The Steamship Authority is interviewing current employees for the job of chief operating officer, general manager Robert Davis said Tuesday during the monthly meeting of the boat line board of governors.
The Steamship Authority hasn’t ruled out an external search yet, but so far has only posted the role in-house with positive results, officials said.
“We do have strong candidates internally for this position,” Mr. Davis said.
Mark Higgins, who held the job from March 2023 to December 2024, was the first chief operating officer in Steamship Authority history. He left for a position in Maine, where he formerly worked for the state ferry service.
Creating the chief operating officer position, which reports directly to the general manager, was one of the primary recommendations in 2018 from consultants who spent much of that year on a comprehensive review of Steamship Authority operations.
Mr. Davis initially resisted delegating responsibility to another administrative officer, until the board of governors pressed for the position in 2022 and a professional search resulted in Mr. Higgins’s hiring early the following year.
While interviewing staff members for his replacement, the Steamship Authority also is preparing to launch an outside search for a successor to Mr. Davis, who agreed last year to step into an advisory position once a new general manager has been hired.
A subcommittee of SSA board and port council members has been interviewing executive search firms in the maritime and transportation industries, prior to selecting a company to launch what Martha’s Vineyard board member James Malkin, who chairs the subcommittee, has said would be an international search.
The timing for these new hires drew criticism during the public comment period.
“That seems really backward to me,” said Amy Cody of Chilmark, one of nearly three dozen people who attended the meeting virtually on a day of high winds and ferry cancellations.
Ms. Cody argued that the Steamship Authority should hire the general manager first and allow that person to name the chief operating officer.
She also called for the Steamship Authority to appoint a community representative to the subcommittee that will identify candidates for the general manager’s job.
Other members of the public echoed Ms. Cody’s request.
“We assumed you would vote on this decision today, and it’s kind of disappointing that it wasn’t on the agenda,” said Alan Brigish of West Tisbury.
Mary Musacchia of Woods Hole and Alysha Norbury of Oak Bluffs also asked for a community voice on the hiring committee.
“I think it would make a huge difference,” Ms. Norbury said.
Mr. Malkin, as search subcommittee chair, declined to act immediately on the request.
“I’m not prepared to bring that to the board at this particular time,” he said.
Among other business during Tuesday’s meeting, human resources director Janice Kennefick told the Steamship Authority board that ferry crews for the summer season are fully staffed, with 270 employees already signed on and five more in training to become captains.
“When we look at the captains and the pilots, [they’re] right where they should be,” Ms. Kennefick said.
Crew shortages aboard SSA ferries have led to numerous trip cancellations in recent years, but Ms. Kennefick said that recruitment and training both are going well.
“When we hear that we have a hard time recruiting vessel employees, I simply don’t find that to be true,” she said.
The one area where recruiting has been trickier, Ms. Kennefick said, is in maintenance.
“We’re down about 12 total employees within the maintenance department [but] I recently received a flurry of activity,” she said, noting that contract negotiations have led to increased pay rates for maintenance workers.
“I’m hopeful that we’ll have those [positions] filled,” Ms. Kennefick said.
The human resources department continues to recruit at area high schools and community colleges, as well as at maritime academies as far away as California, she said.
“It’s really important that we continue to maintain those relationships,” Ms. Kennefick said.
Overall, she said, the Steamship Authority has a better-than-average rate of retaining the workers it hires.
“We’re at a 71 per cent retention rate, which is higher than the industry standard,” Ms. Kennefick said
Also Tuesday, the board of governors heard an update on the M/V Barnstable, the newest Steamship Authority ferry, which displayed some performance shortcomings during its first days on the Hyannis-Nantucket run earlier this year.
The combination freight and passenger ferry is now cruising closer to its projected average of 12.5 knots, or about 14.4 miles per hour, Mr. Davis said.
An upcoming engine programming adjustment will increase the available speed, he said.
Nat Lowell, who represents Nantucket on the Steamship Authority’s advisory port council, told the board of governors that resolving the Barnstable’s quirks now will prevent the same problems from arising when its sister ships M/V Aquinnah and M/V Monomoy go into service later this year.
“The bugs with the Barnstable should be worked out with the Aquinnah by themselves,” Mr. Lowell said.
The Aquinnah is scheduled to join Woods Hole route this summer, when it will begin its day with the 5:30 a.m. freight run to Vineyard Haven.
Test loading has shown that truckers can drive and turn their rigs around on the Barnstable in forward gear, indicating that all three sister ships will be able to load without backing up and triggering loud beeper alarms, Mr. Davis said.
The 5:30 a.m. summer freight departure has been staunchly opposed for years by Woods Hole and Falmouth residents who say the trucks disturb their early-morning rest.
The Monomoy, third of the former oil field support vessels purchased by the Steamship Authority in Louisiana, is still undergoing conversion work at Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, Ala.
Editor's note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated information about the M/V Barnstable ferry.
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