With Y-Gate off the
table, a really light agenda tonight
By Will Collette
When the Council met on July 9, they decided to postpone a
momentous vote on whether to send the issue of spending $398,000 on the abandoned
YMCA camp to the voters to their second July meeting, scheduled for July 23.
Other business the Council could not successfully complete
at the July 9 meeting was also postponed to the July 23 meeting, most notably
fixing the mess the Council created for itself through its peculiar process for
selecting an executive search committee to try to find a new Town
Administrator.
They also added an item – a surprisingly controversial “MOU”
(memorandum of understanding) with other towns and agencies for the cleanup of
fallen trees out of the Pawcatuck River.
With Y-Gate now off the table (click here
and here
for details), the July 23 Council meeting now has only two detailed agenda
items on the docket for next Monday.
I thought MOUs didn’t mean anything
You would think that a project that brings together area
towns, nonprofit groups and the state DEM to clean up storm debris –
particularly large, downed trees – from the Pawcatuck River would be very
popular. All the various parties have to do is sign one of those little old MOUs
that we’ve been told by Councilors Tom Gentz and Dan Slattery and the CCA are
really no big deal, being nonbinding “gentlemen’s agreements” and all.
But not so fast, says
town Public Works Director Alan Arsenault. This deal has hidden costs and
obligations and is not as innocent as it seems.
Councilor Lisa
DiBello revealed these concerns about these hidden obligations in the MOU
at the May 14 Council meeting.
According to Arsenault’s memo, Hopkinton and South Kingstown
have decided not to participate. Westerly will join in, but will set specific limits on how much it will commit to the disposal operation.
From reading the documents, it seems to me that the cleanup
job is pretty big as well as challenging – one reason to want to mobilize the
resources of so many towns. Without some commitment from the towns, it seems
likely the debris will stay in the river. In time, perhaps over many years, those
trees will decay and drift away, I suppose, but at what cost to the health of
the watershed? I would hope that a new deal can be negotiated to get the towns
and DEM working together before winter comes.
To me, a larger point is that MOUs are serious, legal
documents. It does make sense to
look at them carefully to see what consequences come with them.
At the July 9 Council meeting, there was supposed to be a
discussion and possible vote on an “MOU” between the town and Charlie Vandemoer
of the US Fish and Wildlife Service over the town’s use of Ninigret Park. It
turns out that somebody made a mistake listing that item on the agenda and Councilor
Slattery pulled that item off the July 9 agenda in record speed. That
subject is postponed to either next month or sometime after.
When we are told either at the August or September Council
meetings that it’s no big deal to sign an MOU that gives the US Fish and
Wildlife Service powers it has no legal right to have over the town’s use of
Ninigret Park, I hope the controversy over this
MOU will not be forgotten.
How about doing it as a beauty pageant or spelling bee (or “The Price Is Right”)?
The other substantive agenda item addresses the Council’s
comedy of errors in its selection for a committee to review applicants who want
to be Charlestown’s next Town Administrator.
When the CCA’s “Kill Bill” campaign ended with the forced
resignation of Bill DiLibero, it was clear that Charlestown would once again go
through an executive search process. The last time they did it, 15 Charlestown
citizens worked for months to screen applications and interview candidates,
finally deciding that Bill DiLibero was by far the best qualified and
recommending his hiring to the Town Council[1].
This was the CCA-controlled Council that ran Charlestown
from 2008-2010. The new CCA Council slate that CCA ran in 2010 against its old
CCA slate liked Bill DiLibero and decided to continue his contract. They sung
his praises, gave him glowing reviews and raises, and then they decided he was
a thoroughly evil person and “killed Bill.”
For the new search committee, there were initially 19
applicants. One of them, town Tax Collector Joann Santos, was disqualified
because she is a town employee. Santos is also a business associate of Councilor Lisa DiBello, though that does seem to be a disqualifying factor. Another applicant appears to be a nonresident
and thus not eligible to serve.
The Council took a secret straw vote and found they had near
consensus on six candidates, didn’t like six and were split on the middle six.
Since the Councilors agreed they wanted a committee of nine members, they
needed to figure out how to pick three more people from the pool.
However, at the July 9 meeting, this process seemed to come
apart. The Councilors heard that they were wrong to disqualify Joann Santos,
and a 20th applicant for the Committee emerged. Even today, there was a notice on the Town website home page advertising for applicants with no set deadline. Maybe they'll be up to 30 applicants by Monday.
Plus, the Councilors
were challenged to explain how their secret polling met the requirements of the
state Open Meetings Act. Secret ballots are the law for voters voting at the polls,
but not for public officials making official decisions such as the selection of
members for a public body like the search committee.
Not very “open, transparent or professional.”
Click
here to read the applications of the 20 people who want to be on the
committee.
So on July 23, the Council will have a do-over opportunity.
Will they use the secret ballot approach again and run the risk of once again
violating the state Open Meetings Act? Will they get it right this time?
Whose Turn This Month?
It’s not mentioned on the agenda which Council member will
be giving the now-mandatory denunciation of Progressive Charlestown and me in
particular for being a vile, lying, sack of crap for doing the research on
their wheeling and dealing and for poking fun at them.
It cracks me up that Council members have the chutzpah to
criticize PC and my research and writing for being “uncivil” and for naming
names when that is exactly what they are doing – and routinely do in direct
violation of Charlestown
Town Council rules (§9.1).
At the July 9 meeting, the audience heard
Council Boss Tom Gentz excoriate me for being uncivil and for naming names.
Only minutes later, Gentz tolerated a half-hour
character assassination of local business owner Rob Lyons.
But as we have learned under the rule of Tom Gentz, being
Council Boss means never having to say you’re sorry.
[1] As a
side note, Councilor Lisa DiBello claims in her lawsuit, DiBello
v. Charlestown, that DiLibero’s selection was the result of a conspiracy aimed at firing her. In her court filing, DiBello claims that former Town
Administrator Richard Sartor, an archenemy of DiBello’s, had a secret meeting
in Hopkinton with DiLibero, who was then Hopkinton Town Manager.
According to DiBello, Sartor promised to get DiLibero the higher-paying Charlestown job in return for DiLibero’s promise that he would kick DiBello out of her job as Director of Parks and Recreation by whatever means necessary.
According to DiBello’s lawsuit, this quid pro quo deal between Sartor and DiLibero led to her firing in May 2010.
There hasn’t been any evidence presented to back up these charges – presumably that will come out during discovery or trial. But I have been told by members of that search committee their choice of DiLibero was not affected by any alleged conspiracy.
According to DiBello, Sartor promised to get DiLibero the higher-paying Charlestown job in return for DiLibero’s promise that he would kick DiBello out of her job as Director of Parks and Recreation by whatever means necessary.
According to DiBello’s lawsuit, this quid pro quo deal between Sartor and DiLibero led to her firing in May 2010.
There hasn’t been any evidence presented to back up these charges – presumably that will come out during discovery or trial. But I have been told by members of that search committee their choice of DiLibero was not affected by any alleged conspiracy.
