SELECT BOARD CHAIR REFUSES TO RESPOND TO QUESTIONS ON TOWN MANAGER CONTRACT, TRIES TO SHIFT BLAME TO

Asked at the June 23rd Select Board meeting why petition organizer John Costin has not received a reply to a June 10th email containing specific questions on the discrepancy between compensation details in the Town Manager’s “no-show” contract, private Board communications, and what reporters and the public were led to believe about those details, Chair Blake Baldwin once again tried to portray petitioners – more than 1,000 to date – as aggressors and suggested that they do not deserve answers to their questions.  The facts, however, paint a different picture.

Baldwin claimed in his remarks that “whenever I have responded to him I have received a very belligerent and bellicose reply and so I told him that I wouldn’t be replying to him anymore”.  Costin’s emails and statements on this topic (see link below) are nothing of the sort.  The same cannot be said of Baldwin.  He has called petitioners “our antagonists” and accused them of “fraud” and “cheap political smears” at public meetings; he accused Costin of lying when directly quoting Board Members – quotes that can be verified in recordings of Board meetings.

Baldwin also sent inappropriate personal emails, not copied to fellow Board members, to Costin long before the revelation of the controversial Town Manager contract. In one, he accused Costin of “obvious bigotry” (for identifying people as “White”) and “bare-faced intolerance for those of us who are not as woke as you are” as well as being unable to “maintain a coherent chain of thought.”  Costin repeatedly requested that Baldwin stop this contact – not the other way around as Baldwin stated.  

 (You can see every email between the two here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nn65osmve8fc6qv/AAAl8HdfDi6Hz9mChIJ4bXEGa?dl=0)

 (See other related emails from Costin to the Select Board here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ef7jhpinowjo09u/AABRkrrGM1EJV5uc6khhallpa?dl=0)

Other opponents of the contract have also been stonewalled.   “I respond to every email that’s written certainly within 48 hours, or at least I try to…I spend hours every week responding to constituent emails…” Baldwin claimed. Yet a detailed letter from resident Dan Sayre outlining the deep flaws in the Manager arrangement, sent to the Board on March 15, remains unanswered at the time of this writing.  (See Sayre’s letter here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oe7nevfw706w88r/D%20Sayre%20select%20board%20letter%2003152020.pdf?dl=0)

So far, the Board’s response to opponents of the contract is nothing but denials, character attacks and claims of hurt feelings.  Perhaps that’s because the Board is trying to defend the indefensible.  As Baldwin went on to state at the June 23rd  meeting, “Setting aside my obligation as the Chair of this Board, I’m unwilling to engage him [Costin] in online colloquy.  It’s a losing proposition for me.”  Whether Baldwin thinks he will win or lose, he still has a responsibility to answer reasonable questions from the citizens he is sworn to serve.

(To see what the Board apparently finds acceptable discourse, here is an email from former Board Chair Richard Morin that drew no reaction from any Board member: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3jm5okughumkyxd/Comparison%20RM%20081120%20email.pdf?dl=0)