Alternate hearing is set for Monday
BY PETER B. BRACE
At Monday night’s Planning Board meeting, alternates Charity Benz, Jason Flanagan and John Wagley will have the opportunity to respond in executive session to a terse letter issued Oct. 23 that outlined the board’s displeasure with the alternates’ behavior at the board’s bi-monthly meetings.

“What it will be is the alternates will be offered an executive session,” Vorce confirmed. “They have the right to say no, they don’t want it; they have the right to have it in public.”

The letter detailed what the board perceived as inappropriate behavior by its alternates, alleging that all of them had been “arriving and leaving the meetings at will, without notifications to the Chairman or Staff.”

It also charged that one of the three alternates might have been under the influence (although no substance was specified) more than once, and that the alternates’ meeting behavior was distracting and included whispering, reading newspapers at the table, conducting private business activities and sleeping. After the Oct. 30 Planning Board meeting, Planning Board member Frank Spriggs noted that Benz sat at the table humming during the meeting.

The letter also said that the alternates have been hostile and disrespectful to staff members with inappropriate phone calls, racial biasing, failure to sign Planning Board decisions in a timely manner, unprofessional refutation of staff research, public criticism of the board’s actions and a lack of participation in Planning Board matters.

Given no opportunity to formally address the charges, save for letters to the editors of both island newspapers, the alternates’ frustrations erupted in the Other Business segment of the Dec. 11 Planning Board meeting when Planning Board Chairman Don Visco announced that on Jan. 8 the alternates would be heard in an executive session, because the issue is a personnel matter.

“This is an internal matter because the letter never requested the selectmen to take any action,” Visco told the alternates at the end of the Dec. 11 meeting. “It was a for-your-information only type of letter. You are the ones who decided to send it to Yack and the editors and all around, okay?”

At this point, Benz tried to interject, but Visco cut her off.

“I’m not finished yet,” he said. “You have a lot to learn about protocol and how to conduct yourself at a meeting.”

Benz then told Visco she would not participate in the hearing unless she had documents containing all communication between the board, town officials and members of the public she had requested twice in November from the planning staff.

After Visco reiterated his position, he told Benz he and the board were not going argue anymore about the issue that night.

“I just told you when you can have your hearing, you’re done,” Visco said to Benz as she protested.

“Sit down and don’t point your finger at me,” Benz replied to Visco. “I am not going to participate in a hearing . . . you are way out of line, Mr. Chairman.” Vorce said that under the Open

Meeting Law, it is the alternates’ right to deal with their concerns either in an executive session or in a public setting, but he said that although Town Counsel Paul DeRensis would be at the meeting, there would be no courtroom procedure to this hearing.

“I think the way Don had stated the meeting is the point is that this is an open meeting if the alternates want it to be,” Vorce said. “It’s about the alternates addressing their concerns directly to the board, it’s not about interrogation and cross examination; that’s not going to be happening.”

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