Clark: Their response is 'insufficient'
Although Town Meeting overwhelmingly approved a request this spring for money to fund plans for the renovation of Town Hall and Hildreth House, one member of the Board of Selectmen has continued to object to the manner in which his colleagues conducted and reported their deliberations on the matter.
The issue came to a head in mid-August when Selectman Tim Clark filed formal complaints alleging other members of the board broke the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law on three separate occasions as they prepared to deal with two competing proposals for renovating Town Hall, Hildreth House, and the old library. Last week the board members rejected his allegations and said no such violations had occurred.
The dispute dates back to late March and April when a divided Board of Selectmen wrestled with how to reconcile articles 17 and 18 on the warrant to avoid a debacle at Town Meeting, which was only days away. The two articles offered voters a choice on how to proceed with the renovation of Town Hall, Hildreth House, and the old library. One was the work of the Selectmen-appointed Municipal Building Committee (MBC), headed by Ron Ostberg, and the other a citizens' petition drafted by two selectmen, Bill Johnson and Ron Ricci, which proposed a more limited approach and favored the old library over Hildreth House as a senior center.
When the Selectmen met on the morning of Town Meeting, April 2, Town Administrator Tim Bragan arrived with an amended version of Article 17 and a statement of intent to be read by Chairman Peter Warren on behalf of the Board of Selectmen, both of which he had negotiated with Johnson, Ricci and others, including MBC co-chairman Doug Coots, during the previous 24 hours. At that meeting, in a vote that Warren declared to be "unanimous," Selectmen adopted both documents. The amended Article 17 later passed Town Meeting with its required two-thirds majority, as did a ballot question in a town election the following day to fund it.
In one of his complaints, Clark accuses Bill Johnson, Peter Warren, and Ron Ricci of meeting with Town Administrator Tim Bragan in his office on the evening of April 1 to work out the statement of intent that was adopted by the Selectmen the following morning. An unannounced meeting attended by a quorum of a town board is against Open Meeting Law.
In his two other complaints, Clark accuses all four of his colleagues of an improper vote to adopt the amended Article 17 and statement of intent, including a failure to properly post the April 2 meeting and to record the results in "an accurate and timely manner." Clarks says he did not realize he was being asked to vote on both the statement of intent as well as Article 17, and assumed it was only the latter.
When the matter was raised at a meeting of the Selectmen this summer, it was discovered that there were no minutes of the April 2 meeting with which to resolve the matter, a job that, in the absence of Executive Assistant Julie Doucet, is nominally the responsibility of Clerk Bill Johnson. Later, Johnson did prepare minutes, based on his recollection of the meeting, and these were amended and approved on July 19 by a 4-1 vote, with Clark objecting.
As penalties, Clark asks that the named selectmen apologize for their conduct, attend an ethics class, and, if appropriate, be fined. Regarding the votes of the selectmen in support of Article 17 and the statement of intent, Clark says they should be declared "null and void."
The response of the Board members named in the complaints came last Thursday with the release of letters written by Town Administrator Bragan on their behalf.
In the letters the selectmen deny that they violated any open meeting rules, with one exception: the minutes of the April 2 meeting. Those, Bragan wrote, "were not drafted and…acted upon in a reasonable timeframe." He continued, "The Selectmen will endeavor to make sure this does not happen again." Meantime, he told the Press last week, the minutes later written by Johnson and approved by a majority vote are the official record, as far as state law is concerned.
As for the validity of the votes cast by the selectmen prior to Town Meeting, a transcript of the meeting—prepared by Clark from a recording made by a local reporter—shows Chairman Warren "calling for the vote then declaring that it was a unanimous vote," wrote Bragan. His letter continues, "Since you [Clark] were a party to the proceedings…it was incumbent upon you to correct the Chair at that time had you disagreed with the declaration of a unanimous vote or the fact that no motion had been made."
A careful review of the recording by the Press confirms that while no formal motion was made and seconded to adopt either Article 17 or the statement of intent, Warren did call for "a vote" and did declare the result unanimous, and that no objection was made by any of the five selectmen who were present.
The letter also observes that two of Clark's complaints were filed after the 30-day period set by law for doing so had already expired.
According to Open Meeting Law, the response and copies of the original complaint must be forwarded by the Town Clerk to the state attorney general's office for review.
"That way," Bragan said, "the attorney general has the complete package" and can make a more informed decision. Town Clerk Janet Vellante completed that task last week.
Clark can either accept the response of his colleagues or press for the attorney general to render a judgment and penalties, which can includes fines. The office has three months to investigate, though the law does not set a strict deadline. In response to a Harvard Press request for comment, Clark wrote:
"At this point I can't share with you my response to Mr. Bragan's report other than to characterize the board's response as insufficient and…I'm not inclined to drop the matter as it is still unresolved that the minutes as accepted by the BOS do not accurately reflect the proceedings of that morning nor does the response recognize the lack of proper conduct of certain selectmen."
"I found their response insufficient," he added.
Asked her opinion on the matter last week, current Chair Marie Sobalvarro said, "It's time to move on."