MALDEN — If the city hires him as the new municipal Chief Financial Officer (CFO), former City Councilor Neil Kinnon said he will cut all formal ties with the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School, where he has held a highly visible leadership role for most of the past 18 years at the school he helped found in 1998.
“I would take care of that immediately, I give you my word,” the former Ward 6 councilor told his former council colleagues during a formal interview session. He said he would even be willing to sign a formal agreement cutting ties with Mystic Valley.
Kinnon, who has served as chairman of the Mystic Valley Board of Trustees for many of the past 18 years, was responding to a direct question regarding a potential conflict of interest between a future CFO job and those of the city and the charter school.
Kinnon was one of two final candidates interviewed in public by the Council in the latest round. Somerville Treasurer-Collector Michael Bertino also interviewed on the same evening.
The original list of finalists had been six, but two potential Treasurer-CFO candidates dropped out before officially interviewed, both close to the night they were scheduled.
Malden resident and Eaton Vance mutual fund manager Daniel Grover and former Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) general manager Jonathan Davis were interviewed in an earlier session nearly two weeks ago.
Kinnon, a lifelong Malden resident who works as a finance director for a major national company, told the Councilors he believes his local roots, which he said “stretch back for generations,” combined with his extensive background in finance and business management, make him the ideal candidate to serve in a newly-created CFO position.
A strong proponent of residency preference for municipal hirings as a former Councilor, Kinnon spoke directly to councilors when he said,”I know most of you believe residents, with everything else being equal, should be hired for the job.”
Kinnon stressed his familiarity with the city and its finance system should be considered a strength, adding he was up to speed with “issues in all eight of the city’s wards.” He also said he is acutely aware of what lies ahead for Malden in terms of the challenges the city faces.
The former councilor, who resigned his Ward 6 post this past summer, citing personal and family reasons, said he possesses the leadership and management experience and skills to shore up the city’s finance offices and personnel which have been stung by thefts, two of them considered major, in the past number of years.
The other candidate,Bertino, a Winthrop resident all of his life, has also served as finance director for both Winthrop and West Newbury before taking the Somerville job. He said he was impressed with both where Malden stands as a city as well as what appears to lie ahead. “Malden is facing a breakthrough period in the next several years, in my opinion,” Bertino said. “This is where I want to be.”
Bertino also stressed to Councilors in his interview that he was “very experienced” dealing with budgets that are stretched thin by state local aid cuts and that he prefers to hear different opinions and work asteam when coming up with resolutions.
With the public interview rounds now completed and four finalists under consideration, Councilors said they will now hold a round of executive session (closed to the public) interviews with candidates and then decide as a group how they intended to proceed with the selection process.
