Fair board makes offer to manager applicant

At their monthly meeting Tuesday night, the Great Northern Fair board voted unanimously offer the position of fairboard manager to an applicant.

The position has been open since last October after the resignation of Mike Sharp.

Fair Board Chair Paul McCann and board member Missy Boucher said the applicant requested his name not be revealed until he accepted the position so he could have time to inform his current employer.

Board members did say he is from Havre and has experience in the military and business.

Carla Vaughn, the board’s vice chair, said the candidate was interviewed last week by McCann, County Commissioner Jeff LaVoi, auditor Kathy Olson and personnel clerk Emily Mayer. Vaughn said she was present only as an observer and did not actively participate in the interview process.

Vaughn said that in accordance with the county’s screening process, the applicant was asked questions, and his answers were ranked and subsequently added up.

McCann confirmed this account and said the candidate's answers to the questions were “adequate or above across the board.”

Another applicant who was from Wyoming was also being looked at for the position. McCann said that when he called the man to schedule an interview, he said that he had accepted another job and withdrew his name from contention.

Following the interview, McCann said he and Boucher met with the candidate following the interview. He said they went together up to the fairgrounds to give the contender for the position a glimpse of the fairgrounds he will manage should he take the job and visited with him.

“After meeting this gentleman, I have to say he had a lot of ideas, a lot of things he would like to try,” Boucher said. “He is not afraid, by the way he talks, to try new things.”

Some other board members knew the applicant, and those who did not reviewed his resume at the meeting, something that was not made available to members of the press, and expressed satisfaction with his qualifications.

LaVoi said the applicant had a “level of maturity.”

“He’s got a family and stuff, so he’s got responsibilities and something to work for,” said Scott Doney, a board member who had talked with the applicant in the past. “From the conversations I’ve had with him, I am comfortable, too.”

McCann said the manager position is broader and less defined than what was laid out in the actual description. If the applicant does ultimately accept the position, he suggested forming a “committee of orientation” consisting of a few of the board’s members to act as a resource in familiarizing him with the procedures of the fairgrounds and obligations associated with that position.

McCann said he hoped to further the hiring process, adding that since February individual fairboard members had to perform many of the tasks that are usually the duty of the manger.