The town of Canton, Connecticut is scheduled to see a familiar face take over the role of emergence management director. Christopher Arciero, the Chief of Police in Canton, will assume the duties of the directorial position later this month and will likely receive a $12,000 increase in pay for doing so. The pay raise has not been made official yet but the Canton Board of Finance is expected to approve the raise before the new arrangement takes permanent effect.
Adam Libros has been the emergency management director as well as the town’s fire marshal but resigned from the position to take a job with the Town of Vernon at the beginning of September.
Town officials in Canton see the hiring and the interim between directors as a means to begin reorganizing and revamping its emergency management infrastructure. Town selectmen voted 3 to 1 in favor of hiring Arciero into the position. The single dissenting vote coming from a selectman who stated that while he believes Arciero is indeed qualified to take on the emergency management duties, he is not in favor of the salary increase and thinks the decision in that regard should be postponed until later during the winter term when a new budget is written for Canton.
Other town officials, including those who were not part of the voting, stated that there would be additional training necessary for Arciero to be able to effectively execute the duties of emergency management director but that they believe he will do a solid job in his new role.
There were, however, a number of officials who expressed concern about Arciero’s ability to successfully handle the added responsibilities and balancing both the chief of police as well as the emergency management director positions.
Nevertheless, Arciero has already been gaining valuable experience in the role, having been named the interim emergency management director upon Libros’ recent departure.
