Over a dozen residents bundled up on Saturday morning to gather in the parking lot of the Chichester Central School despite frigid temperatures and packed schedules for a town meeting that never took place.
The meeting, called for by a citizen petition, would have given residents a chance to mandate that the Board of Selectmen meet weekly and publicly post minutes and agendas before each meeting to ensure more transparency. Yet the Board of Selectmen voted 2-1 to cancel the meeting last week, stating that the petition wasn’t valid. That didn’t stop these residents, who maintain that their legal right to meet has been breached by the decision, from convening at the planned date and time.
“The minute they posted the meeting, they accepted the signatures as valid,” longtime resident Chris Weir told the group on Saturday. “They can’t go back and say, ‘Oh we don’t like that now.’”
Weir has sued the town over the board’s vote to leave the residents out in the cold.
“No statute grants Selectmen the authority to cancel a lawfully warned citizen-petitioned Special Town Meeting,” his suit states.
Without access to the building and the proper town personnel, the meeting could not proceed as intended.
“It’s a game. They’re playing a game,” Weir said. “They don’t want what we’re trying to do. They want to be in charge.”
The selectmen argued the petition didn’t have the required number of signatures and they didn’t have to recognize any signatures that were submitted electronically.
“I feel like my biggest frustration is that I don’t understand why we have to butt heads? It doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Robyn LeBreton, who stood out in the cold on Saturday to participate in conversations about what to do next. “All we’ve asked them to do is to meet weekly so that we can get things done and to allow us to provide input and answer questions. That’s all we’ve asked them to do, and it’s just been a fight every step of the way.”
Weir first sued the town in October for the handling of the petition to hold the special town meeting. In his lawsuit, Weir stated that he handed Board of Selectmen Chair Richard Bouchard a petition in August to hold a special town meeting and that Bouchard responded by saying, “Any paperwork you hand me, I will throw in the trash.”
Weir said his petition to hold the special meeting had 50 signatures, enough to meet the threshold. When the town filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Nov. 13, five days later, Weir filed an objection.
In making a motion to cancel the meeting at a Tuesday selectmen’s meeting, Bouchard explained his reasoning.
“Part of the signatures were turned in electronically, and unless both parties agree on it up front, then it’s not valid,” he said. “You can’t be turning in 50 signatures and some of them are electronic unless both parties agree to it. That’s all under an RSA.”
Bouchard also said that the subject of the warrant article didn’t align with the designated purpose of holding a special town meeting.
“So the special town meetings — and they list what the criteria is — it’s so you guys can vote on something in an emergency,” he said. “We have to call that special meeting that the legislative body needs to approve, that’s outside of everything else that we’re doing, that you don’t do at regular town meeting, which is the legislative body.”
His arguments didn’t sit well with some people in town.
“It’s an insult to all the town residents,” said Roger Dupuis, who came on Saturday morning with his wife, Debbie. “Because we all signed petitions. We went to the meetings. The moderator organized the whole meeting to be held.”
At a Board of Selectmen meeting on Oct. 21, Bouchard discussed the petition Weir had given him in August. Both Frank Swirko and Matthew Stolnis said they hadn’t seen the petition or any legal documents pertaining to it until that week, eliciting further agitation from residents.
Dupuis wants to see Chichester citizens and their concerns treated with due care.
“They need to listen to us too, our opinion is, because they work for us,” he said. “We voted them in, and so I think it seems to be more of a dictatorship.”
After Bouchard and Swirko voted to cancel the meeting on Tuesday, with Stolnis voting against the decision, Weir filed a new complaint with Merrimack County Superior Court.
While no ruling was made before the meeting, arguments are scheduled to be heard on Jan. 26.
Residents have been voicing concerns about town hall transparency for months. The weekly meeting doctrine, which many had hoped to vote on at the special town meeting, includes a clause mandating that minutes and agendas for Board of Selectmen meetings are posted the Friday ahead of the meeting. Several people on Saturday expressed frustration about meetings happening without corresponding agendas and lengthy delays in minutes being posted afterwards.
When the board voted to cancel the meeting on Tuesday, no agenda item was listed to indicate that any such decision would be taking place.
Resident Jesse Martel was concerned that some people wouldn’t know the meeting had been cancelled. He had rearranged his work schedule in order to attend on Saturday.
“If the agenda was talking about canceling or rescheduling it, people would be more aware what’s going on,” Martel said ahead of the Saturday gathering. “It kind of seemed like they just pulled that out of nowhere, especially since people have been fighting so long to get the meeting scheduled.”
A disclaimer recently appeared at the bottom of meeting agendas stating that the busines before the board “is subject to change at the Selectmen’s discretion up to or during the time of the meeting.”
None of the selectmen responded to the Monitor’s request for comment.
LeBreton said she was taken aback but not surprised by the selectmen’s vote. For her, the group of people that gathered on Saturday felt like a step in the right direction.
“I’m encouraged that people are coming out and people are paying attention and people are having concerns, so I’m hoping that more people will get involved,” she said. “I mean, that’s the only way that we’re going to change things, is by more people getting involved and just coming out and taking it all in.”