After months of waiting and one unexpected delay, officials say Pittsboro is finally getting closer to naming its next town manager.

“We can probably have a candidate [selected] by the beginning of April,” Mayor Cindy Perry told 97.9 The Hill earlier this week.

The selection process has been ongoing since last August, when previous town manager Chris Kennedy abruptly announced his resignation after two years in the position. The town appointed Hazen Blodgett to serve as interim town manager until a permanent hire was named — but the process hit a snag when neither of the town’s two preferred candidates accepted the offer.

“The two people that we chose…did not wish to come,” Perry said. “Not because of anything that we were offering, but because of their own personal situations.”

Listen to Mayor Perry’s full conversation with 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey.

Ultimately, the search extended beyond Blodgett’s agreed-upon five-month tenure in the interim role. And having come out of retirement to fill the position, Blodgett didn’t want to extend his tenure any further — leaving the town to appoint Larry Faison as a second interim manager while soliciting a new round of applications.

Now, though, Perry says the process is back on track.

“We [got] 28 applications [and] we have narrowed it down to 12,” she said.

The Pittsboro Board of Commissioners met Thursday to discuss those remaining candidates, with the intention of narrowing the field down further to a set of five finalists.

“Then a special assessment process will go on in the first week of March for those five,” Perry said. “Then we’ll choose one, two, or three for face-to-face interviews.”

Once those interviews are done, Perry said, it shouldn’t be long before the board makes a final decision — but even then, she said, it might still be a while before the chosen candidate actually arrives on the job.

“They may need to give notice to their current employer before they can come on with us,” she said. “So it will probably be May, maybe June.”

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