Former First Selectman Glassman Takes Job with CREC

Mary Glassman, who resigned from her job as Simsbury first selectman as of Jan. 4, has taken a job with the Capital Region Education Council which created a new department that she will run.

Glassman will head the new “Office for Regional Efficiencies” which will help school districts find ways to save money without hurting educational quality, CREC said in a news release.

One example of how to do that is to work with towns in exploring joint purchase contracts, Glassman told the Hartford Courant, as reported in a recent article.

Glassman’s salary as a first selectman was $113,850. It had been frozen since she took office in 2008, and Republicans on the Board of Selectman had decided to cut it by 35 percent mid-way through 2015 because some of her duties were being taken over by people in newly created positions in town government.

Her salary with CREC will start at $135,000, the Courant reported.

Here’s the news release from CREC:

To help school and town officials find innovative ways to increase efficiencies in non-education services, CREC has created the Office for Regional Efficiencies, and the new department will be managed by former Simsbury First Selectwoman Mary A. Glassman.

Glassman, who led the town of Simsbury for 16 years, began working at CREC on January 22.

“I’ve been recruiting Mary Glassman for the past 10 years,” said CREC Executive Director Bruce E. Douglas. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work with her. She is the right person to head up our Office for Regional Efficiencies.”

The creation of the new department was officially announced at a January breakfast held at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. At that time, Douglas, BlumShapiro, and management consultant and strategist, James M. Kerr, highlighted possible areas where savings could be realized, including transportation, facilities management, food services, and information technology.

Work is already underway to enable schools to optimize bus routes, to achieve economies of scale through cooperative purchasing programs, to lower costs for facilities operations, and to provide state-of-the-art technology systems.

As manager of the CREC Office for Regional Efficiencies, Glassman will work closely with the Municipal Opportunities and Regional Efficiencies (MORE) Commission, a bipartisan group of state and local officials charged with finding ways to make local government more efficient and affordable.

In her capacity as a local official, Glassman has been active with the MORE Commission since it was established in 2010, serving as a member of the commission’s regional entities work group. In addition to her prior role as first selectwoman, Glassman is a former president of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and a former chairwoman of the Capitol Region Council of Governments.

“I’m excited to join CREC, and I look forward to using my municipal and legislative experience to find creative ways to fund education,” Glassman said.