Council selects new Eastport city manager

Eastport city councillors have decided on a new city manager and are expected to make the appointment and approve a contract at the April 12 council meeting. Jonathan Southern of Perry accepted the offer of the position on April 5 and is expected to begin work on April 26.

Southern, who is a native of England but is now a U.S. citizen and has lived in Perry for the past nine years, will bring considerable managerial experience to his new position. He moved to Perry to live with his wife, Nancy, who has lived there since she was six.

The 37-year-old Southern has a bachelor's degree in business, information technology and finance from the University of Manchester in England and a master's degree in business and information technology from the University of Salford, also in England. Until 2001 he ran his own business as a management and training consultant in Great Britain. Then he moved to the U.S. and worked first as a police officer for the Pleasant Point Police Department and later as tribal planner for the Passamaquoddy tribal government and at the Pleasant Point Health Center.

In 2005 he was recruited to work for Superlative Technologies, or SuprTEK, a Washington, D.C., based firm that operated the U.S. Navy's human resources benefits contact center in Machias, serving 186,000 U.S. civilians who work for the Navy. He was senior program manager at the Machias center, which employed over 40 people. When SuprTEK lost its Navy contract in 2006, because it was too large a firm to bid on the contract, he went to work for the winning bidder, Occam Solutions of McLean, Va., which took over the center in Machias. The Machias center continues to employ about 30 workers, providing technical jobs to local people. Southern has been working as the center's manager, and he also became the program director for the company, which has oversight for several programs for federal agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Department of Justice and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The company provides management solutions to government agencies for areas ranging from information technology to call centers and also has support staff in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Southern says his strengths include program management, as he has worked on management solutions while at Occam, and he has grant-writing experience while working for the tribal government. He also has experience in emergency management, having undertaken training by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

"I've been very fortunate to have been able to take on some excellent challenges in this area and have done very well at them," says Southern.

Concerning his applying for the position of Eastport city manager, Southern says, "I wanted a challenge. There's no other job I could think of to use such a broad range of leadership skills."

"Right when I first came here I fell in love with the City of Eastport," he adds, noting that it is the safest place he knows of and has "a lot of excellent attributes," particularly the people. "Their work ethic is second to none."

"I think Eastport has a lot of promise," he says, pointing to its natural resources, the port, which has opportunities for expansion, the airport and a diverse and skilled workforce.

Southern was chosen from a field of nine applicants. Following a rating of the candidates by the councillors, two were chosen to be interviewed. Extensive background checks were run on both. City council President Bob Peacock says councillors unanimously decided to make the offer to Southern based on his management experience. City attorney Dennis Mahar has been very helpful drawing up a contract, and acting City Manager George "Bud" Finch has been "great to deal with," says Peacock. "He's been a great teacher."