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providing annual funding to the town via the Ames Trust and
funding more than half of the cost to operate the Ames Free
Library. The company also has left a physical legacy in the way
of some architectural marvels. Lets not forget that Town Hall
was a gift from the Ames family. Even with that longstanding
legacy, the Shovel Works site, by 2006, had become an eyesore.
A series of owners had left it partially occupied and partially
boarded up. A developer came along who wanted to demolish
part of it, make unwise additions to the buildings that remained,
and add a large new apartment building in the center of the site.
The proposed 160-unit project had one redeeming feature: a
wastewater treatment plant approval for enough capacity to
serve the site. Since this was proposed before we had achieved
safe harbor from the provisions of 40B, it was certain to become
a long-running controversy in the town and would require
expensive opposition to fight it at the State level.
Having experience in historic preservation and in public/private
partnerships, I knew that there were developers out there who
specialized in historic preservation and reuse of sites like this.
After some outreach, I found Beacon Communities. I wont go
through the entire history of this very complex development that
resulted in a meticulously restored site with only 113 apartments
(30 affordable), a home for the Chamber of Commerce and
Cultural District Council Artists, and won the prestigious
Driehaus Award from the National Trust for Historic
Preservation. But I do want to talk about its role in the economic
revival of Main Street.
Main Street is undergoing a physical transformation that was
made possible by a decision I made when the Shovel Works
project was planned. The previous developer had proposed and
gained approval for a wastewater plant that would service 160
apartments. The successful Shovel Works project only had 113. I
decided to build the extra wastewater capacity to supply North
Easton Village including Main Street. No one liked the idea. Not
the developer or their lawyers, and certainly not the Bank of
America who was providing construction financing. They said a
public wastewater facility built by a public entity on a private
site could not be done, and they doubted our ability to produce it
on time if it could be done. We proved them wrong and
delivered the plant ahead of schedule and under budget. With
that achievement, we could go about the business of providing
sewer to homes in the village that were existing on failed septic
systems and of promoting economic development on Main
Street. In addition, we received $2M in state grants to help
reduce the cost of the sewer system, build the town parking lot,
and re-construct Main Street with new sidewalks, period
lighting, and underground utilities.
It is an irrefutable fact that no developer, no matter how rich or
how interested, would have been able to do what is being done
now without the sewer system. I worked to make that happen
against the odds, and it has led to a complete transformation of
our historic downtown.
Before Shovel Works, there was Queset Commons, a mixed
commercial and residential development being built under
Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40R. It is also subject to a
development agreement that I negotiated with the developer that
provides for the reconstruction of the intersection of Belmont
and Washington Streets, including traffic signals and pedestrian
amenities, as well as the reconstruction and expansion of the
Depot Street Fire Station. It also includes incentive payments to
the Town for providing housing. The Town has received
hundreds of thousands of dollars in such payments, along with
State grants for infrastructure work in excess of $1M. The
project also includes a wastewater plant (privately built) that
will service the development and the abutting Queset
Commercial District. Working with the Planning and Zoning
Board and staff, we developed and won Town Meeting approval
for the rezoning of this district to provide greater flexibility and
density for the development proposals that are certain to follow
the construction of the sewer system this year.
This spring will be a critical period for the success of these
efforts. Construction will begin on intersection improvements at
Roosevelt Dr. and Washington Street for better access to Queset
Commons. Construction is also slated for the Queset sewer
infrastructure. In addition, the developer is behind schedule on
constructing a commercial building on the site, so leadership to
ensure compliance with the development agreement is essential.
The latest economic initiative is the Five Corners District. This
areas growth has long been stymied by the lack of sewer
infrastructure. Over the past two years we have taken some very
concrete steps to remedy that problem. First, we identified a
source for wastewater service provision to the town in the
Mansfield, Norton, and Foxboro sewer district. The district is
currently constructing a replacement for its wastewater
treatment plant that will provide greater capacity than the three
towns need. We began negotiations with the Town of Mansfield
to sell us some of their capacity. This agreement provides for
160,000 gallons per day of capacity, making it the largest
treatment capacity we have developed so far. Concurrent to this
agreement, the Avalon Bay 290-unit apartment and townhouse
development was being planned. They would have had to
construct, maintain, and operate a private treatment plant to
service their development. We proposed an alternative.
Eliminate that cost and buy some of our Mansfield capacity.
They agreed and financed the construction of a sewer from
Mansfield into Easton to service the western edge of the Five
Corners District. In all, Avalon Bay will pay over $3M for
infrastructure and wastewater treatment capacity in an
agreement we negotiated. This is in addition to $2.6M for
general mitigation that will be earmarked for school building
construction or renovation.
This sewer unlocks vast potential for economic development in
this commercial corridor. In fact, just before being suspended, I
was in talks with a major commercial land owner regarding
development of two sites near Avalon dependent on the towns
ability to deliver sewer capacity.
Some Final Thoughts.
I have tried to give you the highlights of a ten-year tenure as
Eastons Town Administrator. I am also attaching a list of
selected accomplishments. Boiling ten years of service down to
a few pages means that some episodes are left out entirely and
that this is, by its nature, merely a summary. There are a few
themes that I think are particularly useful in considering the
present action of the Board of Selectmen. First, I recruit, hire,
mentor, and empower really good people. The Town of Easton
has professional staff that is well-educated, experienced,
certified, and respected by their peers. They are officers in their
professional associations, some of them teach and evaluate
others in their professions, and others speak at professional
conferences. The fact that the Board of Selectmen turned the
town over, with 48 hours notice, to the relatively inexperienced
Assistant Town Administrator, is shocking in its boldness but
belies the stated reason for my removal. For someone whose
conduct confirms a complete and systematic failure to
exercise any reasonable degree of supervision of a department
head he hired it is curious that the Board replaced him with
someone the Town Administrator recruited, hired, trained,
taught, mentored, and promoted, and, in doing so, heaped praise
upon him. He is certainly deserving of praise. Since I hired him
fresh from college five years ago with no municipal experience
because our vetting process revealed great potential, he has risen
to become a leader among his peers, a scholarship winning 4.0
graduate of an MPA program, certified in Massachusetts as a
Public Procurement Officer, co-chair of the Massachusetts
Municipal Association Strategic Planning Committee, and now
Acting Town Administrator. I recognized this potential long
before he was promoted to Assistant Town Administrator in
2016 and it was my skill as a manager of human resources and
his innate abilities and desire that combined to produce a
competent professional administrator.
The task of submitting bylaws to the Attorney General is but one
example of hundreds, if not thousands, of functions routinely
carried out by our employees on a daily, weekly, monthly and
annual basis. I do not minimize the importance of this task in
particular. However, the notion that I would have direct
responsibility for oversight of this task in particular ignores the
volume and complexity of the work carried out by all of our
Town departments and employees every day. I am being held to
an impractical and completely unrealistic standard of
performance if I am to be terminated for the former Town
Clerks failure to complete this one task.
The fact is that I have hired and supervised effectively dozens of
staff over my tenure. In the present case, the individual was
experienced, educated, certified and respected by his peers, yet
still failed to perform a basic part of his job. In my view, what
matters is how I handled that failure. First, I gave him numerous
opportunities to explain himself. I investigated his explanations
and found them lacking. I confronted him with my findings that
he lied to me and others over the years and attempted to cover
up his failure by blaming someone else. His response was to
continue blaming an innocent party. So I held him to account,
not simply for the failure but for the lies and cover-up. I did this
publicly and gave the Board a detailed report. I then assigned
my assistant to assume the duties of Town Clerk and instructed
him to report weekly in writing, holding nothing back. In
contrast to the former Town Clerk, my conduct and the conduct
of my staff has been completely transparent, professional, and
brimming with integrity.
This crisis, like any other, requires clear thinking, a calm
demeanor, and swift action. I exhibited those qualities (working
with Town Counsel) by quickly identifying a solution to the
failure to submit by-laws. That solution, after being endorsed by
every major board in town government, was adopted by Town
Meeting, the Massachusetts Legislature, and signed into law by
Governor Baker. Up until my suspension, the acting Town Clerk
had been submitting by-laws to the Attorney General for
approval. Since that time, I can only hope that progress has been
made.
As for doubt around development, no evidence has been
presented that any development is truly at risk. In fact, the
Attorney General recently approved Eastons zoning by-law
making any zoning related issues with development moot. Any
difficulty there may have been was only procedural in nature
and temporary. My record on economic development speaks for
itself.
Finally, my record on negotiating mitigation and development
agreements, obtaining state grants, negotiating contracts, and
enhancing, in particular, ambulance revenue is second to none.
We have generated revenue many times the amount of my
annual salary over the years. My record on keeping expenses
lower than average is clear. The by-law problem is well on its
way to being successfully resolved. Any theoretical risk was
purely speculative; on the other hand, my record on protecting
the town from risk is real.
We will present testimony and evidence at the hearing that will
show that this preliminary resolution is fraught with inaccuracies
and that there is not sufficient cause for my removal.