Conservation Commission Battle Gets Hotter

GEORGETOWN – The Board of Selectmen called a special meeting last week to consider ousting Carl Shreder as chair of the town’s Conservation Commission for sarcastic comments he made about using Town Hall as a fire suppression exercise.
Select board member Douglas Dawes called Shreder’s comments “egregious” and said he worried in the current tense political environment that someone might be prompted by his comments “to do it.”
Robert Hoover, a selectman, called Shreder, who met earlier with the Select Board, “courageous” for apologizing publicly for his comments.
Rachel Bancroft, who serves on the Select Board and the ConComm, said there is a lack of trust between the two boards that will have to be fixed. “This (Select) board is very much in attack mode,” she said.
The special meeting was the latest round in the fight in this town over the agency that manages construction and development projects, including the proposed 500-ton trash transfer station. The proposal by G. Mello Disposal Corp. to build the new station on Carlton Road was turned down by the Conservation Commission, a decision that Mello has appealed to state court.
After almost two hours of heated debate, the Selectmen agreed not to hold a public meeting to oust Shreder, a certified safety professional at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. He has been the chair of the commission for more than two decades.
Dawes favored holding the public hearing, but Hoover said the commission would “implode” if Shreder were removed.
Instead, the five members of the SelectBoard voted to set up a meeting between the two town boards to discuss their differences. Dawes agreed to the meeting “in the interest of consensus.”
The ConComm has put the proposed meeting on its agenda Sept. 14 to decide if it agrees to meet with the Select Board, Shreder wrote in an email.
Hoover suggested that the two boards bring in an independent moderator to run the meeting.
The issues include Shreder’s comments when he suggested sarcastically that a good use of Town Hall would be as a fire suppression exercise for the town Fire Department. Dawes said some employees were alarmed at the comments.
Also at issue is a town-funded investigation of the ConComm’s payroll payments to its former agent, Steve Przyjemski. Pacheco did not respond to questions about the investigation, but members of the ConComm said they believe the investigation by the StirmGroup in Newburyport is whether Przyjemski inflated the hours he worked.
Pacheco wrote in an email after Przyjemski resigned that he and the Selectmen had to exercise more authority so “the vast payroll fraud and undocumented work hours that occurred previously has more controls over it. Please note while the Commission may refer to this as harassment, we are simply doing our job to protect taxpayers and follow the law.”
Shreder said he has seen no evidence of fraud in the compensation paid to Przyjemski, who resigned after 17 years at ConComm.
The commission has been without staff for several weeks since Julie Cantara, the administrative assistant, resigned because of the hostile work environment. Its phones are being answered by the Georgetown police department, Select Board Chair Amy Smith said.
Consultant John Lopez, who initially said he was leaving, agreed to stay on “a little longer” after he was trained by the Building Inspector on a system for managing documents. “Things have stabilized,” he said.
Shreder said two applicants have responded to an advertisement he placed for a new agent, although the budget for an agent was cut 50 percent at the last Town Meeting.
“I can’t figure why they would want to work there,” Shreder said.