Board of Selectmen Began Planning to Replace the Fire Chief Weeks Earlier than Officially Stated

Email correspondence made public via a right-to-know request has revealed that the Board of Selectmen had started planning to replace the Fire Chief weeks before the date the board had previously acknowledged. In the board’s official statement, it says that it received initial complaints against the Fire Chief on March 20. Contrary to this timeline, the right-to-know request shows that the board began planning to replace the Fire Chief at least a month and a half earlier.

The correspondence released does not disclose any reasons for the board to expect the Fire Chief position to soon need to be filled. As the above email chain began the morning of Tuesday, February 7, presumably the board developed this expectation in its non-public session the prior evening.  

Immediately after this, the town’s former Interim Town Administrator appears to have taken action to create documented grounds for termination, initiating a series of conflicts with the Fire Chief in which the Chief was blamed for a variety of problems, as covered in a prior article. 

The above email chain begins with an inquiry from the Interim Town Administrator - who was not an employee of the town but instead an employee of Municipal Resources, Inc. on contract to the town - to his boss at MRI inquiring about having MRI fill the expected vacancy. 

[Commentary: Two things are noteworthy about this. One is that the action seems contrary to the rumor-mongering that the town’s Building Inspector, Dale Sylvia, was trying to get himself installed as Fire Chief. Sylvia appears to have been proposed as an alternative candidate for Interim Fire Chief to the one proposed by MRI. 

The other noteworthy thing is a question of whether the Interim Town Administrator was involved in a conflict of interest. RSA 31:39-a empowers towns to create conflict-of-interest ordinances. I was unable to find such an ordinance on the town’s website but in the July 25, 2022 Board of Selectmen meeting there’s a mention of Selectman Dumas wanting one added to the town’s Purchasing and Fund Balance Policies, which are not posted on the town’s website. Because of this potential conflict of interest, it would appear that the board acted wisely in finding an alternative candidate for Interim Fire Chief.]