Looks like it’s back to the old drawing board for the Oxford Downtown Development Authority (DDA).

At last week’s meeting, Chairperson Sue Bossardet let it be known the DDA’s choice to fill the vacant executive director position, Cheri LaFlamme Szcodronski, a resident of Hillsborough, North Carolina, was forced to decline due to “medical reasons.”

“She was very upset,” Bossardet said. “She loves our little town and she already had houses picked out that she wanted to look at.”

DDA board member Rod Charles inquired if Szcodronski’s situation was such that it could be resolved in a few months and the position could be held for her in the meantime.

“She indicated to me that it was going to be at least a year,” Bossardet replied.

Szcodronski was the board’s unanimous choice for the job after she and two other finalists were interviewed during the March 6 special meeting. They all liked her personality, passion and level of experience.

Bossardet presented the board with a number of options for resuming the director search.

One of them was to have the search committee take a second look at the resumes the DDA had received and see if there was anyone worth reconsidering.

DDA board member Pete Scholz didn’t feel it would be “worthwhile” to reconsider applicants that had already been “filtered out.”

“If one of them didn’t make our short list, then I don’t think I would spend my time going in that direction,” he said.

Bossardet also suggested looking into three individuals who had applied for a DDA position elsewhere and came highly recommended.

Ultimately, the board voted 6-0 to readvertise the position through the Michigan Municipal League, for an amount not to exceed $250, and locally, through Sherman Publications, Inc. for a cost not to exceed $200.

To Charles, that was the way to go “for the sake of fair play” and so there are “no questions” regarding the openness of the search process.

“We don’t want to have anybody complain that they didn’t know about it or something like that,” he said.

The DDA has been without a director since early February when Joe Frost left to take a position with Main Street Oakland County. He had been on the job since July 2015.

Since 2003, the DDA has had six directors. Four resigned for other positions, one quit to start a family and one was chopped due to budget cuts.