Board of Selectmen Give Town Manager Unprecedented Veto over Chairman Position

The recent board vote to give Chuck Woodard the chairmanship reflects a disturbing abrogation of responsibility and transfer of power from our elected officials to the town manager. 

At last night’s board of selectmen meeting, Selectmen O’Brien and Simon cited that Bob Haarde was unfit to be Chairman of the Board since he did not get along with the town manager or staff.  These comments turn upside down the expected governance of the board of selectmen, where the town manager works for the board, not the other way around.  Hearing two of our selectmen make this observation is especially troubling given the recent firings at FINCOM of two members who objected to various town warrant articles.

By making the relationship with the town manager and town staff a selection criteria for chair, the selectmen have essentially said that the town managers and town staff working relationship with an elected official is more important than the voters who elected that official in the first place.

We elect a board of selectmen and we hope to have a FINCOM which serves as oversight over the functions of our town government, not the other way around.  By definition, effectively serving in an oversight role creates conflict.  By declaring that board members must get along with the town manager to be considered for the chair, the board has crossed the line from an oversight body to a peer to the town manager.

This is probably not a surprise to many voters who watched the board of selectmen in 2010 scramble to sign a five year contract with the town manager in 2010 ahead of schedule and just prior to an election, and the most recent creation of a “super majority” for evaluating the town manager’s performance earlier this year.  The town managers performance has never been discussed in public. In fact, the closest we got to a public discussion was Selectman Simon’s soliloquy last night on why Selectman Haarde's evaluation was wrong.

When the board of selectmen work harder to protect the town manager from negative feedback or a chairmen with whom she does not get along than they do remembering the voters who elected them, those members of the board have abandoned their obligations to the voters.  That’s not right.  We need a board and a FINCOM that will provide oversight to our town bureaucracy, not cozy up to it.