According to Mahoney, there is no objective reason to fire Stankiewicz.

“This town manager has brought back-to-back, fiscally conservative budgets to the Advisory and Finance Committee, and to Town Meeting floor,” Mahoney noted.

The explanation for Stankiewicz’s dismissal, the selectman said, is that the other board members are looking for a scapegoat.

“The situation,” Mahoney continued, “is that current, and past, members of the Board of Selectmen don’t understand what their role is in this form of government. Some think they’re omnipotent. Others are just angry at what happened at Town Meeting, but they know they can’t fire Town Meeting representatives, and they can’t fire department heads so, instead, they are lashing out at the town manager.”

“It’s personal, short-sighted, and incompetent,” he summarized. “There is just no objective reason for this individual not to complete his contract.”

Is this more a question of personal fit than a problem with performance?

Stankiewicz’s tenure as town manager began with the famous “pregnant pause.”

The night that Stankiewicz was hired the deciding vote – a super majority of four votes is needed to hire or fire the town manager – was cast by former Selectman Chairman Dicky Quintal.

But that night Quintal did everything but hold his nose when he cast that vote. After three members of the board had voted to hire him, it came down to Quintal. And he waited. And he waited. And he waited.

He waited several minutes before finally adding the fourth vote for hiring Stankiewicz.

Then, sources say, it was Quintal who wanted the board to fire the town manager last year.

A little more than a year ago the selectmen held an executive session in the second floor Plantation Room at Town Hall to consider dismissal for what sources say was largely “an attitude problem.”

After that, the board refused to give Stankiewicz a new contract but agreed, in a handshake deal, to allow him to pursue other positions during the last year of his existing contract. Stankiewicz was recently a finalist for the town manager’s job in Burlington.

But following the recent Town Meeting, when almost every one of the selectmen’s initiatives were turned down by representatives, Stankiewicz was on the block again.

While confirming the main points of this story prior to the meeting, Stankiewicz also acknowledged that until an agreement was signed there was still the potential that things could change.

But, with Stankiewicz' days in town now officially numbered, who will replace him?

Will it be long-time Assistant Town Manager Melissa Arrighi, as has been rumored, or will the town conduct yet another wide-ranging search for yet another new town manager?