HADLEY — A search for a new town administrator to serve Hadley is being canceled after members of the Select Board opted against offering the job to either of the two finalists who returned for in-depth interviews Wednesday.

In a 5-0 vote, the board decided not to name either Nate Malloy, an Amherst senior planner, or Nick Caccamo, Williamsburg’s town administrator, to the position, and instructed a consultant from Community Paradigm Associates that the search be paused and resumed later this summer.

Members of the board cited the need for a special Town Meeting in September and likelihood of bringing a Proposition 2½ tax-cap override to voters to maintain existing town services as making this a difficult time to hire a town administrator who might need time to get up to speed.

“I think that at the end of the day so much is going on right now that we feel it’s better to wait,” said Select Board Chairman Randy Izer.

Hadley has been without a permanent town administrator since last September, when Carolyn Brennan retired, and since then Police Chief Michael Mason has served in the interim capacity.

Caccamo, Malloy and a third candidate, Leominster Library Director Alexander Lent, were the finalists brought forward by a search committee that reviewed 16 applications and interviewed five semifinalists.

Though Izer and colleagues Molly Keegan and David J. Fill II all expressed a preference to hire Malloy, who has worked 17 years as an Amherst planner, board members Amy Parsons and Jane Nevinsmith said they couldn’t support either candidate. That ultimately led to the unified vote by the board to halt the search and not make an appointment.

“I think that if we’re split, that’s not a good thing,” Izer said.

Keegan said feedback from residents, department heads and others was “all over the place,” meaning there was no great clarity as to whether either finalist was right for the job,

Fill said with the special Town Meeting looming, resuming the search in August or September, and a hire to follow, would make sense. “I think that would be an easier transition for them,” Fill said.

Parsons said she appreciated that Malloy understands that Hadley is a right-to-farm community and that residents want the community to remain a small town, and not become like Amherst and Northampton. “I thought that was really respectable,” Parsons said.

The difference between Hadley and Williamsburg was an issue for Fill.

“I don’t have the confidence that coming from Williamsburg (that) it’s scalable to Hadley,” Fill said. Fill said he also worried that Caccamo’s hands-on approach to leading that town wouldn’t work in Hadley.

The decision means that Mason will remain in the interim role. But even had a hire taken place, board members anticipated that Mason wouldn’t have been able to go back to being exclusively a police chief.

“Whoever we hire it’s going to be a learning curve, I don’t care how much experience they have,” Izer said

“I think whoever we hire is not going to come to the office on day one and be abandoned by Mike,” Nevinsmith said. “There is going to be someone there to guide him through crises.”

Keegan, too, said she was nervous about rethinking the Town Hall structure.

“There’s no question neither one of them has the, I’ll call it ‘hit the ground running experience,’ to just take it and go,” Keegan said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.