On September 27, the Norwich Selectboard appointed Brennan Duffy as the permanent Town Manager, after an 18 minute executive session. The vote was 3-2. The sudden hiring of the interim Town Manager for the permanent position came without warning. It was preceded by two emergency meetings to discuss the Interim Town Manager’s contract. Emergency meetings do not require public notice.
To date, the only additional information explaining the Selectboard’s decision to forego its planned national search for a Town Manager is the cryptic explanation in the press release of September 29.
Last week time-sensitive information came to the Selectboard which demanded notice to the full Selectboard and two emergency meetings to discuss. As part of that process, and upon deep reflection, the Selectboard determined that it was in the best interest of the town to forego the time and cost of a recruitment consultant search and to offer the position to Brennan.
Questions aplenty
Some residents are not happy with this explanation. Resident Cheryl Lindberg pressed the Selectboard for a better explanation at the October 11 Selectboard meeting. Her follow up email, at page 20 of the Selectboard packet for the October 25 meeting, contains an excellent list of questions. All deserve a response. A partial list follows.
- When did the Selectboard make a decision to scrap the Town Manager search process?
- Where is that decision documented for the taxpayers of Norwich to read?
- Where are the responses to the RFQ for a [Town Manager] search firm with a September 8, 2023 deadline?
- If there were responses, why didn’t they get summarized and reported to the Selectboard per the Master Financial Policy?
- What was the “time-sensitive” information received by the Selectboard [that was the basis for the emergency meetings]?
- Does the Selectboard know that the Secretary of State’s office believes that “emergency meetings” are for emergencies such as flooding disasters, collapsed bridges or burned municipal structures?
- Was [the Assistant Town Manager] position created to fill a void in the Town Manager or Interim Town Manager positions?
- Why did the Selectboard violate the Town’s personnel hiring policy requiring the posting for at least 5 days of any open position?
- Why did the Selectboard violate the federal EEOE regulation that is embedded in our Town’s hiring policy?
- How does the Selectboard justify the exclusion of minorities and women from this Town Manager hiring process?
- How does the Selectboard justify the hiring of a Town Manager at $144,700 when there is only $104,000 budgeted in the FY24 budget?
- Where will the overage of this salary decision come from?
Comment: Transparency?
I thought that after the Selectboard elections last March, we would have more transparency in town government. There have been marked improvements, for sure. But the secrecy around this hiring process leaves me shaking my head. Hiring a Town Manager is one of the most important decisions a Selectboard makes.
Why have meetings without public notice? Why the misdirection in the emergency executive sessions? The stated purpose of those were to discuss the interim Town Manager contract. We know now that this description is not accurate. Did anyone object?
In addition, we know from the press release that at those closed meetings the Selectboard “determined” that it was “in the best interest of the town to forego … a recruitment consultant search and to offer the position to Brennan.” Decision making must occur in public session under the Open Meeting Law. Yet, the minutes from the emergency meetings are silent as to any action taken. Surely the need for confidentiality, if any, cannot subsume the entire process.
Perhaps, there is an arcane reason for why these secret meetings comply with the Open Meeting Law. However, just because the Selectboard can arguably take action in secret, does not mean it must. Or should.
Indeed, Selectboard member Pam Smith criticized the process as designed to “do it as quietly and with as little public awareness as possible,” according to the YouTube transcript of the Selectboard meeting on September 27(13:44 to 14:03). Further, if I correctly read between the lines of Ms. Smith’s comments, the initial plan was to appoint the permanent Town Manager without any advance public notice. At the meeting, Chair Marcia Calloway took “issue with [those] allegations,” without explanation.
* * *
End notes
A. The Town Personnel Policies are not on the Town’s website. However, I found a copy (last updated September 7, 2010) at page 6 of the packet for the Selectboard meeting of March 29, 2023,
B. According to the Open Meeting Law, 1 V.S.A. § 313(a):
A motion to go into executive session shall indicate the nature of the business of the executive session, and no other matter may be considered in the executive session. Such vote shall be taken in the course of an open meeting and the result of the vote recorded in the minutes. No formal or binding action shall be taken in executive session except for actions relating to the securing of real estate options under subdivision (2) of this subsection
* * *
Contact me at norwichobserver[at]gmail.com
Thanks for posting this on your blog Chris.
Cheryl Lindbergh had some valid questions that should be answered by the Norwich SB.
Why can’t the SB explain to the townspeople why they pushed for making Mr Duffys position permanent? This should be explained to us as well as the many unanswered
questions Cheryl asked.
How can the SB get away with this secrecy. It’s not the first time and probably won’t be the last.
Given the very positive changes in the Selectboard, the SB’s behavior in this episode is surprising and puzzling. It appears that the SB acted the way it did because there was some serious threat to the Town that had to be averted. It further appears that the fact of the threat itself could not be mentioned, because if the threat itself was mentioned, the threat would be carried out. This sounds kind of mafia-ish, but it is the sort of thing that does happen. In the nature of “if I don’t get what I want, I will sue you, and if you mention that I threatened to sue you, I will sue you.”