For Steve Bartha, It's No Longer Assistant 'to the' Town Manager

In NBC's The Office, the overeager, eccentric Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) adamantly calls himself "assistant regional manager," to which Dunder Mifflin Regional Manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell) constantly corrects him, "Assistant to the regional manager."

Avon Assistant to the Town Manager Steve Bartha is no Schrute, so we hope, and effective Dec. 5 he will lose "to the" – just that, "to the" – to be promoted to assistant town manager,

"I'm just very excited," Bartha said after Town Manager Brandon Robertson announced it at the Board of Finance meeting Monday.

It is common practice in Avon for the assistant to the town manager to work for at least a year and a half before being promoted to assistant town manager, said Bartha, who has been on the job for that amount of time. This was also true for his predecessor Blythe Robinson, who was promoted on the same timeline and went on to be hired as town manager of Upton, MA in early 2010, according to the Milford Daily News.

"It's kind of what this position is intended to be," Bartha said. "Generally the younger people, who want to become town managers and can put in five years of due diligence into the profession, sharpen their teeth on the budget and crazy situations like Winter Storm Alfred that come up and give you a chance to see all aspects of municipal government."

His responsibilities as assistant town manager will be similar.

"A good example would be 'contribute toward the capital improvement program,' 'to manage a capital improvement program,'" Bartha said, noting the like roles between the two titles.

He has already worked very closely on the library expansion project with the Library Building Committee.

"It's really more a function of tenure than it is job duties," Bartha said.

Before he was hired in Avon, Bartha worked in the health and human services sector of the State Budget Office.

"I was working with public assistance programs," Bartha said.

He graduated from Michigan State University in 2004 before doing Teach for America for two years in Louisiana.

"It was grueling," he said.

After the program was over, he went to graduate school and got his master's degree at the University of Connecticut.

He also worked in the Town Manager's Office in Farmington for a year and a half.

Now that he is on the brink on shedding "to the," he aspires to be "the"....

"I want to be a town manager some day," Bartha said, who will serve as acting town manager for a couple days when Robertson takes some days off early next week.

Sorry, Dwight Schrute. It's someone else's turn to be assistant manager this time.