FW: Upcoming election on Monday, May 10th
Al Hamilton
May 10th is election day. This year we have several contested seats and the stakes for the future of our town are high. I and many others have endorsed John Rooney for Selectmen. Both Roger Challen and John Butler make the case for John far more eloquently than I can and their endorsements as well as a supporters list can be found below.
Al Hamilton
From: Roger Challen
[mailto:r...@datadist.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2010 8:46 AM
To: Roger Challen
Subject: Upcoming election on Monday, May 10th
My name is Roger Challen and I am asking you to support the Town’s need for new leadership and vote for John Rooney for Selectman in the upcoming election on Monday, May 10.
For those of you who don’t know me, I have lived in Southborough for 35 years. Today I am watching this Town, which I have long served and where I have enjoyed living, get torn apart. I am a former Selectman (I did not run for re-election because of my work travel schedule), and I served on the Advisory Committee for 10 years. I currently am a member of the Personnel Board. I have personally known each of our current three Selectmen for many years. As a Selectman, I worked with Bill Boland and Bonnie Phaneuf, before Sal Giorlandino ran unopposed for this, his first term on the BOS. These are not bad people, but as currently constituted, this Board does not provide the effective leadership that our Town really needs.
John Rooney is not a politician. He is an extremely capable and experienced leader. He is honest, forthright (gives you a direct answer to a question), and will focus on things that are important to the future of Southborough. Some people are concerned that John doesn’t have the necessary experience. I can speak from my experience as a former Selectman, who has had the job… John can do it well, and better than it has been getting done.
I spent some time at the transfer station on Saturday speaking with a number of Town residents. I spoke with one person who told me he is supporting the incumbent in the upcoming election. When I asked him why, he said it is because he “wants to keep things the way they are”.
So if you haven’t been paying attention, or reading the blogs or newspapers, here is the way things are, folks:
Instead of focusing on larger issues, our BOS has wasted thousands of dollars of taxpayer’s money on legal fees… why? They were personally upset with someone who anonymously criticized their Police Chief selection process. But many taxpayers, including me, had already been openly critical of that selection process. Spending these dollars was an incredibly misplaced sense of entitlement, abuse of power, and misuse of public funds, not to mention an attack on free speech.
Then we find out that the BOS has spent thousands more of our taxpayers’ dollars on even more lawyers. The final amount has still not yet been made public. This was for the lengthy investigation of 8 employees (most were department heads) as a result of some comment(s) made at an evening get-together at a restaurant in Westborough. The incumbent in this election, Sal Giorlandino, defended the BOS action, by stating that “the Board was required to initiate the internal investigation under the Town’s Professional Conduct Policy”. A read of the policy does not support this at all. This has been an unacceptable waste of money and time, and has cost good hardworking, employees their dignity.
Clearly, the BOS handling of this matter created an intimidating work environment, not only for the department heads and employees under investigation, but for others. And this has gone on for months. We have already lost one top employee, and we may lose more.
Our excellent (now just ex) Town Planner, is no longer here as a result of this work environment. She resigned to accept a job elsewhere. She was NOT fired, as had been rumored. I am afraid more will follow her out the door. The mismanagement of this situation has caused Southborough to become the laughingstock of many residents in neighboring towns (just read the newspaper comments).
As to the big picture, every year Southborough, as a municipality, continually spends more money than we take in – we need to overhaul our thinking on this – we have no plan to deal with the continued erosion of our assets.
For the first time since I can remember, Moodys, the company responsible for determining credit ratings for municipalities, has issued a negative report about Southborough’s fiscal stability. I am told this is the warning that comes before the Bond rating downgrade, unless our Town management can present a believable plan about how we are going to turn things around. As I said above… we have no plan. If (when) we are downgraded, the interest rate at which the Town can borrow will increase, leading to higher costs (and higher taxes).
I am disappointed and outraged about all of this… about what has happened, and what continues to happen. I have spoken with other Town residents who say they also support John Rooney. A partial list of those who are endorsing him appear at the end of this email. Others tell me they would also like to support John publically, but they fear reprisals of some sort, due to the fact that they may have to appear before the BOS or one of the many committees appointed by the BOS. What kind of Town is this, folks? A closed club? What kind of Town do we want it to be?
We have a chance to make a much needed change now, and we must do it. It will have two very important results. It will repair part of the problem, and inject much needed new leadership into our executive branch of Town government. It will serve to tell the remaining two members of the BOS that the citizens of Southborough will not tolerate the kind of behavior that the BOS have demonstrated. If we fail to act now, we will sadly be sending a message to the current BOS, our Town employees, and the towns around us, that we accept and want to continue with this lack of leadership and intimidating treatment of our personnel.
How can you help…
Inform others of the issues. Please forward this email to any one you wish, especially those who will forward this again to their email lists, and if you receive the email, please forward it on – it is difficult to unseat an incumbent. Uninformed voters tend to check the first box on the ballot.
Get people out to vote – call and email your friends and neighbors… remind them the election is next Monday, MAY 10, less than a week from now.
Put up a John Rooney sign if you are willing – it will add visibility. Reply to my email address, or to r...@datadist.com, and ask for a sign (don’t forget to supply your street address) and we will get a sign out to you. And yes, we WILL take the sign off your property immediately after the election, Monday, May 10.
If you haven’t been following the issues, please read the “Path to the Problem” summary by John Butler, which appears below.
Thanks in advance for your support of John Rooney.
Roger Challen
John Butler writes:
As near as I can tell, this is the path that led us to the current set of problems.
A process for selecting a police chief was put in place with ground rules that favored the inside candidate. She was guaranteed a seat as a finalist regardless of the quality of the other candidates. After hiring an outside consultant the consultant’s utility was diminished by preventing him from actively interviewing candidates, increasing the perception of a rigged process. The report of the consultant is secret.
Even so, this process might not be a problem today, if the appointed inside candidate immediately gained both community and peer support as an outstanding choice. However, as a process, the chosen approach is very risky. It puts a great premium on achieving immediate general acclamation for the appointment, since on the surface it appears biased.
As a result, this process, which appeared to favor Moran, actually was unfair to her, since it allowed suspicion to arise as to whether she would have been selected in an unbiased review.
Unfortunately, then, the required level of community and peer support did not materialize. Reports now say that the Chief herself believed that her peers were not supporting her. The combination of a biased search and then this outcome is a very hazardous situation.
At this point, which is where we were last Fall, there was a festering problem, a weakly supported new Chief, and a biased process that made her naturally defensive.
Then, things went from bad to worse because of a chain of stunningly bad decisions by the Board of Selectmen. The net effect of the subsequent Board of Selectmen’s actions was to maximize the unfairness to Moran by, at each step, unwisely choosing methods that were sure to backfire by creating the maximum public visibility on the questions, subjecting Chief Moran to endless public discussion, and dividing her from her peers.
In the most bizarre of the Selectmen decisions, last Fall the Board tried to find out the name of an anonymous poster named Marty who was harping on the biased Chief selection process. They did this by sending threatening letters to the mysouthborough blog owner, Susan Fitzgerald. The letters trample over all ideas of free speech concerning public matters. If such speech weren’t so thoroughly protected, they would be frightening, but fortunately we live in a country where they are merely laughably inept.
In this process the Town spent more than $3000 on legal fees trying to find out who Marty is. Since they didn’t have a legal leg to stand on, this went exactly nowhere, of course. However, the public backlash against the Board caused a huge spotlight to be focused on the “Marty accusations”. This was exactly counterproductive, since it brought the focus back to Chief Moran’s biased appointment process.
This backfiring was also completely predictable. It is impossible, at least in this country, to quell public talk by these heavy handed methods. Apparently unchastened, Mr. Giorlandino was still talking in the press about “financial consequences” to “Marty” as late as March of this year. I do wonder what country he thinks he lives in. The media attention, fundamentally unfair to Moran, and arising out of the biased selection process, was only amplified by the Board of Selectmen’s foolish approach to the problem.
In the bad climate of the Fall, there arose a rumor that Moran’s peers were speaking ill of her, over pizza in Westborough. Of course what was needed by the Board of Selectmen was a concerned but light touch, with lots of private meetings with all the parties, to sooth frayed nerves. Instead, the Board of Selectmen decided on a heavy handed disciplinary process with eight of the senior Town department managers as defendants and more than half dozen lawyers involved. How this could foster long term peer respect for Chief Moran is anyone’s guess.
Think how you would feel about a peer at work if you had to hire a lawyer to defend your job for something that, maybe, someone said over pizza about her in another town. The chosen process can only amplify peer resentment and make you hate the powers that caused this. Those powers would be the Board of Selectmen. So we have intense opposition between the Board and its team of managers. Not good.
In the midst of this, while it was still secret, one of the eight, and one of the most respected managers, Vera Kolias, resigned. So that her reputation wasn’t tarred, it all spilled out into the public, as of course it would eventually. At this point the choice of “heavy process, heavy secrecy” had its inevitable breakdown. When has that ever worked?
Presumably, based on Mr. Giorlandino’s recent statements at the candidate session, fear of a lawsuit by the Police Chief drove these bad decisions, but such fear doesn’t excuse those judgments. Perversely these judgments created exactly a public climate in which Chief Moran may feel most publicly abused, and now, added to that, her peers feel persecuted as well.
For Southborough, the Board of Selectmen’s methods created a spotlight of media attention, and what could have been handled privately and quietly, Moran’s concern about peer regard, instead received as much noisy attention as ever envelops this quiet Town.
Bad choices continued. Mr. Giorlandino claimed in a recent email to mysouthborough.com that the disciplinary action against the eight employees was required by the Town’s Professional Conduct policy. A copy of the policy makes it clear that there is no such requirement. At the very least, Giorlandino’s statement reflects a continued lack of understanding of what it means to operate in public. Of course the cited policy was obtained and published. When it contained no such statement, it was another black eye. How does this foster trust?
In summary, the Board of Selectmen gave us a flawed Chief selection process, that was unfair to Moran because it set her up for public doubts, a response to public concern that fanned the flames of publicity about the process, a response to peer concerns that only entrenched whatever peer divisions there were and, most recently, seemingly false claims about why this was required. These decisions only increase bad publicity and the likelihood that Moran, feeling hounded, will seek recompense in some way. They have created a horrible distrust between the Town’s managers and the Board. In short, the Town has seen a complete mishandling of the situation and a misunderstanding of what it means to operate in public.
JOHN ROONEY, ENDORSEMENT LIST
Thomas Barnes, Board Member, Southborough Youth Baseball
Ted Bassett, Former Chair, Southborough Zoning Board of Appeals
John Boiardi, Member, Southborough Advisory Committee
Laurie Bourdon, President, Breakneck Hill Farm
John Butler, Member, Southborough Advisory Committee
Roger Challen, Former Southborough Selectman
Karen Challen, Chair, Southborough American with Disabilities Act Committee
Paul Cimino, Member, Southborough Personnel Board
Janice Conlin, Former Southborough Town Administrator
Thomas Conlin, Chair, Southborough Council on Aging
Mark Ford, Member, Southborough Advisory Committee
Al Hamilton, Former Member, Southborough Advisory Committee
Doriann Jasinski, Co-chair, Southborough Scholarship Advisory Committee
Jack Kessler, Member, Southborough School Committee
Daniel Kolenda, Member, Northborough-Southborough Regional School Committee
Maryellen Luttrell, Chair, Southborough Open Space Committee
Janet Maney, Member, Southborough Scholarship Advisory Committee
Jim McCarthy, Executive Committee Member, Southborough Youth Baseball
Russell Millholland, Member, Southborough Personnel Board
Steven Morreale, Chair, Southborough Personnel Board
Claire Reynolds, Chair, Southborough Advisory Committee
Tony Speranzella, Former President, Southborough Youth Basketball
pamela esty
pam
On 5/5/10 9:41 AM, "Al Hamilton" <al.ha...@signal-fire.com> wrote:
May 10th is election day. This year we have several contested seats and the stakes for the future of our town are high. I and many others have endorsed John Rooney for Selectmen. Both Roger Challen and John Butler make the case for John far more eloquently than I can and their endorsements as well as a supporters list can be found below.
Al Hamilton
From: Roger Challen [mailto:r...@datadist.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2010 8:46 AM
To: Roger Challen
Subject: Upcoming election on Monday, May 10th
My name is Roger Challen and I am asking you to support the Town’s need for new leadership and vote for John Rooney for Selectman in the upcoming election on Monday, May 10.
For those of you who don’t know me, I have lived in Southborough for 35 years. Today I am watching this Town, which I have long served and where I have enjoyed living, get torn apart. I am a former Selectman (I did not run for re-election because of my work travel schedule), and I served on the Advisory Committee for 10 years. I currently am a member of the Personnel Board. I have personally known each of our current three Selectmen for many years. As a Selectman, I worked with Bill Boland and Bonnie Phaneuf, before Sal Giorlandino ran unopposed for this, his first term on the BOS. These are not bad people, but as currently constituted, this Board does not provide the effective leadership that our Town really needs.
John Rooney is not a politician. He is an extremely capable and experienced leader. He is honest, forthright (gives you a direct answer to a question), and will focus on things that are important to the future of Southborough. Some people are concerned that John doesn’t have the necessary experience. I can speak from my experience as a former Selectman, who has had the job… John can do it well, and better than it has been getting done.
I spent some time at the transfer station on Saturday speaking with a number of Town residents. I spoke with one person who told me he is supporting the incumbent in the upcoming election. When I asked him why, he said it is because he “wants to keep things the way they are”.
So if you haven’t been paying attention, or reading the blogs or newspapers, here is the way things are, folks:
Instead of focusing on larger issues, our BOS has wasted thousands of dollars of taxpayer’s money on legal fees… why? They were personally upset with someone who anonymously criticized their Police Chief selection process. But many taxpayers, including me, had already been openly critical of that selection process. Spending these dollars was an incredibly misplaced sense of entitlement, abuse of power, and misuse of public funds, not to mention an attack on free speech.
Then we find out that the BOS has spent thousands more of our taxpayers’ dollars on even more lawyers. The final amount has still not yet been made public. This was for the lengthy investigation of 8 employees (most were department heads) as a result of some comment(s) made at an evening get-together at a restaurant in Westborough. The incumbent in this election, Sal Giorlandino, defended the BOS action, by stating that “the Board was required to initiate the internal investigation under the Town’s Professional Conduct Policy”. A read of the policy does not support this at all. This has been an unacceptable waste of money and time, and has cost good hardworking, employees their dignity.
Clearly, the BOS handling of this matter created an intimidating work environment, not only for the department heads and employees under investigation, but for others. And this has gone on for months. We have already lost one top employee, and we may lose more.
Our excellent (now just ex) Town Planner, is no longer here as a result of this work environment. She resigned to accept a job elsewhere. She was NOT fired, as had been rumored. I am afraid more will follow her out the door. The mismanagement of this situation has caused Southborough to become the laughingstock of many residents in neighboring towns (just read the newspaper comments).
As to the big picture, every year Southborough, as a municipality, continually spends more money than we take in – we need to overhaul our thinking on this – we have no plan to deal with the continued erosion of our assets.
For the first time since I can remember, Moodys, the company responsible for determining credit ratings for municipalities, has issued a negative report about Southborough’s fiscal stability. I am told this is the warning that comes before the Bond rating downgrade, unless our Town management can present a believable plan about how we are going to turn things around. As I said above… we have no plan. If (when) we are downgraded, the interest rate at which the Town can borrow will increase, leading to higher costs (and higher taxes).
I am disappointed and outraged about all of this… about what has happened, and what continues to happen. I have spoken with other Town residents who say they also support John Rooney. A partial list of those who are endorsing him appear at the end of this email. Others tell me they would also like to support John publically, but they fear reprisals of some sort, due to the fact that they may have to appear before the BOS or one of the many committees appointed by the BOS. What kind of Town is this, folks? A closed club? What kind of Town do we want it to be?
We have a chance to make a much needed change now, and we must do it. It will have two very important results. It will repair part of the problem, and inject much needed new leadership into our executive branch of Town government. It will serve to tell the remaining two members of the BOS that the citizens of Southborough will not tolerate the kind of behavior that the BOS have demonstrated. If we fail to act now, we will sadly be sending a message to the current BOS, our Town employees, and the towns around us, that we accept and want to continue with this lack of leadership and intimidating treatment of our personnel.
How can you help…
Inform others of the issues. Please forward this email to any one you wish, especially those who will forward this again to their email lists, and if you receive the email, please forward it on – it is difficult to unseat an incumbent. Uninformed voters tend to check the first box on the ballot.
Get people out to vote – call and email your friends and neighbors… remind them the election is next Monday, MAY 10, less than a week from now.
Put up a John Rooney sign if you are willing – it will add visibility. Reply to my email address, or to r...@datadist.com <mailto:r...@datadist.com> , and ask for a sign (don’t forget to supply your street address) and we will get a sign out to you. And yes, we WILL take the sign off your property immediately after the election, Monday, May 10.
Neil Rossen
You can rely on me to vote for anyone new to the BOS.