TRURO — The select board worked through the Truro Motor Inn quandary, approved a seasonal condominium conversion for Anchorage on the Bay, and allocated $50,000 from the affordable housing trust for rental assistance for this year and next at its Oct. 22 meeting.
But the session’s forward momentum was slowed when the board hit an agenda item about whether the town manager should notify the select board when he plans to work remotely for two or more days in a row.
Select board clerk Nancy Medoff, who advocated for the policy, spoke first. “This suggestion is a management right, a simple courtesy, and is not an unreasonable ask,” she said.
Board member Stephanie Rein said that she had always found Town Manager Darrin Tangeman communicative regardless of his location, but added she would be in favor of amending the town manager’s contract if needed to provide clearer standards for remote work.
Member Bob Weinstein agreed and highlighted ambiguities in the contract, negotiated in May. It allows Tangeman to take time off without counting it as leave if he works more than 40 hours a week. It requires advance notice to the select board chair but doesn’t explicitly address remote work guidelines.
“I think this is very badly drafted,” said Weinstein.
Wellfleet Town Administrator Tom Guerino, whose home is in Vernon, Vt., did not respond to a reporter’s email and text message asking about his remote work arrangements.
Provincetown Town Manager Alex Morse said his contract does allow discretion regarding his schedule but includes nothing specific about remote work. Eastham Town Manager Jacqui Beebe said her contract does not address remote work, either. “For me, it would be odd if the town manager wasn’t at town hall,” she said. Morse and Beebe both said they tell their select boards when they take time off — but working remotely doesn’t mean taking time off.
Tangeman told the Independent he rarely uses the “flex time” his contract allows. Instead, he prefers to work remotely once or twice per month when he exceeds his hours, he said. “It doesn’t force me to give my tasks to my assistant town manager or other staff who are already overworked,” he wrote in an email.
Board chair Susan Areson acknowledged the absence of explicit remote work guidelines in Tangeman’s contract but said she thought a formal amendment was unnecessary. Remote work terms could be added to the contract of a future town manager, she said, but a simple notification would suffice for now.
“I’m not challenging the right to work remotely,” said Areson. “I’m just saying I want to know, and I think the board should know.”
Medoff had raised the notification question earlier — at the select board’s Aug. 13 meeting during a review of the “Town Manager Critical Information Requirements.” The August review, according to Medoff, was something she asked for in July after learning that Tangeman had regularly worked remotely without informing the select board.
Areson supported Medoff’s request in August. “It’s not a question of thinking that you’re not working,” she said at the time. The matter was dropped at that meeting, but the conversation about the board’s requirements regarding knowing in advance when the town manager would not be in town continued piecemeal.
Medoff said she talked with Tangeman privately four different times about the matter and once invited Weinstein to join in, but they couldn’t agree.
Medoff told the Independent that Tangeman thought the solution required reopening his contract — something he had wanted to speak to his lawyer about. She said she wanted to resolve the issue in a public meeting.
That’s when Areson put the item back on the board’s agenda for the Oct. 22 meeting.
On whether this discussion belonged in a contract renegotiation, town counsel David Jenkins wrote to the select board on Oct. 18 that he thought it didn’t need to be. Their request was simply “an inherent management right,” Jenkins wrote.
Jenkins added that even if a contract amendment were under consideration it would still first have to be discussed in open session. That’s because discussions of professional competence or general work performance in executive session “under the guise of strategy discussions” are a violation of the state’s Open Meeting Law.
After a tense hour-long discussion on Oct. 22, Tangeman agreed to the notification policy, and Weinstein thanked him. Then the select board voted unanimously to make it a requirement that Tangeman inform the board each time he plans to work remotely for two or more consecutive business days.
“I will abide by it as stated,” said Tangeman. “Let’s take the temperature down a little bit and just move forward.”
