SOUTH HADLEY — The town’s assistant town administrator and human resources director left the position Friday after three years in the role.
At the Select Board meeting on Tuesday, Chuck Romboletti expressed his gratitude for South Hadley staff and leadership. He is taking a job as director of labor relations at Holyoke Community College after working for 16 years in municipal government. Before coming to South Hadley, Romboletti served as the human resources director in Needham and worked in the Holyoke Office of Planning and Economic Development.
“There’s challenging times ahead, but we have a great team here,” Romboletti said. “We have great people involved, and we’ll get through things with people engaged just fine.”
South Hadley will eliminate the assistant town administrator position and hire only a replacement human resources director. The change will save the town money and increase the capacity to assist South Hadley Public Schools with human resources, said Town Administrator Lisa Wong.
The town will seek to fill the position immediately. In addition to the director, the Human Resources Department includes a part-time assistant and a contracted benefits administrator. The department is responsible for hiring, training, employee relations and union bargaining.
Wong said the experience and enthusiasm Romboletti brought to his position have been indispensable.
“He’s just been invaluable in terms of coming in with just deep HR experience, but also just willing to tackle a little bit of everything,” Wong said.
Eliminating the assistant town administrator position is one of the budget cuts Wong considered for fiscal 2028. The cut will add “one to one-and-a-half days of work” to Wong’s week, she said.
Narrowing the job to a single role will also allow the human resources director to assist the school department as further budget cuts leave administration leaner. The schools have no designated human resources director, so the work typically falls to the HR coordinator, superintendent and assistant superintendent, Wong said.
“If the superintendent is potentially going to be losing a lot of staff and services, we would, you know, take out the [assistant town administrator] duties and provide some ability to provide some support for the schools,” Wong said.
The Select Board supports sharing services between the town and schools and also wants to eventually consolidate all human resources director duties under one position.
“I hope that the end goal is to make it one person, much like our facilities person in town, to have both schools and town in the future,” Select Board Chair Jeff Cyr said.
The details of this arrangement remain unclear, Wong said. The suddenness of Romboletti’s departure forced the conversation to happen earlier than expected. Wong first indicated Romboletti was leaving at a Sept. 8 board meeting.
“Unfortunately it’s not hard and fast right now because it is the very beginning of the budget [season], but the capacity and the intent is initially saving money … with the intent of knowing that there’s going to be these reductions moving forward,” Wong said.
