Warner will hold a special town meeting in January in response to a flurry of resident petitions, including one signed by over 60 residents calling for the removal of four town officials.
Residents who signed the latest petition are calling for the resignation of selectmen Harry Seidel and Alfred Hanson, Finance Director Clyde Carson and administrator Judy Newman-Rogers. The petitions, signed between Sept. 27 to Oct. 3, raised a variety of different issues that residents felt would require a special town meeting to resolve.
After the petitions were submitted to the town, the Select Board set the special town meeting date for Jan. 7, prompting frustration from some residents who hoped the meeting would be scheduled to take place before the holidays.
“The [law] doesn’t give you guys any wiggle room,” James Gaffney said during the select board’s meeting on Oct. 28. Gaffney, a Warner resident, has signed onto every petition. “You’re spending more money running around in circles than it would cost to just hold the darn meeting.”
The resignation petition outlined that a lack of confidence in the town’s officials are “due to ongoing concerns including a restraining order issued against a sitting selectman for alleged assault at town hall employee, multiple years of problematic financial audit findings and a pattern of behavior that has created a toxic and hostile workplace environment.”
In the other four petitions, residents asked officials to publish the town’s financial audit online, to outsource payroll, to bar the select board from meeting with town counsel without a public quorum and to prohibit the board from accepting money outside of highway, fire, police or transfer station operations without a majority vote.
To call for a special town meeting, at least 50 signatures are required on any petitioned warrant article. Each petition received between 61 and 76 signatures.
At the board’s Oct. 28 meeting, resident David Carle submitted amendments to the Select Board Rules of Procedures. These amendments provided specific language for requests from town counsel, resignations, conflicts of interest, committee organizations and other rules.
The select board elected to tackle each of the nine amendments one at a time and voted unanimously to put off further discussion until Nov. 18.
“I was very pleased about the reception of the proposed amendments,” Carle said. “I felt that it was positive, and I think people understood that this isn’t for just this select board, but for future boards.”
Carle is not supportive of the residents’ petitions. He believes that most of the petitions are calling for administrative actions that the select board should take, like the firing of personnel, not actions that should be up to residents.
He has experience submitting similar warrant articles in town: When Carle submitted a warrant article to create a committee to review all property tax exemptions every five years, he was told the article concerned an administrative decision that could not be voted on by residents.
He said he believes most of the articles submitted this year also fall under the select board’s purview.
“Every one of those proposed articles for the special town meeting are administrative decisions,” he said. “Otherwise, the town people would be micromanaging the management of the town.”
Seidel, Hanson and Newman-Rogers did not respond to request for comment. Carson said he was not familiar with the articles but said he continues to do his best for Warner.
Selectman Michael Smith signed all five petitions and voted negatively on the Jan. 7 meeting date. He did not respond to request for comment.
