Another Columbus boondoggle as Chairman

If one takes the time to look over the agenda for the selectmen meeting held on Monday, March 12, 2012 at the Narragansett middle school cafeteria and you stay when the board went into executive session as you watched through the wall of glass only unable to hear what was going on, you would have seen town coordinator move from his position from sitting at the same table as the selectmen to a chair facing the board. That is the same position taken by anyone who comes before the board any business, including executive session. The one thing about this meeting was you were able to watch through the glass. The man in the suit sitting next to Mr. Ritter was an attorney from Kopelman & Paige. As Len Kopelman stated last July, 2011, he works for the majority of the board. I am filing an Open Meeting Law violation against the board because of improper posting of the executive session. The posting written by columbus and put on agenda by him as chair of the board was incorrect..........AGAIN. I can tell you that there was no union contract in front of us, either in the blue binders that you selectmen use at just about all of their meetings, nor was their any contracts in front of us not in those binders. There was no law suit information in those binders nor just on the table. There was mention of character of an individual and you could see Mr. Jeff Ritter sitting in front of us so you make the call. In my opinion, the only character flaw for Templeton politics Mr. Ritter has is he is honest and he has tried to help all of the people who live in the town of Templeton. ( the flaw would be that some people don't like that personality trait because it makes it harder for midnight appointments) Wrong subjects contained in the posting of an executive session is a violation of the law as there are only 10 reasons that you MAY go into executive session along with some procedural errors are the reasons for my complaint. This could have been avoided if bubba had used the services of the attorney from K&P who I saw walk in the doors at about 7:00 p.m. that night and he was there to at least 10:00 p.m. You the taxpayers paid the bill for Mr. Jenkens to be there, his boss said that he works for the majority of the board and if you look back at the rate K&P use to charge, $165.00 per hour, you can see old bubba columbus pretty much wasted your tax dollars, again! I pointed these mis-steps out to the attorney and he apologized for not looking the posting over before hand and said he could be back in a couple of weeks and he would look over the next posting to make sure it was correct. Gee-wiz, thanks for the screwing over, I mean the service. Is this the best we can get from columbus and the high profile, high powered law firm of Kopleman & Paige. He was schooled on open meeting law procedure by a graduate of Narragansett Regional High School. I guess our school system is not so bad after all. A second term selectman and chairman for at least the third time and bubba columbus does not know how to post a meeting properly. In my opinion, it looks that he can not read so well because all the information is in the open meeting law guide that bubba sign a paper that is on file at the Templeton town clerks office stating he has a copy of the law, he understands it and will keep up with any changes and that he will abide by it for his term on what ever entity he serves on. There is always the Massachusetts Attorney Generals office which does not directly cost the taxpayers anything for a call to the division of open government. Nope, columbus has to bring in a $165.00 per hour attorney for which you get the bill and still he can not get it right. I am assuming the rate is $165.00 per hour since we have no contract for services with K&P and the night when they switched law firms, they did not seem to have any information on those little details. Perhaps it is time to cut how much we have in the budget for town counsel so there is less money available for Len to take from the town. Taxpayers really need to not only keep the heat on but they need to educate themselves so at-least someone is prepared for selectmen meetings. A good place to start is to contact some local building inspectors as well as the state to find out exactly when the 8th edition of the building code went into effect in Massachusetts and when this information was available to local building inspectors. Remember, the building at 252 Baldwinville Road became Templeton property on November 3, 2010, at least that is what the paperwork says. You really can't make this stuff up.
Respectfully ;

Jeffrey Bennett