HEY THERE...Our City Is A Classic CLUSTER F*&K

Flanagan taps Cadime to
take over as city administrator

Shawn Cadime will take over

 as the city administrator.

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By Michael Holtzman
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Apr 28, 2010 @ 09:55 PM
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FALL RIVER — Mayor Will Flanagan has hired School Committee Vice Chairman Shawn Cadime to be the next city administrator.

Cadime, 29, has been a program financial analyst with General Dynamics in Taunton for the past seven years.

“I am looking forward to working with Shawn. He is energetic and dynamic. … He will be an asset to the sixth floor,” Flanagan said.


“He brings with him skills in finance, in collective bargaining and qualities of intergovernmental relations. He has a good working relationship with City Council, the School Committee and other elected officials at the county and state levels,” he said.


Cadime begins May 17.

He’s expected to sign today a two-year contract at a salary of $95,000. His pay will be adjusted to $87,400 after he accepted the 8 percent pay reduction consistent with cutbacks by other administrators, Flanagan said Wednesday.

He replaces Adam Chapdelaine, who held the job the past 1½ years until mid-April. His salary was $91,800 before the 8 percent cut.


Cadime’s hiring does not require City Council ratification. It requires resigning from the School Committee.

He plans to resign that seat after signing his contract.


Flanagan, who by city ordinance serves as School Committee chairman, said he will support Mark Costa as vice chairman. Costa lost that post this year in a split election, with Flanagan casting the decisive vote for Cadime.


Cadime, like Chapdelaine, is a lifelong city resident with a business background.


He graduated Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and concentration in finance and marketing. He’s enrolled for an MBA at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

For the past four years, Cadime has served as School Committee vice chairman and chaired its finance committee.


Thanking Flanagan and his administration for their support, Cadime said, “This is a tremendous opportunity for me to fully utilize my skills and my financial experience to better serve the community... I consider it a great opportunity and honor to work for the city that I was born, raised and continue to live in,” Cadime said.


He also thanked those that gave him the opportunity to serve on the School Committee.
Flanagan began the city administrator search a month ago, and stressed that his choice bring strong administrative and business experience/education to the post.


The job entails managing the daily operations of the municipality, oversight of city departments and implementing the mayor’s policies.

Flanagan declined to name the other three administrator finalists, culled from 58 applicants and 15 whom he and his top administrators interviewed the past 2½ weeks.


“It’s because they currently have full-time positions or are seeking other positions,” Human Resources Director Madeline Coelho said.

She and Flanagan gave limited background about the three other finalists.


They included a SouthCoast lawyer with experience in fiscal and legislative affairs; a Connecticut man who’d been a selectman and town manager, working in business sales; and a 20-year municipal manager from the southern part of the state.


Of the latter candidate, Flanagan said, “He has the experience in government being a manager and administrator. However, he did not have the experience in Fall River with knowledge of inner workings in Fall River.”


Flanagan said it was important to him the person hired “followed the budget of the last several years, and knew about the prior decisions affecting today’s budget process to see what past mistakes had been made … to ensure not making the same mistakes in the future.”


He emphasized wanting an administrator that “would hit the ground running.”


“I look forward to working with the mayor, City Council, School Committee and all of the citizens of Fall River to weather this financial storm, and I look forward to better days in the future,” Cadime said in his brief prepared statement.


Working at General Dynamics, a Fortune 100 company, Cadime said he managed financial programs of about $150 million. He also “interacts with presidents and directors of the company as well as various government agencies,” he wrote in a letter applying for the job.


Flanagan added that Cadime “has earned respect of people of Fall River. He has earned their confidence and trust, and he is leaving a secure job to join the city at its most difficult financial time in its history.”

He called Cadime a “no-nonsense person. … He will hold people accountable.”


Until beginning the job May 17 he will work nights meeting with department heads and helping form the next budget with the financial team, Flanagan said.


He must submit the mayor’s fiscal 2011 budget to the City Council by June 1.


Prior to his current work, Cadime held one-year jobs as a corporate action specialist for State Street in Quincy and as a technical administrator for Putham Investments in Norwood. He held short-term paid internships at Government Center as a college student, in the treasurer’s office and mayor’s office, the latter while Edward Lambert Jr. was mayor in 2000.
E-mail Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com.


Ladies and gentlemen there is an old colloquial Army term that describes what this City's politics and administrative governance has become. If you are squeemish at all, please look away. The term is:

Fall River Today!

(I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know!)

Yes it is!

This annoucement is nothing but a sad joke. I just finished watching the last School Committee Meeting on cable TV and was  amazed how relatively silent this new "financial genus" was when questions related to budget line items and grants were being discussed by two other Committee members, Pavao and Martins. An amazing performance with not one utterance of helpful explanation.

And where was this beacon of good management, financial acumen and all around accountability last year when he, like everyone on the Committee except Joe Martins,  layed down for The Great Destroyer Correia on vote after vote after vote. That was especially true for the budget. Should we even bring up the sad state of past grant accounts and why they haven't been audited? Would not the oversight of this issue be his primary Committee responsibility to see solved? I think the loud answer to that question is a resounding YES!

This is a man who has worked as a financial analyst for a Fortune 100 company. You know what the equivalent position is in municipal management? It's called a "budget analyst", the workhorse you hire right out of grad school to enter financial data  on spreadsheets and have perform perfunctory analysis of basic figures. That's how they learn about the municipal financial management business, by learning the timing and volume of the flow of funds over time. Basically, it boils down to how much gets spent, when, why and by who. But it's not "management" of actual operations. And in the private sector, especially at a "Fortune 100" company, which means mega money, $150 million is relative peanuts. Folks don't take my word for it, do some research and check it yourselves. I'd call the comments made by the Mayor and included by Cadime in his letter of application a serious case of resume inflation. But hey, he's the City's savior. This budget turns out to be no damn good, Mayor Flanagan has TWO scapegoats now; the Finance Director and little Shawny Cadime, the MBA student.

By the way, doing interships while Mayor Lambert was in office doesn't count as REAL experience. It might seem so to unemployed folk without a high school diploma. Yes, they would be impressed enough after reading this pile of crud doled out by Mayor Flanagan and his people, but this one smells like walking into Seabra's when that grotesque salted cod hits your olfactory system like a ball peen hammer.

Why do I suspect this was more of the same old same old, politics as usual in Fall River? Mr. Cadime obviously knows Mr. Lambert. Mr. Cadime served on the School Committee while Mr. Lambert was Mayor. Mr. Lambert moved heaven and earth to see Mayor Flanagan elected. Hence, this is a decision of hiring someone with their own political base (VOTES!) to support the plans of Mayor Flanagan for the price of a new job, all under the watchful eyes of Ed Lambert. And I'll bet you dollars to donuts Mr. Cadime is making a good sized pay raise. Most "budget analysts" in MA municipalities with a budget the size of Fall River make a salary around $70 - $75 K per year after a few years of service. Just saying!

This person may be a great guy, might be a really bright guy, and might be a dedicated public servant. Even if all those things are true, he still isn't qualified to run a City the size of Fall River. Neither was Mr. Chapdelaine but he's head and shoulders beyond Mr. Cadime, and I never thought I'd be saying that, but it's true. And now Mr. Chadelaine finds employment for a well run community as an assistant Town Manager at a higher salary than what he was paid here. The selection committee for that job was made up of two professional MA municipal managers FROM OTHER COMMUNITIES, plus a professional talent evaluator with vast municipal job rating and preformance experience. What does that tell you? At least Mr. Chapdelaine already had his MBA. And he's still not qualified to run a well run community! But he ran Fall River. Oh yeah, it was run by the Mayor. HA!

More of the same old same old. It wasn't who I thought it would be, but I'm sorry now, because either one of those men would have made far better candidates.