LISBON — Former Freeport Town Manager Dale Olmstead will step in as the interim town manager, Council Chairwoman Lisa Ward said Tuesday night following an executive session.

Police Chief David Brooks, who has been the acting town manager, will continue in that role until the next council meeting on Feb. 4 when Olmstead will be appointed, Ward said.

Brooks stepped into the acting town manager’s role after J. Michael Huston, named interim manager on Jan. 7, was hospitalized. The town’s most recent manager, Steve Eldridge, left after the council voted not to renew his contract, which ended Jan. 6.

The executive session was preceded by a workshop that included a presentation by a representative from the Maine Municipal Association.

David Barrett, MMA’s director of personnel services and labor relations, said it could take 12 to 16 weeks before a new town manager is named. MMA provides a number of services for Maine cities and towns, including helping them negotiate labor contracts and hire new town managers.

Barrett said MMA typically helps six to eight towns a year select new managers. Barrett said they just finished helping Kennebunkport in its search and are now in the process of helping New Gloucester.

“The first thing we do is meet with you to develop a needs assessment,” Barrett said. “We need to know what your three- to five-year game plan is and what skills you are looking for.”

The search committee can be made up of just the council, or members of the council and others from the town, he said.

“We draft an ad, then run it by you,” he said. “Resumes will come into our office and we respond so people aren’t calling the Town Office. After the deadline has passed, I review them and categorize them: the top group, who have all the skills you’re looking for, a middle group of people who have some of the skills you’re looking for and a bottom group who probably aren’t qualified.”

Asked how many applicants the town might receive, Barrett said based on recent searches, it wouldn’t be unusual to get 60 people who are interested in the job.

“We would screen them down to about 20 applicants, then reconvene and decide who we want to interview,” he said. MMA will provide members of the search committee with information on each candidate, as well as general topics such as interviewing techniques, he said.

“We’ll include all the resumes, questions to ask and questions not to ask, so we don’t get into trouble,” he said.

Asked whether it’s best to have a committee made up of just council members or council members and the public, Barrett said there has been more of a trend in recent years to have people from the public involved.

However, he said, if the public is involved, “They have to understand the importance of confidentiality. All of your interviews will be in executive session.”

Ward asked Barrett how MMA’s services compared to other groups that provide executive search expertise.

“The services are similar,” Barrett said. “We’ve been doing this for a very long time, so our advantage is that people know who we are.”

Revaluation update

The council workshop continued with a presentation from Assessor Bill Van Tuinen, who updated councilors on the four-year contract he has to carry out a revaluation of town properties.

Asked how far along he was in the revaluation, Van Tuinen said he had completed about 70 percent of the buildings.

“We are in our third year now,” he said. “We have done about 2,500 buildings. We expect to start the notification and hearing process in the spring of 2015.”

Van Tuinen said it was his understanding that 1989 was the last time a townwide revaluation was done.

“There has been indexing since then,” he said. “I believe there was an update in 2010 or 2011 to try to bring the valuations up to 80 percent of the sales value. Now, with some deterioration in the market, you might be at 85 percent.”