Rift Over Hiring Pits Community Preservation Committee Against Town Administration

A dispute between the town of Nantucket administration and the semi-independent Community Preservation Committee (CPC) has reached a boiling point, with the CPC voting unanimously to bring in outside counsel as it continues to feud with the town over efforts to hire a new CPC staffer. The rift has grown somewhat ugly, with sharp words, official reprimands, and legal memos flying as the two sides clash over what would usually be a routine hiring process.

CPC chair Linda Williams and vice chair Joe Topham allege that the town is infringing on their independence, essentially choosing a candidate the CPC never selected. The town disagrees about the level of independence afforded to the CPC and claims that the CPC’s leadership actually did select the candidate in question.

“This is just not the way it's supposed to go,” Williams said. “We want to back this process up so it follows the charter, follows what we're supposed to do, and not this behind-our-back stuff that we find out after the fact, which is totally not appropriate.”

The CPC awards grants of taxpayer funds raised through a 3 percent property tax surcharge to local non-profits for the purposes of securing open space, historic preservation, and housing. It has been searching for a new administrator since last winter, but CPC leadership and town administration can’t agree on the hiring process, pay, or hours. They can’t even agree on what to call the position: the town says the term “administrative assistant” is more appropriate than administrator. Of note, the former designation justifies a lower rate of pay than the latter.

CPC member Eleanor Antonietti, who represents the Land Bank on the Committee, jokingly compared the entire situation to “get[ting] a camel out of a tent with a bomb in it.”

The issue is complicated by the fact that the candidate the town has recommended for the CPC to hire is a family relation of town manager Libby Gibson. Gibson, who oversees the town employees responsible for managing the CPC’s staffer and handling the hiring process, is officially recused, and she submitted a conflict-of-interest disclosure form in which she indicated that “I have not, and will not, influence decision-making on hiring with this position.”

Williams has been extremely pointed in their criticism of the town’s approach, occasionally taking an aggressive tone in emails and at CPC meetings. Last March, before Gibson’s family member had applied for the position and she recused, Gibson issued an official code of conduct notice to Williams, telling her to “refrain from abusive conduct, harassment, personal charges, or verbal attacks toward Town staff” and that “any further communications with Town staff regarding anything whatsoever with the [CPC] must be directed through the Town Manager’s Office.”

Then, in late August, after Gibson had recused, committee operations coordinator Deborah Goudemond sent a similar email to both Williams and Topham, in which she wrote that “calling a staff member’s actions ‘completely inappropriate,’ instructing a staff member to arrange meetings ‘today’ or ‘ASAP,’ telling an employee how she ‘needs to be a leader,’ and attributing broader morale or volunteer-retention concerns to an individual staff member are neither consistent with [town] expectations nor acceptable in any way.”

Williams and Topham declined to speak with the Current, but responded to a request for comment with the following statement, which they asked to be published in full:

“The Chair and Vice Chair of the Community Preservation Committee believe that this matter is best addressed through continued constructive dialogue with Town Administration and the Human Resources Department, consistent with the applicable procedures we have requested all along. We do not wish to address this matter through a public exchange in the press. We intend to continue seeking an opportunity to meet and discuss the matter. If those efforts do not resolve the issue, the Chair and Vice Chair will address the relevant provisions of the Town Charter and CPC operations during the next available Select Board meeting.”

The CPC has been without a designated staffer for some time, forcing its members, most notably Williams, to take on significant administrative duties beyond what they are usually expected to do in their roles as elected and appointed representatives. The CPC handles millions in funds, and with grant applications closing for the year, the town and the CPC are in agreement that the Committee needs a permanent staff member as soon as possible. It is everything else that they can’t agree on.

The CPC asked to hire an administrator at $45 an hour and 30 hours a week. They believe that 30 hours will be necessary to complete the work of the committee, and that a rate of $45 an hour would allow them to attract highly qualified candidates.

The town ultimately offered the candidate 25 hours a week at $39.52 an hour, arguing that “the CPC's requested rate of pay was not supported by the classification assigned to the duties of the position.” Here, the town is referring to a system used to determine the rate at which many town employees are compensated. In general, the town does not pay staff members more than the maximum rate assigned to their classification within this system. Had the candidate been offered $45 per hour, it would have put their compensation far above what similar town employees are paid.

The position is paid for using the CPC’s funds, which are approved by Town Meeting each year separately from the town’s operating budget, but Town of Nantucket human resources director Amanda Perry says that this distinction ultimately does not matter: the CPC’s staffer is still a town employee, and should not receive additional compensation just because she is assisting the CPC.

“The source of funding for a position does not, by itself, determine the position's classification, compensation, hours, or applicable personnel requirements,” Perry wrote in an email to the Current. “As part of the recruitment process, Human Resources reviewed with the CPC Chair and Vice Chair the position description, including its duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and level of authority, against the Town's established classification and compensation structure. Based on that review, the position was assigned the applicable wage range, title and work schedule.”

However, if the town called the position an “administrator,” as requested by the CPC, a significantly higher pay rate would be justified.

“This is not an administrative assistant,” Williams said. “It's an administrative position because they're dealing with, we've given away almost $80 million worth of funds, and we have $15 million out on top of that, and this person has got to manage all these people, dozens of grantees, clawing back the money when they finish their projects, they've got to go introduce themselves to everybody, they have to be the face of the CPC. They're not assisting anybody.”

But the town disagrees with the CPC.

“The title initially proposed—Community Preservation Administrator—was reviewed against the actual duties, responsibilities, decision-making authority, and qualifications identified for a Town position with that title,” Perry told the Current. “Based on that review, Human Resources determined that Community Preservation Administrative Assistant more accurately reflected the nature and level of the work and its placement within the Town's classification and compensation structure. The title was therefore not changed for the purpose of reducing compensation; rather, both the title and compensation range resulted from the classification of the duties assigned to the position and to maintain consistency.”

The largest dispute, however—the one which led the CPC to vote to obtain a legal opinion from an outside attorney—is over the hiring process.

After an initial round of interviews, which Topham described as “very loose,” the field was essentially narrowed to two candidates. Williams and Topham wanted a second round of interviews, but instead, the town requested that they rank the candidates in order of preference based on the first interviews and application materials. Williams and Topham did so, and both ranked the candidate related to Gibson first. They later told the CPC that they expected a second round of interviews would then be scheduled, but it was not.

“We specifically asked to have a second interview with both of the top candidates,” Williams said. “I wasn't comfortable with that rank.”

Perry said that this request was never “formal.”

“No formal decision was communicated to Human Resources to proceed with a second round,” she wrote. “Following the initial interviews, Human Resources requested the interview team’s candidate assessments. Those results reflected a clear consensus regarding the preferred candidate, and the recruitment therefore proceeded to the reference and background-check stage rather than an additional round of interviews, which again, would not be standard process nor was it communicated appropriately to HR.”

Instead of scheduling a second round of interviews, the town requested that the CPC hire the candidate who is related to Gibson. Perry sent a memorandum to the CPC and several town administrators “intended to confirm [the candidate's] employment with the Town of Nantucket and to request that the Community Preservation Committee ('CPC') vote to appoint [the candidate] to the position of Administrative Assistant to the CPC.”

The candidate's "selection reflects a comprehensive recruitment process conducted with the direct participation of CPC leadership and Town staff,” the memo reads in part. “[Their] anticipated appointment will provide the CPC with dedicated administrative support while maintaining the appropriate distinction between the Committee’s authority over its substantive work and the Town’s responsibility for personnel and administrative oversight.”

Williams was not happy.

“I've run this by a couple of people off-island and they are in violation of the [town] charter,” Williams said. “We can't give up our rights at this point, or we'll never get them back.”

Beyond the details of the hiring process or the level of pay offered to the prospective administrative assistant—or administrator—the fundamental conflict between the CPC and town administration is over the extent to which the town should be involved with CPC operations.

A legal memo from former town counsel John Giorgio, which the town provided to the Current, suggests that the town has administrative and managerial authority over the CPC, so long as it does not interfere with the committee’s substantive work and decision-making. The town views the CPC’s staffer as a municipal employee and believes the same hiring procedures that the town uses for other positions should be followed to fill the opening at the CPC.

But Topham and Williams say that they spoke with Stuart Saginor, the Executive Director of the Community Preservation Coalition, a non-profit that stewards the act that established Community Preservation Committees in Massachusetts, and he disagrees with Giorgio. Topham and Williams believe the CPC must be afforded much greater authority and independence.

At their most recent meeting, the rest of the CPC sided with Williams and Topham. The CPC refused to take the town’s suggestion regarding the hiring, instead voting to proceed with the second round of interviews anyway.

“If you feel the process is incomplete, regardless of who is driving it, then…go ahead and schedule the interviews,” CPC member Tim Soverino said. “If they're delaying the process, take matters into your own hands. Schedule the interviews, I don't care, at the Muse [bar] if you have to.”

This would be a dramatic break with the town’s usual hiring process. At this point, it is unclear who has the legal authority to do what. If Williams and Topham interview the top two candidates separately, and ultimately recommend the candidate that the town did not recommend, the CPC will be at an almost entirely unprecedented crossroads.

Antonietti was the CPC member most sympathetic to the town at the committee’s last meeting. She called the situation “absurd,” but said she did not believe the town was being malicious, and initially argued that the CPC should hire the candidate recommended by the town immediately, without waiting for the second round of interviews. However, she eventually joined the rest of the CPC members present at the meeting, save Select Board representative Dawn Hill, who was recused, in voting to schedule a second round of interviews.

“I know this person is very competent and I would be delighted to have them as our CPC administrator,” Antonietti said. “I don't want to wait for our next meeting. This person has been given assurances of a job. I feel very bad for this person.”

Meanwhile, the town is trying to relocate the CPC’s offices from 7C Hanabea Lane to 5B Windy Way, which the CPC is also resisting. Williams and Topham both claim that the new offices are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“We're not going into a building that is not handicap code compliant,” Williams said.

The CPC voted to remain in its current offices, with Antonietti abstaining, but the town’s website says that those offices are closed, and that the CPC is being relocated. It is, once more, unclear who has the final say. It’s not even clear if the offices are ADA-compliant or not.

“The Town is responsible for arranging appropriate office space and related facilities for Town operations, including administrative support for the CPC,” Perry wrote. “The CPC is not independently authorized to enter into a lease for municipal office space. The space at 5B Windy Way has been identified by the Town for CPC operations and is ADA compliant.”

The CPC’s old offices may have another issue. Williams and Topham said that the committee’s previous staffer recently broke into the Hanabea Lane offices to recover personal items stored in the basement. But allegedly, this incident is unrelated to the town’s decision to move the CPC to a new building.

The dispute over office space is also ultimately about the CPC’s independence, which Williams says must remain so absolute that the CPC is not even allowed to pay for printer paper if some of that paper is used by another town department. In the past, the CPC’s offices have been separate from those of other town departments, but that would change in the new location.

As part of the move, town housing director Kristie Ferrantella is expected to take over management of the CPC’s staffer, which some members of the CPC worry could create further independence issues. Once again, the town disagrees, saying that Ferrantella will only be responsible for administrative management and will not interfere with the business of the CPC.

“This structure is not intended to give the Municipal Housing Director authority over the CPC's statutory decisions, recommendations, priorities, or deliberations,” Perry wrote. “It is common practice in municipalities across the state for employees assisting CPCs to report to a Town agency.”

Giorgio’s memo, mentioned earlier, opines that the town has the authority to control the CPC’s offices and to assign a staff member such as Ferrantella to handle administrative management duties. In an email reviewed by the Current, Topham wrote that other experts had told him differently. The first email in that thread was sent last December. It may be December again before there is any clarity.