Not the First Rodeo for Narragansett's New Town Manager

For Pam Nolan, Narragansett's new town manager, coming back to this seaside community in Rhode Island just felt right.

"It's a beautiful town," Nolan, most recently the town administrator of Seekonk, Mass., said from a chair at the North Beach Clubhouse last week in the waning moments of a two-hour meet and greet scheduled for residents to introduce themselves to their new town leader.

"It felt like it would be going home again. It felt good. It felt right."

A decade ago, Nolan was the manager of the town of Westerly before moving to Massachusetts, where she worked in Truro and Plymouth before her job in Seekonk. Though Seekonk isn't a coastal town, it's the only landlocked town she's managed and Nolan said she is a pro when it comes to looking after a community by the sea.

"All of them were beach towns except Seekonk, which is close to the ocean," she said. "I'm very skilled in managing towns that are on the ocean."

So Nolan knows what it's like to work with state and federal agencies that regulate the coast, ocean and fisheries, which will serve her well in this town that has both the Port of Galilee and Narragansett Town Beach in addition to myriad special districts and zones.

The Town Council last month unanimously voted to appoint Nolan as Narragansett's new town manager, ending a year-long period of flux during which an at-times divided council appointed interim town managers to fill the power void when they fired Grady Miller in 2012. 

Nolan said she's not fazed by the history of the position she's taking over here in Narragansett.

"It's not my first rodeo," she said. "I come with a lot of experience, I've worked in Rhode Island and I did get the vote of every member of the Town Council, so that's impressive. I know I can do a good job."

Every job is a craft and for Nolan, her approach is "defend the taxpayer."

"They pay their taxes and deserve good services," she said. "They expect us to do our job, do it well and keep taxes down."

Here's the rub: people want nicely paved roads. They want the Police and Fire Department to be well equipped and staffed. They want a strong library system, a senior center.

"But it all costs a lot of money," Nolan said. "It's not easy to keep everybody happy."

But you keep the door open, and that goes to individual departments, committees, and citizens.

"You can't make everyone happy, but you can take them seriously and listen to them and that's very important."

Other priorities include preserving the town's strong bond rating and supporting the business community, which faces particular challenges with the town's seasonal nature and the fact its largest neighbor is the Atlantic Ocean, which doesn't have too many shoppers driving in.

"I would never accepted a job in a town that wasn't financially well managed. It has a good bond rating and I want to keep it that way."

Nolan's last day of work in Seekonk was last week and she officially starts on Tuesday. She said she would spend the short break between jobs moving into a condo that she found to rent in Narragansett.

"I'm just thrilled," she said.