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Rich Waldo

    SECRET SESSION

    Minutes Reveal Deep Confusion on Select Board

    Curley’s email to Waldo led to a schism and reorganization

    By

    WELLFLEET — More than a year after a closed select board meeting led to a schism among board members and former Town Administrator Rich Waldo, the mostly unredacted minutes of that meeting have finally been released. They reveal a remarkably confused board whose members did not even know what they were supposed to be discussing in secret.

    The minutes were published following the state attorney general’s office ruling last month that the meeting and the release of heavily redacted minutes of that session violated the Open Meeting Law. The newly released minutes, with just one paragraph censored, outline the origins of a conflict that ultimately led to the board’s reorganization and Waldo’s resignation.

    The June 27, 2023 executive session, closed to the public, had been held “to hear complaints against a public official or employee,” according to the meeting’s agenda. But the unredacted minutes, along with emails between town officials leading up to the meeting, which were obtained by the Independent, reveal confusion over who the complaints were actually about.

    Then-chair Ryan Curley thought the complaints were about Waldo. In fact, they were about the select board itself.

    While staff members initially wrote to Curley requesting an executive session to discuss their complaints, the meeting revolved almost entirely around Waldo. That was because of an email Curley sent to Waldo on June 19, a week after receiving the request from town staff.

    According to the meeting minutes, the other board members believed that Curley’s email to Waldo amounted to an “ultimatum” demanding that Waldo resign or he would be fired. They saw the email, which Curley sent without approval from the board, as an abuse of power. Later, in open meetings, the board voted to replace Curley as chair with Barbara Carboni.

    Asking for ‘Open Conversations’

    During a meeting with department heads in early June, town staff told Waldo that they had complaints they wished to bring to the select board. Executive Assistant Rebekah Eldridge emailed Curley on June 12 asking for a meeting “where we can have open conversations,” according to a copy of the email obtained by the Independent. “Sooner rather than later would be in the best interest of everyone so we don’t lose more staff.”

    On June 19, Curley wrote to Waldo notifying him of his intent to hold an executive session to review complaints against Waldo. “Strictly as a personal opinion I think it would be in the town’s best interest to retain your services through at least the fall special town meeting,” Curley wrote. “I will give you thought [sic] the end of the day tomorrow to consider how you would like to proceed.”

    According to the executive session’s minutes, select board member Michael DeVasto said he received a call from Waldo the next morning describing Curley’s email and his intent to resign by the end of the day. DeVasto expressed shock “that an email like this would be sent to him without any interaction or approval from the rest of the board,” the minutes read. DeVasto called Curley’s email “reckless” and “inappropriate.”

    Eldridge told the board that she had requested a meeting to discuss complaints against the select board, not against Waldo. “It had nothing to do with Rich,” Eldridge told the Independent. “Most of the staff was behind him.” Eldridge thought that Curley had misunderstood her email and assumed that the complaints were about Waldo.

    According to an email sent to the board from Town Counsel Carolyn Murray of KP Law notifying them of the meeting, Murray also believed the complaints were about Waldo.

    “Certain department heads requested to meet with the Select Board to discuss issues related to the Town Administrator,” Murray wrote on June 19. “I think that all parties would prefer to come to a mutually acceptable agreement with respect to Mr. Waldo’s continued employment.”

    During the June 27 closed meeting, board members questioned Curley on whether there were specific complaints against Waldo. “He didn’t answer,” the minutes read. The question was asked again. “He stated he couldn’t say if there was a specific complaint. He stated there have been many over the past year,” the minutes say.

    In an interview with the Independent, Curley said he intended the meeting to be a preliminary discussion on how to handle complaints brought to the board by town staff. “It got turned around into something that it was not,” Curley said. “I wanted a way to identify legitimate issues that needed to be addressed.” Those issues, Curley said, were about both Waldo and the select board.

    Waldo declined to comment for this article, instead referring a reporter to his attorney, Bruce Bierhans. Curley’s email to Waldo and the following executive session, Bierhans said, “constituted an unsubstantiated and unsupported attack on Rich. Whether these actions were defamatory is still an open issue.”

    “We nearly lost a town administrator that day because of the chair’s unilateral action,” DeVasto stated during the meeting, according to the minutes.

    Six months later, Waldo submitted his resignation. At a select board meeting earlier in December, Director of Community Services Suzanne Grout Thomas read aloud a letter on behalf of town staff decrying a lack of support from the select board. That letter, Eldridge told the Independent, was what town staff had hoped to bring to the select board in June.

    The AG’s Decision

    The June 27 executive session had been the subject of much conjecture since the select board’s reorganization and the release of an almost entirely redacted version of the minutes in November. Town Counsel Murray advised in a copy of the redacted minutes that the content of the meeting fell within the personnel exemption to the Open Meeting Law.

    Murray’s redactions were appealed separately by two residents, Jude Ahern and Michael Shannon, and were ultimately overturned by the attorney general’s office earlier this summer. In her written decisions, Assistant Attorney General Carrie Benedon found that the board’s closed meeting and the censored minutes did not fall within the scope of the law.

    “The fact that a topic may be of a sensitive nature does not itself constitute permissible grounds for discussion in executive session,” Benedon wrote.

    Select board member Barbara Carboni, who is a lawyer, defended Murray’s decision, stating that she believes the meeting did in fact fall within the personnel exemption of the Open Meeting Law and that the unredacted minutes did not need to be released.

    “Based on my 20 years of experience as a municipal attorney, I believed and continue to believe that Attorney Murray provided the Board with sound legal guidance and advice,” Carboni wrote. “I was surprised by the Attorney General’s determination requiring release of the executive session minutes.”

    But, she added, she hopes the released minutes will end a much-contested chapter and lead to better trust. “I think the Board and the public are well-served at this time by disclosure and transparency,” she said.

    FRICTION IN WELLFLEET

    Curley Objects to Two Hires as Waldo Departs

    Carboni calls his actions an ‘intrusion into the town administrator’s authority’

    By

    WELLFLEET — During Rich Waldo’s final two weeks as town administrator, he hired Wellfleet’s first-ever town planner and a new town accountant — a key municipal position that had been vacant for more than 13 months.

    But resistance to those hires from two select board members — Ryan Curley and Tim Sayre — shows a lack of clarity about the town administrator’s authority. Waldo has cited the select board’s lack of support as one reason he resigned after just 18 months.

    Other members of the select board pointedly criticized Curley’s behavior, accusing him of intruding on the administrator’s authority and making town hall a place where no one would want to work. Curley said he was just doing his job.

    According to Wellfleet’s charter, the town administrator is responsible for appointing department heads and other staff. The select board may disapprove a hire within 14 days of the appointment, the charter says.

    At the select board’s Jan. 30 meeting, Curley questioned the appointment of Suzanne Moquin as town accountant. According to Moquin’s résumé, she was the finance director in Carver for two years after serving nine years as Abington’s accountant, finance director, and assistant town manager.

    At its next meeting on Feb. 6, the board discussed Waldo’s appointment of Beth Pyles as town planner, a position created at last April’s annual town meeting. Pyles joined the town staff in November as conservation agent before resigning toward the end of January to take the planning job. Waldo said that Pyles, a town planner and land use attorney, was “overqualified” for the conservation agent position and had been fielding competing town planner offers before accepting Waldo’s.

    According to her résumé, Pyles has worked in land-use planning for more than 20 years.

    Curley said on Jan. 30 that he could not support the hiring of Moquin, and he complained on Feb. 6 that the board had not been apprised of the recruitment process for the town planner position.

    But other board members said that recruitment is not in the select board’s purview.

    According to Waldo and several select board members, Curley handed out copies of a news article from the Carver Reporter at the Jan. 30 meeting. It detailed a delay in free cash certification in Carver and Abington during Moquin’s tenures there.

    “I cannot support this,” Curley said of Moquin’s appointment.

    According to Waldo, he and the select board received an email two days later from Richard LaFond, the current town administrator in Webster and former town administrator in Abington and Carver. LaFond was “upset by the way the board proceeded to question Moquin’s integrity in a public setting,” Waldo told the Independent.

    “Wellfleet is very fortunate to have a town accountant with extensive knowledge and experience,” LaFond wrote. There were no concerns among town officials about the delayed certification in Abington, he said. “This childish attempt to assign blame for a matter that wasn’t even a problem has indeed hurt her professionally.”

    At the select board’s Feb. 6 meeting, Curley questioned whether Pyles’s priorities as town planner would align with the select board’s goal of improving the town’s affordable housing inventory. “We talked a number of times about making sure that the applicant is aligned with the goals we seek,” said Curley.

    Board member Tim Sayre appeared to back up Curley’s objections. He reminded the board of its power to disapprove new hires.

    “We have less than 15 days as a board to say we don’t want the offer extended,” said Sayre, “and we don’t have another meeting for 14 days.”

    “I don’t have the information to make an informed decision,” Curley said. “It is very distressing that there was nobody on that interview who was experienced with the functions of that position.”

    Select board chair Barbara Carboni, who is the town planner and land-use counsel for Truro, told the Independent that Pyles’s experience was “quite analogous” to her own. She disputed Curley’s proposed line of questioning of Pyles.

    “It isn’t necessary to interrogate somebody about what their approach is when the staff carries out the policies determined by the select board,” said Carboni. “There is absolutely no requirement in the charter for any member of the select board to be involved in interviewing any position,” she added.

    Other select board members accused Curley of overstepping his authority.

    “I don’t understand this penchant for wanting to have some larger role in the hiring process of people we are not authorized to hire,” said board member Michael DeVasto.

    Curley told the Independent that he disagreed. “It is within the authority of the board to disapprove an appointment, and it needs the information to make an informed decision,” he said.

    But Carboni said that Curley’s actions were an “intrusion into the town administrator’s authority. More problematic than that was that neither the town administrator nor the candidate watching the meeting was prepared for this public display.”

    “I want to make sure that the person we hire for these positions is right for the town,” Curley told the Independent.

    Vice chair John Wolf said that such discussions made Wellfleet look like an unappealing place to work. “They watch this stuff, and they have to ask themselves at some point, ‘Why would I want to come and work here?’ ” he told the board.

    “One hundred percent,” interjected Assistant Town Administrator Silvio Genao, who resigned after just three months on the job. His last day at town hall is Feb. 15.

    “We are trying to put together a good team before we go,” said Waldo on Feb. 9, his last day, “but it feels like every step of the way the board, and in particular a few board members, just want to self-destruct any progress. The manager needs to manage. Hopefully the board will get that message soon.”

    The Administrator’s Role

    Wellfleet is the only Outer Cape town with a town administrator — Eastham, Truro, and Provincetown all have town managers.

    The distinction between manager and administrator is fuzzy, according to Adam Chapdelaine, executive director of the Mass. Municipal Association. “The title of town manager and town administrator are, in practice, interchangeable,” Chapdelaine wrote in an email to the Independent.

    The authority of a town manager or administrator is determined largely by the town’s charter, he said.

    Carboni agreed. “You really have to look at the charter in each town to see what those powers are,” she told the Independent.

    For example, Carboni said, the charters in Truro and Wellfleet lay out similar authority over staffing. “Both the town administrator and town manager are required under their respective charters to obtain the select board’s approval for reorganization of a job,” she said, referring to the controversy in Wellfleet over the town administrator’s power to increase a deputy shellfish constable position to full time.

    According to Eastham Town Manager Jacqueline Beebe, managers may have more authority over decisions like hiring and contracts. They are generally seen as possessing the authority to make decisions without consulting the select board, she said.

    In 2020, Eastham conducted a review of its charter and decided to rename its chief administrative officer’s role from town administrator to town manager.

    Sean Cronin, senior deputy commissioner of the state Dept. of Local Services, assessed the proposed charter and affirmed Eastham’s change, writing that the town manager title generally “enables better oversight and accountability.” Cronin wrote that the difference between town administrator and manager “can be purely semantic.”

    More towns are choosing to have managers as chief administrative officers. In 2022, WBUR reported that 288 of 351 towns in Massachusetts had town managers.

    “The select board’s role is to provide guidance, policy, town goals,” said Provincetown Town Manager Alex Morse. “Then it’s up to the town manager to implement the town goals.”

    Though Morse is not required to consult the select board on every hiring decision, he said he has found it useful in order to “make sure we are aligned around our goals.”

    In fall 2023, Morse decided to change the town’s housing specialist position into a housing director role. He went to the select board “not necessarily for approval but for guidance.”

    Morse said that the greater authority of the town manager allows him to accomplish more without the board having to vet every choice. Otherwise, he would be “waiting for other people to make decisions,” he said.

    LITIGIOUSNESS

    Former Principal Clerk Maclauchlan Sues Wellfleet

    She accuses the town administrator of age and disability discrimination

    By

    WELLFLEET — Former Principal Clerk and select board candidate Jeanne Maclauchlan is suing the town and Town Administrator Rich Waldo for employment discrimination. The lawsuit, filed in Barnstable Superior Court on Aug. 16, alleges that Waldo’s termination of Maclauchlan’s employment last year violated legal protections against age and disability discrimination.

    According to court documents, Maclaughlan, 69, is seeking $100,000 in damages for “lost wages, loss of benefits, and illegal termination.” Waldo fired Maclauchlan in July 2022, her complaint says, about a month after she exhausted her 12-week Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave and her accrued sick leave, after which Maclaughlan did not return to work and did not provide additional supporting evidence from her doctor.

    Maclaughlan’s lawsuit asserts that she was fired because of her medical status and age, citing instances in which Waldo allegedly urged her to consider retiring.

    Waldo said he could not comment on the lawsuit because notice of it had not yet been served to the town. He said he learned about the suit from a reporter for the Independent.

    In May, Maclauchlan filed a separate discrimination complaint through the Mass. Commission Against Discrimination, but she withdrew it before the town could respond, according to Waldo.

    When reached by telephone, Maclaughlan confirmed that the lawsuit papers hadn’t yet been served, but she said she “most definitely” plans to follow through with the suit. According to court records, Maclaughlan has until Nov. 14 to have the documents served to the defendants.

    Maclaughlan declined to comment on the content of the court filings, and her lawyer, Jamie Goodwin of Duddy, Goodwin & Pollard in Worcester, did not respond to calls seeking comment.

    Maclaughlan began working for the town in 1998 and was hired as principal clerk in 2001, according to the court documents. After treatment for cancer in 2006, Maclaughlan began to experience “cardiac health-related issues,” according to the lawsuit, which were exacerbated in 2020 by Covid-19.

    During the pandemic, Maclauchlan’s health “began to deteriorate” because of “increased demands” placed on her as the only employee working at town hall while other town staff worked from home, the suit alleges. “She staffed the office, essentially by herself, for nearly two years while she was required to cover for her colleagues and perform many of their job responsibilities,” the documents state.

    Several current town staff members who were employed during the pandemic contradicted Maclauchlan’s version of events. “We were all there,” said Assessor Nancy Vail. While some staff worked from home occasionally, “We were basically a full office,” Vail said.

    On March 10, 2022, Maclaughlan’s doctor sent a letter to the town requesting a temporary leave of absence. “Cardiologists wanted her to avoid stressful situations and recommended she take time off of work,” the lawsuit states.

    Then-interim Town Administrator Charlie Sumner placed Maclaughlan on paid FMLA leave for 12 weeks. But upon the expiration of her leave, Maclaughlan still had not been cleared by her doctor to return to work, say the documents. After exhausting her accrued sick leave, she was denied a request for additional hours from the town’s sick leave bank.

    According to the town’s personnel manual, the sick leave bank committee, a five-person board of both union and nonunion employees, may deny a request if the applicant has abused sick leave in the past, has not exhausted other available paid leave options, or if the request is not supported by appropriate information.

    Maclauchlan met in person with the newly hired Waldo on June 17. The lawsuit says that Waldo asked her “repeatedly” when she would be able to return to work and suggested retirement “based on her age.”

    Waldo asked Maclauchlan for further information on whether it was safe for her to work, but Maclauchlan alleges that, although she kept the town informed about her inability to work, her doctor did not provide her with the requested written confirmation.

    According to the court filings, Waldo then notified Maclauchlan that she was required to return to work or proffer a doctor’s note by July 7. Maclauchlan still had not received clearance to work from her doctor, the suit states.

    The next day, on July 8, when Maclauchlan did not report for work, Waldo informed her that she had abandoned her position and that she was discharged from her job. “Waldo again expressed animus” about Maclaughlan’s age, the lawsuit asserts.

    “Waldo indicated that work was piling up, her position could not remain unstaffed, and they needed to hire someone else right away,” the suit says.

    The documents assert that the principal clerk position remained unfilled at the time the suit was filed on Aug. 16, despite Waldo telling Maclauchlan that “her position could not remain unstaffed.” But according to Waldo and the Independent’s previous reporting, Christine Young was hired as the town’s principal clerk in April. She remains in that job.

    The lawsuit also claims that Maclauchlan was one year away from being able to retire with a pension of 80 percent of her salary. According to the Barnstable County retirement plan, as well as the State Employees’ Retirement System (SERS), Maclaughlan would have needed to work for the town for at least 32 years to receive 80 percent of her salary as a pension; she had worked for the town for 24 years.

    The lawsuit lists four counts against both the town and Waldo: failure to accommodate, disability discrimination, age discrimination, and retaliation in violation of Mass. General Law 151b, the state’s law protecting employees from discrimination.

    The suit alleges that Maclaughlan has suffered damages including “loss of income, loss of employment benefits, loss of professional opportunities, loss of personal and professional reputation, other financial losses, emotional distress and mental suffering.”

    In May, Maclauchlan ran for a three-year term on the select board. One of her campaign positions was that town staff were being paid too much. She lost to incumbent Ryan Curley by a vote of 532 to 298.

    IN THE WORKS

    The DPW’s Case for a New HQ

    Departing director Waldo is optimistic about town’s path to improvements

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Dept. of Public Works Director Rich Waldo served the town for exactly 10 years before leaving to take the town administrator job in Wellfleet. In that time, he oversaw the phased resurfacing of Commercial Street, the redesign of Shank Painter Road, and the development of a $75-million plan to expand the town’s sewer system to nearly every property in Provincetown.

    Last month, Waldo made a final pitch to the select board for something he saw tabled throughout those 10 years: a plan for a new DPW facility.

    “I wanted to get this out and articulate it before I leave,” said Waldo. “We really want to start the progressive steps, and maybe it won’t be built in three years, but it will be built in 10 years.”

    The current DPW building on Race Point Road just north of Route 6 was built in 1950 out of cinderblocks. It is essentially a garage — it has a cesspool, no insulation, and no fire alarms or sprinklers, according to a needs assessment and site analysis done by the municipal contracting firm Weston and Sampson. What used to be the garage bays hold equipment, tools, and workspaces, while vehicles are mostly stored outside. DPW administrators work from a different building, the Veterans Memorial Community Center on Winslow Street.

    The current DPW barn, built in 1950, at 43 Race Point Road. (Photo courtesy Town of Provincetown)

    In 2009, the town set out on a plan to build a combined DPW facility and police station at Race Point Road, Waldo recounted, but that effort ended at spring town meeting in 2012.

    “In 2012, there was an outcry because of the project’s size and cost and, basically, the assumption that the town couldn’t afford it at the time,” Waldo said. “The number was maybe $17 million,” he said, “a bargain by today’s standards.”

    The need for a police station seemed more pressing. “At that time, we were asked to step aside and pave the way for the police station project, and we said OK,” Waldo said.

    It took 10 years for a new police station location and design to be approved and funded. Town meeting authorized $8.6 million for a police station in 2017, voted down a $3.9-million supplemental authorization in 2019, and approved an $8.5-million supplemental authorization in 2022, for a combined total of $17.1 million to be spent. The new police station will be located at the intersection of Jerome Smith Road, Shank Painter Road, and Route 6.

    The Weston and Sampson presentation at the select board meeting outlined a pair of buildings that comprise 45,000 square feet, with more than half the total area dedicated to indoor storage of vehicles. Nine thousand square feet of office and employee space and seven thousand square feet for a vehicle maintenance bay make up most of the rest of the project. Weston and Sampson offered a “post-pandemic” price range for construction costs of $506 to $553 per square foot, and a total project cost of $29 to $31 million.

    A rendering of a proposed $31-million DPW facility by the municipal consultants Weston and Sampson.

    The select board was broadly supportive, with the caveat that a plan is needed to sequence the town’s upcoming major projects.

    “All these capital projects — this is a result of kicking the can down the road,” said select board member Leslie Sandberg. “There’s delayed maintenance and delayed planning. This is not to blame anyone, but right now we are here. You guys deserve a new facility, and we just have to figure out what the timing is.”

    “We need to take a big-picture look at this,” said select board member Louise Venden. “You have people on your staff who can’t live here. We need to invest millions of additional dollars in housing, in addition to $30 million for a new fire facility, $30 million for a DPW garage, and $75 million for sewer. And that ocean is creeping up on us.

    “We need to put all the cards on the table and figure out how and when we can do all these things,” Venden said.

    Future Projects

    In an interview with the Independent, Waldo discussed some of the town’s upcoming projects.

    “The town is extremely good at getting grant funds,” said Waldo. “These funding agencies need to look good on their end, and when you execute a project very well, it reflects well on them. When these agencies see Provincetown applying, they’re like, ‘Oh, let’s try to get them funded.’ ”

    Waldo credited town staff with that success. “There’s so much that people don’t see, and a lot of staff time that people don’t recognize,” he said.

    The upcoming improvements to Shank Painter Road are Waldo’s “baby,” what he called “a really beautiful project that’s going to have such an impact to that area.”

    That project, he said, is “all set up to go, the funding has been secured; I just won’t be in the driver’s seat to see it happen.”

    The state is funding the Shank Painter Road project, which will add bike lanes and other improvements, turn the intersection with Route 6 into a rotary, and replace the two inbound traffic lanes of Route 6 from Herring Cove Beach to Shank Painter with a bike and pedestrian path. The town is now studying whether the two southern lanes of Route 6 can also be removed from Shank Painter Road to Conwell Street.

    The town owns the land under the roadbed, and, in some places, it owns the adjacent parcels as well. The new police station will be sited on some of this land, and town officials have floated ideas for other parts of it, including a wastewater substation, a fire substation, and a potential new housing project.

    The town’s wastewater leaching fields are in these town-owned parcels as well, but Waldo said it’s feasible to move all of them to Motta Field. He estimates moving the effluent beds to Motta Field will cost about $2.5 million.

    “It’s really not a super challenging project — it’s just pipe,” he said. “The effluent that comes out of there is very clean, some say potable, but we have no volunteers to try it,” Waldo added.

    In addition to these parcels, the town is studying the Veterans Memorial Community Center building for redevelopment. That is where several town departments, including DPW, are currently headquartered.

    Waldo said the costs of temporarily relocating these departments during a full-blown reconstruction of the VMCC would be large — “probably an extra $5 million.” He pointed to the nearby Grace Hall parking lots and said housing over parking, or housing next to an elevated parking structure, might be cheaper than tearing down the VMCC.

    Waldo leaves with some things still on his wish list. He lamented how much land is owned by the state Div. of Fish and Wildlife.

    “I wish the process wasn’t so cumbersome to try to get that back,” said Waldo. “It’s huge swaths of land down by Howland Street. If we could just scab off a little piece somewhere for a cluster development, make a land swap, that would be our greatest defense for housing.”

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