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The first public accounting of what Marblehead is doing with $17.3 million in new tax revenue is due in early October. The town will assemble it without at least two of the officials who built the numbers underneath it, and possibly without a third.
Andover Public Schools has hired Michael Pfifferling, who ran Marblehead Public Schools' finance operation through two punishing budget cycles, as its assistant superintendent of finance and administration, Andover News reported Friday. Andover said he will join the district this fall.
Pfifferling did not answer a phone call from the Independent on Friday seeking comment on the move.
His departure is the third this summer involving a senior official attached to Marblehead's finances. On June 9, voters approved a $15 million operating override and a separate $2.3 million trash and recycling override. Six days later, the Select Board acknowledged formal notice that Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer intends to retire Dec. 31. On July 10, the town announced that Chief Financial Officer Aleesha Benjamin would leave in August to become Nantucket's chief financial officer, starting there in September.
Where reasons have been given, they differ. Kezer told the Independent he decided before the override vote and told Select Board Chair Dan Fox before residents went to the polls, calling it personal timing after decades of long municipal workdays. Benjamin said the Nantucket job lets her better provide for her family while continuing in public service, and that it was not a reflection on Marblehead. Pfifferling has not explained his decision publicly.
The jobs are not equivalent. Kezer and Benjamin hold the two highest administrative posts on the municipal side. Pfifferling answered to the superintendent and School Committee. What connects them is the work.
Where the school numbers met the town's
In Andover, Pfifferling takes the position Keith Taverna held before the School Committee named him superintendent this spring. Andover News reported that Taverna announced the appointment in a message to staff and families, describing Pfifferling as most recently Marblehead's school business administrator and previously assistant superintendent of finance and operations in Haverhill and Marblehead.
"Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a strong commitment to fiscal stewardship, educational leadership, mentorship, and public service," Taverna said in the announcement.
The appointment follows an earlier candidacy. The Independent reported in March that Pfifferling was one of two finalists for the business manager job at Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School in Haverhill, while Marblehead's fiscal 2027 budget was still being cut.
That budget is where his work ran into the town's. During a March dispute over roughly $462,000 the town held as a cushion against health-insurance swings, three analyses of the school share landed within about $50,000 of each other. Pfifferling put it near $10.66 million. Former Finance Committee chair Alec Goolsby put it at $10.71 million. Benjamin came out between them. Pfifferling took the higher figure.
Benjamin said afterward that she had met with Pfifferling twice during the season and that Goolsby had spent five hours auditing her spreadsheet. When the Finance Committee filed its 2026 report in May, it thanked Kezer, Benjamin, Superintendent John Robidoux and Pfifferling by name for the guidance they gave the process.
That process left work behind. The Finance Committee report notes the schools closed their $3.7 million share of the deficit partly by prepaying $1.5 million in out-of-district tuition, money that must return to the school budget in fiscal 2028 and that the committee said will contribute to a significant school deficit that year. Beginning in fiscal 2028, the town also intends to move school employees' health insurance and pension costs onto the school side of the ledger while continuing to administer the benefits. A memorandum of understanding among the Select Board, School Committee and Finance Committee holds the town-school split through fiscal 2029 and bars another general override until at least fiscal 2030.
Two searches, one deadline
The October review is the first test of that arrangement, and at the board's July 24 retreat it was still unbuilt. Select Board member Rossana Ferrante said the data, the format and the presenters had not been settled.
"I think it's very important that October happens," she said.
Fox said he would convene the School Committee chair and its finance lead with Kezer and Benjamin, with a practice run first. Benjamin leaves this month.
Two searches are already running. The town said it would begin recruiting a chief financial officer immediately, with Benjamin assisting through August. The Select Board asked Chief Procurement Officer Allison Jenkins to draft a request for proposals for an executive search firm to find Kezer's successor, and Fox has said the board may need to hire that person by October. Kezer is assembling what he has called a big book laying out the job. No comparable handoff document has been described publicly for the finance office.
The 10-year plan Kezer and Benjamin presented in July runs through fiscal 2036 on the condition that health insurance rises no more than 10 percent a year. Marblehead budgeted about $16.75 million for group insurance this year, so a 10 percent increase would add roughly $1.7 million.
Marblehead Public Schools has not announced who will handle the district's finance work after Pfifferling leaves, or whether an interim will be named.
