Town Council's Final Meeting a Quiet Affair

If you were expecting any nastiness at the last scheduled meeting of the East Hampton Town Council prior to the Nov. 8 election, you didn’t get it on Tuesday night.

No bloodletting, no heated exchanges, no petitions, little negativity at all. Even comments from the council or the public concerning the pending investigations into Sgt. Michael Green were at a minimum.

No, this meeting was mostly about tending to some new business, cleaning up some of the old and for the council to reflect on the past two years. Public comments mostly offered praise and thank yous to the council members for their service and investment in time, even if they didn’t always see eye-to-eye.

For four council members, this was their final town council meeting, at least for the foreseeable future. Chairwoman Melissa Engel, vice chair John Tuttle, Thom Cordeiro and Chris Goff won’t be seeking re-election.

“I will miss you all,” Engel said. “I have made tremendous friends doing this. People I would never have met otherwise, and you’ve all brought a sense of humor, joy, intelligence, curiosity, piqued things and made things happen, and I can’t thank you enough. I’ll miss you.”

Among the items acted on was approving a no smoking policy for Sears Park. Smoking will still be permitted, but there will be areas designated as non-smoking. Those areas will be the beach, picnic areas including the shelter and picnic table areas, and the playground. The vote was 5-2 in favor of implementing the proposed policy as drafted by town attorney Jean D’Aquila and parks and recreation director Ruth Plummer.

Which department should handle processing requests for Sears Park stickers also was on the agenda. Currently, residents can get stickers at the town clerk’s office, the library, the police department and the parks and recreation department.

However, it’s the town clerk’s office that handles most of the requests.

Citing a heavy workload and the anticipation of a busy 2012, town clerk Sandy Wieleba provided the council with a memo supporting the demands on her office and requested the council relieve her office of the duties associated with the purchasing of stickers.

“The Sears Park stickers are a burden to my office,” said Wieleba, who added she has come to the town council before with a similar request. “What I request is you take a look at this and to have [the stickers] back where it really belongs, in the possession of the park and rec department.”

If Plummer didn’t like the idea, she hid it well.

“If you don’t want them sold at town hall, send them to my office,” she said.

Which the council did with a unanimous vote.

Police department overtime was added to the agenda, though the investigations into Sgt. Green were not.

“I know that we’ve been told by our very brilliant attorneys, and they are, including Jean, that we may not discuss Michael Green and all that stuff,” Engel said, “but I think taxpayers have every right to know that as of [Monday], we’ve paid Michael Green $17,500 to stay home.”

Engel went on to point out that Sgt. Garritt Kelly has worked 155 hours of overtime at $53.40 an hour over the last two pay periods or four weeks. Others have worked overtime as well but to a far lesser degree.

“What matters is that we’re spending that much money on overtime when we have Michael Green, who could be at work, and we have Tim Dowty, who is in training in Virginia,” Engel said. “So, I guess I’m asking Anne [McKinney] to try to do something.

“When we’re this understaffed, I don’t know why we have a guy out. I also don’t know why we would have sent a guy to training.”

During the acting interim town manager’s report, McKinney was “very, very, very pleased” to mention a recent article in Connecticut Magazine. The magazine ranked East Hampton 10th of all Connecticut towns with a population between 10,000 and 15,000.

McKinney also updated the council on a few other matters that had been pending. The new oil tank at Memorial Elementary School is complete and under budget, the generator has been installed at Company No. 2 Firehouse and the roof at the firehouse should be completed as early as Wednesday. McKinney also announced the senior center would receive a 2007 14-passenger van “at really no cost to us.”

“One of our obligations is to use it to a certain mileage if that’s at all possible,” she said.

In other business, a contract was awarded for the design of the performing arts gazebo at Sears Park for $12,500. Currently, there is no timetable for the completion of the gazebo.

“Our biggest goal is to have it done by the middle of June so that it doesn’t interrupt the summer,” Plummer said.

The council also agreed to transfer $209,000 to the Capital Reserve Fund to cover costs for the upgrade of radio communication equipment for the fire department, police department and public works department. Funding will come from unspent budgets in the 2010-11 fiscal year.

But it was toward the end when the council took turns saying thank you and talking about some of what has been accomplished, some of what they are most proud of.

“I would like to thank the community for the ability to serve,” Cordeiro said. “I also think there are lot of good things that have transpired over, not only the last two years, but the last four years that I am proud of. There’s a number of issues that I’ll take a lot of pride in over the last several years.”

Tuttle mentioned the road project the council recently approved then singled out Cathy Sirois, the recording secretary and administrative assistant to the town manager, who the council depends on for so much. Tuttle also took the opportunity to defend “Sgt. Green’s honor” by addressing comments from a September meeting alleging “nothing happened to fix some of the problems that were apparently there during Sgt. Green’s oversight of the department.”

“I think he did a lot of good things,” said Tuttle, who then read from a report Green provided Police Chief Matt Reimondo about what was accomplished during his absence.

Engel thanked her family and close friends.

"The curse of being either related to me or being my friend, is that you also had to withstand some public mudslinging and humiliation and you guys did not deserve that and yet encouraged me to continue every step of the way," she said.

Perhaps Barbara Moore, who is running for re-election, summed the moment up best.

“The four of you are kind of lucky because you know this is your last meeting, but the three of us don’t have a clue,” she said, referring to Sue Weintraub and Chatham Carillo as well. “We’ll have to wait for two more weeks.”

Then Moore pointed out the decades of service the council will be losing.

“That’s a lot.”