GEORGETOWN, MA – SelectBoard member Laura Repplier told Mike Donahue, another SelectBoard member, she can no longer work with him without a third-party being present.
On Sept. 10, Repplier emailed him: “Mike, your initiation of this conversation and tenor of your responses is giving me concern regarding our work together on the workshop project. I understand that our collaboration could be valuable, but I am no longer comfortable meeting with you 1:1.
“Going forward I will only agree to meet at Town Hall with a third party present. (Town Administrator) Orlando (Pacheco) has offered to sit in on our meetings.”
Asked to explain what happened between the two town officials, Repplier wrote last weekend: “This is a personal, private matter which I will not deal with in public.”
Donahue told The Town Common in a meeting Friday that Repplier had apologized to him and was working with him on the projects, although not alone.
“I do not agree with Mike’s interpretation,” Repplier wrote.
Meanwhile, Facebook attacks on SelectBoard member Rachel Bancroft continued from a private citizen. The initial post attacking Bancroft was removed from the site, but another had not been.
At his meeting with The Town Common, Donahue agreed that the town’s SelectBoard may be “dysfunctional.”
The spat between Repplier and Donahue appears to have started when a resident wrote an email to all members of the SelectBoard criticizing the first-term selectman for his attacks on the town’s Conservation Commission (ConCom).
“Your agenda of the many things that you’d like to accomplish are weighed down by his (Donahue’s) unnecessary comments about the ConCom,” resident Kay Lee Ogden wrote in all capital letters.
Repplier had volunteered at a recent SelectBoard meeting to work on two extra projects, involving creating new policies and procedures for all boards and commissions and particularly the ConCom. Donahue joined her.
She initially declined to say why she did not want to work alone with Donahue. She wrote: “Just a conversation between me and Mike. No need to elaborate.”
In a meeting with The Town Common Friday, Donahue said he had been angry about Ogden’s criticism of him and had discussed it by email with Repplier. He said she took offense at his email.
“I chalked it up that she was upset,” Donahue said.
Since her email in early September, Donahue and Repplier have met twice to work on the projects and planned a third meeting this week, all with Pacheco in attendance. The first meeting was held in person in Town Hall. The second was on Zoom and the third was scheduled to be in person at Town Hall.
SelectBoard Chair Robert Hoover also declined to comment on the dispute. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I hope you understand,” he wrote.
Emails provided by Donahue show that he had criticized Hoover, who wrote to Donahue, also on Sept. 10, that he had asked him one question. After answering the question, Donahue went off in an area that had nothing to do with the question, the chairman wrote.
“Instead, you chose to take my question and turn it into your opportunity to put into the public record (which you have every right to do) some pretty strong accusations about me. I am very disappointed in this is how you work within your committee,” Hoover wrote.
Donahue has clashed frequently with Bancroft, accusing her of being unprofessional and referring her to the Essex County District Attorney for investigation.
Last week, a frequent critic of the town’s ConCom also stepped up his attack on Bancroft, who chairs the commission. In a Georgetown News social media post, Kevin Wood called for her to resign because of a Family Court judge’s ruling in a highly contentious divorce proceeding.
Bancroft was held in contempt of Family Court because she had not listed her house for sale, although the divorce has not been resolved. The judge admitted earlier that she had mistakenly written that the deadline for selling the house is May 2026, not May 2025. Bancroft’s husband, who owns half of the house and must agree to list the house, was not held in contempt by Judge Frances Giordano.
Wood, who applied unsuccessfully to be a member of the ConCom, posted on the Georgetown News Facebook page that she should not be chair of the ConCom because she was held in contempt of court in a private proceeding. He repeated several of the accusations he and Donahue in tandem had made against Bancroft.
After numerous complaints from outraged residents about Wood’s post were registered with the site, his first post was removed.
But on Friday, Wood continued his attacks on Bancroft, posting she is “unstable, deceitful and willfully violated Court Orders.”
Wood repeated Donahue’s accusation that Bancroft filed a false report with the Georgetown Police
The accusations stem from a $10,000 report by the Stirm Group, a private detective firm, which the SelectBoard refused to endorse because it was flawed. The SelectBoard said it “finds (the report) inadequate and does not endorse it.”
Repplier called the report a “misuse of funds.” Hoover, the chair, said, “nothing important has come out of this report.”
The state Inspector General (IG) reviewed the fraud accusation, but could not substantiate the charge.
No other SelectBoard member agreed to join Donahue in referring the issue to the district attorney. ♦
