“It’s strange that men should take up crime when there are so
many legal ways to be dishonest.” Anonymous
The
BOS will be selecting town counsel for the next fiscal year in a few weeks. At
this time it is appropriate to review the BOS actions involving town counsel
since last year. Last July, the BOS
interviewed four or five law firms for town counsel. After some debate, that
BOS voted to hire the firm of Blatman, Bobrowski & Mead (BBM) as general
town counsel and the firm of Collins, Loughran & Peolquin for labor
counsel. A contract was signed and executed. The Town of Templeton was very
close to meeting the budgeted amount for town counsel until the recall
election.
On
the night of February 16, 2012, the
newly installed BOS voted to dismiss the firm of BBM and hire Kopelman &
Paige (K & P) as town counsel “FORWITH”. These
documents are the final invoices for BBM and labor counsel. These invoices
total $12,767.50. That BOS voted to hire K&P without considering the
financial consequences of their decision….(kinda like hiring a town coordinator
w/o $$)
At
the BOS meeting on February 16th, I asked each member of the BOS if
they had any contact with K&P prior to their vote. As you can see from the video of that meeting, each selectman
stated they had no prior contact with K&P. Contained within this copy
of the K & P invoice for February 2012, on page 2 of the invoice please
note an entry under GENERAL LABOR SERVICES for 2/16/2012 TOWN HALL – STRATEGIZE
RE:PERSONNEL ACTION 0.30 49.50. It seems some people were not telling
the truth on the night of February
16, 2012.
Here
are the links for the March 2012
and May
2012 K & P invoices (I seem to have misplaced the April invoice).
Please feel free to do the math. As of May 31, 2012 the town of Templeton was
about $5,000 short in the town counsel line item, which may have prompted this letter
from Lenny. I guess the math majors in accounting at K&P let Lenny know
about the “situation”. This particular selectman feels no great urgency to pay
the remainder of K&P’s bills. The budget cuts that we have had to make
should not be wasted on funding mathematical errors by a prior board.
John Godfrey Saxe once said:” Laws, like sausage, cease to
inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.”
Julie
Farrell (The blue links open new documents or videos)
as always - Thank you Julie, I haven't look it over real close, when I do I know I'll have more comments, but one thing popped out at me - If K&P were not hired back until the NIGHT of Feb 16th how are they billing us for something they did on Feb 16th (see the link to K&P bill from Julie's Blog)did Lenny get right to work at 9:00pm that night???
ReplyDeleteCheck when BBM were told or informed they had been fired. The legal budget fell short at the end of February after K&P billed around 5 thousand for 8 days which menat Templeton spent atleast 10 thousand for legal services in one month. Just by looking at past years bills, I knew and anyone could conclude the same thing, that after town meeting there would be no money left. At about $1,400.00 per town meeting night and that the May bill with K&P is generally around 8 thousand dollars. Simple math would tell you that with spending such as that, you going to run out of money. Simply waiting until the end of the month to change council would have changed the situation, but when you are on a crusade to go backwards as fast as possible, stuff happens. Thank you Virginia Wilder, columbus and mullins. I remember your ad columbus, you wanted to send a second message to the people, well you did, you, Wilder and mullins (scrappy) failed math class. You three fired Jeff Ritter, paid him $14,000.00 and then had not enough money to rehire your dear friend carol skelton back, except not enough money left to pay her, and dear carol does not work a few weeks for free, (to help the town) so one can see just from these three actions how it may help to explain how Templeton got off kilter so bad when looking at the financial mess we are in. Imagine a year with those 3 incharge along with dear friend carol skelton. Just wait until you residents get your hands on those executive session minutes. I may have to be out of town when that happens. I believe those minutes will help that little event in August (as in the recall of wilder) happen rather easily.
ReplyDeleteWhy is there conversations with the "interim town administrator" on the Feb bill? Who is "interim town administrator"? Is it Mr. Ritter? Is it Carol Skelton? Carol was not reappointed until April. So, who is this referring to? This is alarming!!
DeleteOh! and by the way, K&P refer to Mr. Ritter's settlement as a "settlement". So, if your legal counsel even refers to a payment as a settlement, then the bylaw that the former BOS violated holds up (no settlement is to be made over $1,000 without the vote of the town). Plain and simple.
DeletePauly, and anyone else, you may wish to check out pages 2 and 3 of the February bill and look at the work done for settlement agreement, then look at the April bill and you will see more settlement agreement work, (pages 3 & 4 ) sure is alot of billing for a settlement agreement, that is not a settlement or claim? Makes one wonder if that is legal and or right? One thing to remember, Denise Andrews is NOT the representative for Templeton right now, whom ever wins theelection in November will, after the 1st of the new year, 2013 will be our new state representative, so she is not our official rep on Beacon Hill. So while she may listen as she looks for votes, she has no real vested interest in Templeton, as in talk to you now until she gets the votes, then turns the phone off. In laymens terms, she follows Anne Gobi and does not listen or do anything for you. The news media in my opinion is the best way to go, ya just have to outline and chronicalize the information in a way that will get someones attention, then that will get the story out and while you have the medias attention (which will not be long) someone credible needs to talk on point about a few things (big ticket items) and be sure to mention the law firm in question everytime your lips are moving. In the end, if you get public opinion on your side, more people talking, newspapers even give you a few lines, you may be able to do something that will really cause headaches for "them" you can possiblity tarnish the name and reputation of the name and firm of Kopelman & Paige. Len has to retire sometime and if his company is tarnished, the value goes down and perhaps some clients toss them aside. Now that would be a show and a win, for the long run. A by-product of that would be to show how much lieing and deceit took place while your good buddies columbus, skelton, grimley & co. were at the helm. In my opinion of course.
ReplyDeleteAnother question for Wilder at the next selectmens meeting (under new business) So Viginia, why did we have three law firms working for us on February 16? I clearly remember you stating (on dvd) That you motioned to hire K&P to replace the three firms we had, then Mr. Ritter corrected you and you fixed you motion to replace our two law firms with K&P, except as the February bill clearly states the K&P was already working for us before the vote. And here I thought the columbus, mullins and Wilder said they had no previous communication with K&P so how was it that K&P was working for the tonw on February 16? Virginia, did you fib to us taxpayers?
ReplyDeleteOne more point to make...everyone keeps asking who changed the warrant articles. Look at the dates on the K&P bills. It clearly states K&P reviewed and proposed article changes after VW's "dear friend" came aboard. With this timeline, and (hopefully) the release of the executive session minutes, all the pieces will be in place for all to see the full picture.
DeleteAlso noted...lots of calls regarding town hall project and how to conduct BOS meetings. K&P should have known a full 21E needed to be done before purchasing 252 Bald. Rd. according to their own guidelines. $13k unnecessary cost to town due to K&P poor guidance. And how is it a BOS chair who has served for years doesn't know how to conduct a meeting?
If I did my math correctly, the former BOS chair cost the town over $2,800 to get rid of Mr. Ritter and to ask for help conducting BOS meetings in Feb and March. He also cost the town around $750 for asking for counsel opinions on OML complaints. The BOS did not vote to seek counsel opinions as doing so goes against the OML procedure. The BOS chair took it upon himself to spend this money. So, over $3,500 wasted on poor leadership. This doesn't include charges for April which, I'm sure would only make these amounts higher.
DeleteThere is a phone conversation with building committee member on 3/9 that I would like to know what was said. It states it was discussing votes and town meeting. In another phone conversation, it states discussion on using ambulance receipt money to pay for capital expenditures. Maybe if they weren't so busy with all this nonsense, they could have done their job properly on other business--warrant articles, monitoring correct bankruptcy procedures, reviewing real estate purchase according to their own guidelines...the list goes on.