WILTON – Town Manager Peter Nielsen defended himself this week against charges that he kicked a selectman out of a meeting, saying he was only trying “to keep the Board of Selectmen out of (legal) trouble.”
The controversy erupted Jan. 4 at a meeting of the Fire Truck Advisory Committee, which is charged with reviewing firetruck bids and making recommendations.
When Selectman Rodney Hall arrived at the meeting, two other selectmen were already present, one as a member of the committee and the other, Chairman of the Board Russell Black, with the permission of the other selectmen, to ask a few specific questions.
Under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act, a quorum of an elected board cannot meet without posting a meeting to inform the public of its business and “allow public attendance.” That’s because, theoretically, a quorum could make decisions outside of posted meetings and then just make it official during a regular meeting. Wilton has five selectmen.
Hall could not be reached for comment Friday.
Black said Friday that at the Jan. 4 meeting, Nielsen asked to postpone the meeting until it had been posted, and shortly afterward Hall walked out. A few weeks later, Nielsen received a letter from Hall’s lawyer, David Sanders, accusing the town manager of kicking Hall out of the meeting and misreading the Freedom of Access Act.
“My feeling,” Black said, “is that Rodney may have taken it personallyPeter did not ask him personally to leave.”
But Black added Friday that while he supported the town manager’s request to stop the Jan. 4 meeting, he strongly disagreed with the law. “If two selectmen are sitting in Athena’s (restaurant)and another walks in and sits down, do you mean as citizens we can’t discuss town politics?” he asked. “If it’s not legal I think it’s very wrong that three selectmen can’t stand there and not constitute a meeting.”
Nielsen did not want to comment further on the issue Friday, but he wrote a letter in response to Sanders’ on Feb. 1, defending his actions in postponing the meeting.
Sanders argued in his letter that not allowing a majority of an elected board to gather in private or in unadvertised meetings “is a gross distortion of what the drafters (of the Maine public access law) reasonably might have intended.”
However, Nielsen was advised by the Maine Municipal Association, after Hall complained about his actions, that it was proper to postpone the meeting once three selectmen were present and delay it long enough to alert the public of a special selectmen’s meeting.
Black said he stands by Nielsen’s actions and thinks Hall misunderstood the town manager’s intentions when he stopped the meeting. “I honestly don’t believe in this situation Peter did anything wrong,” he said. “I think Rodney is carrying this a little too far.”
He said he thinks while Nielsen is “super overcautious about this,” the town manager is doing the job selectmen hired him to do and “looking out for the interest of the town of Wilton.”
“Right now, I think Peter is erring on the side of caution, and that’s fine, that’s part of his job, and I support him fully on that. He’s protecting the interests of the public. We’ve hired him to help us, and we need to let him do his job,” Black said.
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