The Webster select board has no interest in trying to recover the land illegally sold to a former town treasurer in 2019.
Former town treasurer Bruce Johnson bought two 1½-acre parcels next to his Walker Pond property in 2019, in a deal approved by the Select Board. In August, he pleaded no contest and paid a $1,200 fine for acquiring property “other than by competitive bidding,” in violation of state law and town policy. Johnson also resigned as town treasurer.
“To quote Ronald Reagan and JFK respectively, it is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions,” Selectman David Hemenway said Monday, reading a statement from the board. “Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past, but let us accept our own responsibility for the future.’ ”
Hemenway announced that the three-member board had voted not to pursue a lawsuit and had instead received a permanent conservation easement on the Walker Pond land.
The Merrimack County Attorney’s Office, which brought charges against Johnson for violating state law, discovered the sale because of the efforts of Webster couple Tara Gunnigle and Jon Pearson, who filed complaints.
“This is wrong, everything about the whole transaction is wrong,” Gunnigle said after the meeting. “They didn’t discuss it with any townspeople. It’s the townspeople that own that property.”
Although the town’s fraud policy says that “in all cases involving monetary losses to the Town, the Town will pursue recovery of losses,” Hemenway said the $7,000 sale price, which covered back taxes and processing fees, was not a monetary loss for the town.
“Since the town wouldn’t have been able to keep any additional funds beyond the sale price, there aren’t really monetary losses, but rather the sale would likely be considered to be in the best financial interest of the town, collecting both the purchase price and future taxes,” Hemenway said in the meeting.
He said a lawsuit would cost Webster taxpayers money, with no guarantee that the town would win in court since a previous select board had approved the deal.
“This will keep tax income coming from the lot, not require financial outlay from the town, as well as maintain the conservation purpose it was always recommended to have,” Hemenway said.
Previously, the town’s Conservation Commission had recommended the land be spared from development.
Johnson bought the property for just $7,000 in 2019, when the assessed value of the two vacant parcels was $44,800, according to tax records. Webster’s policy on selling town property states that “all sales or sealed bids shall be awarded to the highest responsible bidder,” and requires sales to be properly advertised.
However, under state law, the town would not have been able to keep any extra funds from a higher sale price for the tax deeded property, which was acquired from the previous owner in 2010, Hemenway said in an email interview.
In fall of 2020, when Gunnigle and Pearson first raised concerns about the sale, Johnson wrote a letter saying that while he did not think any wrongdoing had occurred, he and his wife would sell the land back to the town to address any lingering questions.
“We are willing to sell the property back to the Town for the $7,000 paid for the property, plus the $675 paid in taxes for the first year with no additional taxes accrued,” Johnson said in the letter. At the time, the Select Board decided not to buy the land back.
After the meeting, Hemenway said that Johnson’s previous offer was no longer on the table.
“Changes to the land’s access have been recorded, in addition to the deed becoming non-buildable during the sale, so re-purchasing the property also wouldn’t have gotten the town back the property as it was prior to the sale,” he wrote in an email to the Monitor.
Johnson did not respond to the Monitor’s requests for comment.
In its statement, the Select Board acknowledged that the previous board’s decision to approve the deal and seal the minutes of that meeting were not in the spirit of town policies and procedures. Those minutes were sealed until 2020.
“It would have been advisable for one of the Select Board members at the time to abstain from the vote due to a perceived conflict of interest from joint property ownership,” Hemenway said in the statement.
One of the 2019 Select Board members, Christine Schadler, owns a nearby parcel at 132 Walker Pond Road jointly with Johnson’s wife, Katherine. Schadler is the current chair of the Webster Conservation Commission. She had also served as chair prior to her term as selectwoman, but did not hold the two positions simultaneously.
Hemenway said that because none of the 2019 board members remained in office and because the former town administrator was no longer a town employee, the current Webster select board could not remove them from any positions.
“Even if that perceived conflict of interest were determined, an actual legal conflict of interest, it would be impossible for the town to remove her from the Select Board, as she’s no longer on it. It was also recorded as a unanimous Select Board decision, so her single vote didn’t change the outcome of the sale,” Hemenway wrote in an email.
Former Selectwoman Bianca Acebron Peco, who was recorded as voting to approve the sale, did not sign the deed. “I can’t recall exactly but I do remember it was just something that didn’t feel right to me,” she said in an earlier interview.
Schadler said the town administrator at the time told her she could participate in the vote because her shared property was not directly abutting the land.
Discussion of the Walker Pond property did not appear on the Select Board’s agenda for the October 6 meeting. Hemenway read the board’s statement at the beginning of the meeting, which can be viewed on YouTube.
“We wanted to get the information out about the result as quickly as possible once it had been transacted, to put the issue behind us and be as transparent as possible,” Hemenway wrote in an email.