9/9/1991 BOARD OF SELECTMEN Minutes

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BOARD OF SELECTMEN Page 12 MINUTES MONDAY, SEPTEMBER # 1991 Recreation enter: The letters involve litigation which any one of the Board o Selectmen can core to him and ask to see and' he will show it to thea. I put confidential on it and they are not to be photocopied state-s Counsel, There is a. reason for that. I have been Counsel for this Town Jong enough to have unfortunately experienced situations where I am in court and suddenly I have a letter that was sent confidentially to the Town appears out of the opposing counsel' s file and is shown to the judge, As an attorney, that angers me mightely. I can' t go back and accuse anybody of having leaked information. This became a problem and I discussed this with our Executive Secretary Joseph Murphy and e established a protocol.. The protocol I just explained is exactly what is done, In other words, if I feel it is a very sensitve matter that would be harmful to the Town, I sen a copy to the Executive Secretary, he has a. copy and keeps it under lock and key, Any member of the Board o Selectmen -that wants to see -it, I presume the Executive Secretary shows it to him. That is what Mr. Murphy did and I know that Kevin does it now. + There could be a better protocol., but that was the one that was put into place. There really wasn' t anything I don' t think intended by me ,in sending this letter to Jerry with a. copy to Wil and to Kevin. No intentions that should be interpreted that someone was trying to keep this thing swept under the rug or placed in the closet or buried in the dark. I just thought it important that people understand that, Joe, I think when we first talked about this and I heard about the Keeter property, you in fact told ane immediately about this and in fact said go to Kevin states Selectman Ca, n and get a copy. Sure states Counsel. And that is exactly what you said states Selectman Cafflyn, However, when 'I did get a. copy, I shared it with Carol. I told you any letter sent to the Executive Secretary by nye would be held for the viewing by any Selectman upon request of any Selectmen states Counsel. I also told you the reason for. that is just as I explained. Because in the past, copies have appeared and been disseminated and ended p in the enemy I s c amp. Just to make this clear states Selectman Cad n I dick find out about it we had an ExecutiveMeeting. e did share copies with Carol and I believe Peter Lawrence had said that he had not seen this either. So it was an important letter if anyone has read this to see_-. because it did require us to understand that perhaps what was being considered was in fact illegal and in fact in certain places at least in Attorney Reardon' s opinion detrimental to the Town. 1 think our review of this was reasonalle. Ater taking evaluation of the appraisal, I suggested to the otter Selectmen that perhaps a more realistic figure would be closer to $450, 000 a. share. I also suggested that a more reasonable trade would be -a half a share of K e et er for a swap of the church property states Selectman Caffyn. Now if we wanted the church for a recreation center, we should have the Church building and the property. That might be a more reasonable swap between Field' s Point and the Town.