WESTFIELD – The Westfield Auditor Search Committee met for its first meeting on July 17 to discuss ways to find more candidates and interview questions.

The committee is attempting to fill the position that was recently vacated by former Auditor Chris Caputo.

One of the biggest concerns the committee had surrounded how they could avoid reviewing interview questions during an open meeting as to not give any of the candidates an unfair advantage.

City Councilor Ralph Figy said, “We cannot go into executive session to formulate questions as that would have to be done in open session. If we were to do that it may give someone an unfair advantage going into the interview.”

Figy added that along with questions from the Legal and Personnel departments he would be asking the rest of the city council for questions to send along.

“What I will be doing after this meeting is soliciting from my fellow city councilors any questions that they might want to have asked,” he said. “Since we have been given the responsibility to do the interview and make recommendations I would like any input they may have on this.”

Along with those questions, Figy said they will also be using the questions from the previous auditor search as a template.

Were the committee to review the questions in executive session, it would violate the open meeting law. Shana Reed, the city’s attorney, said, “That would unfortunately be considered a serial violation of the open meeting law because you are getting it and giving feedback not in an open session. The delegation to Legal and Personnel is a full-on delegation.”

At the time of the meeting there was just one incomplete application for the job and the Personnel Department was still waiting to hear back about the missing information. As a result, the committee agreed to extend the posting another 30 days from its current expiration date of July 21.

In order to find new applicants, the committee also decided to post the listing on several more websites, including Linkedin, School Spring, and the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants.

Joanne Lemelin, the director of the Personnel Department acknowledged that finding a new auditor would be difficult. She said, “This is going to be a hard one to fill; we knew even before Chris left that filling financial positions in Mass. would be difficult. There are some towns that have been unfilled for eight to 10 months in Western Mass.”

The committee will next meet in August once the pool of candidates grows and the new expiration date for the posting is closer.