SKOWHEGAN — Somerset County Administrator Larry Post abruptly resigned Tuesday afternoon after a closed meeting with county commissioners.

Post, 59, of St. Albans, later was escorted from the county courthouse, where his office had been, by Chief Deputy Dale Lancaster of the Somerset County Sheriff’s Department.

“He resigned today, plain and simple. He felt he and we — the county commissioners — had two different management styles,” Commissioner Lynda Quinn, of Skowhegan, said by phone Tuesday night. “He decided to move on.”

Contacted at his home Tuesday night, Post said the decision to resign came with the blessing of county commissioners.

“It was a mutual parting,” he said. “We did not see eye to eye regarding the direction and management of the county.”

Commission Chairman Robert Dunphy, of Embden, could not be reached for additional details about the resignation.

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The five-member board of Somerset County commissioners did not take a vote after the closed-door executive session.

Quinn said commissioners did not go into the executive session Tuesday afternoon with the intention of firing Post.

“That was never, ever, part of the equation,” Quinn said. “We all wanted to be on the same management page, but we couldn’t.”

When Post was named administrator in June 2010, Quinn opposed his appointment.

She said at the time he had little or no county experience and “We’re talking a $12 million, $14 million budget, and his experience is limited to a million dollars.”

She also said the package he was offered “in this particular economic climate is extremely handsome. I think it’s way too much and just not fair to the taxpayers.”

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Post got a four-year contract with a $60,000 annual salary and the county paying 100 percent of his health insurance. He also got five weeks of paid vacation, and he would have been entitled to a severance package of 40 weeks’ pay if his employment had been terminated.

He was approved for the job by Dunphy and Gerald York, of Fairfield, on what was then a three-member board.

Quinn said it is standard operating procedure for a county sheriff’s deputy to escort a resigning administrator from the building.

Lancaster said Somerset County Sheriff Barry DeLong was contacted Monday and was asked to have a deputy stationed outside the door of the room where the meeting was being held.

Lancaster said he arrived at 2 p.m. Tuesday and stood by as county commissioners went into the executive session to discuss the county manager, according to the public notice of the meeting.

Post, a former Hartland town manager, was hired in July 2010.

Before that, he was town manager in St. Albans for 30 years.

Doug Harlow — 612-2367
dharlow@mainetoday.com


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