While tensions between City Councilor Stacey Brown and some of her peers has erupted in a personal way in recent weeks, the Ward Five councilor’s engagement with city administration has been a building point of friction for months.
Brown, as she described it Monday, sees a rigorous oversight of city administration as part of the “trust but verify” obligations of her role as a city councilor. Her critics say she is burdening city staff with voluminous questions, particularly related to management of the city’s golf course.
To some of her peers, however, Brown has gone too far in recent months by accusing City Hall of moving money around without council approval.
“I’m one of those folks that likes to question things and examine them and welcome that from the public,” said Kris Schultz, the Ward Nine councilor, Monday night. “But in this case, when it tiptoes towards the belief, or almost an assumption of malfeasance, I do not believe that is the case.”
In public testimony Monday, former state representative and candidate for county sheriff Jason Gerhard said her concern was valid.
“I don’t want to think that anybody’s doing anything untoward, but there’s a lot of money that’s kind of up in the air,” he said. He echoed Brown’s concern that the city’s Trustees of the Trust funds don’t have a stronger oversight role, and suggested a Grand Jury look into city finances. “This whole thing just seems kind of sketch.”
In rejecting Brown’s portrayal that money was wrongly being moved around without authorization, Brian LeBrun, the deputy city manager for finance, underlined that “every dollar” listed in the budget was approved by a city council vote.
“Do not try to say that the dollars that were transferred out were not approved by the city council,” he said.
Brown responded that this was “misinformation” before Mayor Byron Champlin cut her off by ruling her “out of order.”
She did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
Beyond her questions about finances on Monday night, Brown brought up other councilors’ attendance records at committee meetings and accused others of ethical violations. The meeting was abruptly halted and then adjourned. Champlin has said the city is considering its options to remove her from office.
Here’s a rundown of some of her recent questions about Concord’s public expenditures and the responses from city staff.
Reserve money and the Beaver Meadow Clubhouse
The recreation reserve was at the heart of a broader dispute about how the council has been spending city savings. On Monday night, the city council approved a refresh of the rules attached to their reserve accounts and closed a few no longer in use.
The recreation reserve was created in 2016 “to support future expenses of the new City-wide Community Center project.” The council tucked aside money to help with debt payments and cover new staffing and operating costs for the new center.
The new definition approved adds language stating the money can also be spent on “other recreation-related purposes as approved by the City Council.”
Similar language was added to more than a dozen city reserve accounts, though some had more specific outlined purposes than others. For example, the Human Resources reserve was created in 2024 in anticipation of rising compensation costs related to a new wage study. Now, it is also dedicated to “other human resources related purposes as approved by the City Council.”
In general, these changes give the council more flexibility on how it wants to apply city savings, while still creating different pools of reserves based on its priorities.
Brown objected, though, because the council had been approving spending from a few reserves outside of their more narrow definitions, in particular from the recreation reserve to pay for a new clubhouse at the city-owned Beaver Meadow Gold Course.
The recreation reserve was outlined in a plan from the city manager, announced during budget deliberations to help cover construction costs on the $5.9 million project.
Golf course funds, $250,000 a year, are set to go toward paying for the project, as are a mix of recreation reserve funding and, after this year, tax money.
State law requires reserve account money to be spent “only for and in connection with the purposes for which said fund was established.” Brown has said the city manager misled councilors about the recreation reserve’s purpose, and she speculated that this and other city spending would put city officials, namely the trustees of the trust funds, in conflict with state law.
City Solicitor John Conforti argued all of this reserve spending has been above board, saying there was more ambiguity than it appears in the reserve’s creation.
“When we looked at the history of this, there was a lack of clarity in terms of whether it was tethered completely to the community development center or used for other purposes,” he said.
The 2016 resolution creating the recreation reserve outlines it explicitly as dedicated to the new community center and new day-to-day expenses related to it. A report attached to that approval, however, also notes that “these amounts may be varied and other expenses can be considered based on the direction of the City Council.”
The new language approved Monday, Conforti said, made the actual boundaries of how the council wants to spend its reserves clear.
“I think that there are some clarity issues that can be addressed… to make sure it is consistent with the council’s wishes,” he said Monday.
The recreation reserve
The city of Concord is required to send a report, called an MS-9, of its trusts and reserves to the state Department of Revenue Administration each fiscal year. A version of this form from the end of October showed a $100,000 transfer out of the recreation reserve since the start of the fiscal year, which began in July.
The council didn’t discuss such a transfer explicitly when it approved the current budget in June, and Brown speculated that city staff had been moving money around without the council’s permission.
That use of recreation money is part of support for parks and recreation operating expenses from city trusts included in the council-approved city budget over the last several years, according to budget records and Brian LeBrun, the deputy city manager for finance.
Notably, though, the $100,000 transfer isn’t apparent in the budget documents made available to the public.
The budget available to the public online lists a total of between $400,000 and $500,000 coming into the parks’ budget from reserves each year for the last few years, but doesn’t delineate the specific sources.
A breakdown exists in a supplementary budget detail provided to councilors. While it is a public record, is not posted online. The detail shows that $100,000 from the recreation reserve made up part of about $483,000 in total funds that went towards the parks budget approved in June. In 2025, the amount from the recreation reserve was $200,000 and in preceding years it had been higher.
In a September council meeting, Brown asked LeBrun what the $200,000 of recreation reserve funding into the 2025 parks budget had paid for.
She said that he “couldn’t say where it went.”
His answer included more context that Brown omitted.
Because the money went into the parks department’s general budget, LeBrun said in a September council meeting, it was divvied among the department’s day-to-day costs. The city budget, he continued, sums its revenue and sums its expenses, then sets the tax rate to make up the difference. Which dollars would have gone towards which expenses, from salaries to electricity to office supplies, is not tracked, so it was impossible to answer exactly how they were used.
“It’s a revenue source,” he said. “When we collect motor vehicle registrations, we don’t mark down every car that comes in and say this is going to go buy 14 notebooks or it’s going to pay for $12 of electricity. That’s not how that revenue stream works.”
Community improvement reserve
Brown raised concerns Monday night about money coming out of the community improvement reserve that she didn’t think the council had authorized.
This money was approved, but indirectly: it was a “back of the budget” change that councilors authorized the city manager to make, LeBrun said.
When the city council workshops its budget, the 15 members meet in a sequence of meetings as the Finance Committee. On the final budget workshop night – this year it was June 5 – the Finance Committee makes its major changes, then adjourns and reconvenes minutes later as the City Council to approve the amended spending plan. There are separate agendas and minutes for each, but it’s the same 15 people.
The minutes from both June 5 meetings list the approved budget amendments. What Brown flagged is a $244,000 transfer from the community improvement reserve into the general fund that appears in the City Council minutes but not the Finance Committee minutes.
Looking only at the minutes, it’s not clear why the extra reserve spending is there, and neither meeting includes an explicit motion from the council to allocate that money. They did, however, approve “back of the budget” reductions by the manager, and $244,000 appears in the council minutes as a result.
After hours of deliberations, councilors settled on cuts that would lower the originally proposed tax rate increase for this year by a half a percentage point. But they wanted to reduce the increase by a full percentage point, so they directed City Manager Tom Aspell to shave off another half-percent from the increase at his discretion.
Brown and Schultz opposed this move, saying it should be up to councilors to make those kinds of reductions.
Aspell’s office found that a half percent reduction in the tax rate by using $244,000 from the community improvement reserve to offset operational spending, LeBrun said in an email to the Monitor.
Friends of the Beav donation
A non-profit organization behind the city golf course and clubhouse project pledged to raise $250,000 over the next ten years to help pay for the $5.9 million project.
They presented city councilors with the first $25,000 in December, with a photo and a big check.
Both the organization and city staff told the Monitor that the donation has been provided to the city.
Brown has questioned whether this donation actually arrived, saying it could not have been deposited without a council vote. When donations of a certain size are made to the city, the council must vote to accept them.
LeBrun said in an email to the Monitor that the inclusion of this donation in the clubhouse plan approved by the council meant the council had already accepted it. He affirmed that the money had been deposited in city accounts.
