.

Under the old fee structure, the permit for a $1.2 million structure would cost $9,600.

With the reduction approved, the fee for that project would be $800, a reduction of $8,800.