DUMMERSTON — Jack Lilly has resigned as both chair and member of the town's Development Review Board, effective immediately, citing health reasons.
Lilly's letter of resignation was introduced at the Nov. 13 Selectboard meeting, where members accepted it unanimously.
“Sorry for the situation,” member Steve Glabach said quietly, as the vote was being recorded.
The DRB is being led for the moment by interim chair Hugh Worden. Meanwhile, the Selectboard is seeking candidates to interview for one regular member and one alternate to the DRB. The deadline for candidates to step forward is 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 26, at the Town Office.
Selectmen will conduct interviews starting that day at 5 p.m. just prior to their budget work session, scheduled for 6. Interviews had been posted for Nov. 20, but the full Selectboard would not have been available, so the date was changed, according to Selectboard Administrator Laurie Frechette.
The DRB hears and issues decisions on certain development applications as spelled out in the Dummerston Zoning Bylaw. Its regular meeting time is 7 p.m. on the third Tuesday of the month; additional special meetings are scheduled as necessary.
At the meeting, a resident questioned whether the DRB has been consistently recording minutes at its meetings this year and making them publicly available, as statute requires.
Indeed, more than a year's worth of approved DRB meeting minutes had failed to make it to the town clerk for public consumption, The Commons has learned, though the oversight reportedly is being corrected.
Lilly was appointed to the DRB in 2009 and named chairman this March, Frechette told The Commons by telephone. Absent Lilly, the DRB's members are Hugh Worden, Sam Griffis, Patty Walior, Steve Jarosak, and Marty Forrett (alternate).
The Selectboard's first priority is filling the regular-member position for the DRB, Selectboard Chair Zeke Goodband said at the Nov. 13 meeting. An alternate is needed to serve as a dual member of the Planning Commission, which in December will take up a zoning bylaw proposal to reduce the number of members needed to serve on those bodies.
Minutes were MIA
Earlier in the Selectboard's Nov. 13 meeting, resident Gail Sorenson told the board she'd recently had cause to research something in the DRB's minutes, and couldn't find any, or the board's agendas, on DRB's webpage since winter.
“I know it's not a requirement of a town that these be online, though it helps in terms of open government,” Sorenson said.
She continued: “In double checking with [Zoning Administrator] Charlotte [Annis], there's been no minutes for at least the past three meetings. They are required by statute, same as yours, within five days or soon thereafter.”
Sorenson noted she has checked with Lilly, “and he's had much difficulty in getting minutes from the person designated to provide them, and I would hope that you might somehow intercede and see what's going on there so that there are minutes available to the public.”
Goodband, speaking with apparent care for a hushed Selectboard, agreed: “So if the board is all right [with this], I'll talk with the vice chair of the DRB and look into this.”
At the time of this writing, the DRB has posted only its Feb. 26 and March 19 unapproved minutes - for all of 2013 - at dummerston.org/drb/drb-min.asp. In contrast, that board posted eight meeting minutes for 2012 and six for 2011.
Town website visitors are advised that approved minutes are available at the Town Clerk's office.
Reached for comment by telephone, Annis told The Commons that, as someone who attends DRB meetings, she “knows for a fact” minutes were kept, either by DRB clerk Sam Griffis or an alternate, and some number of them had yet to be filed. She spoke to a “two-month, three-month backlog. I can't give you for-sure numbers.”
Annis said the most recent DRB minutes kept on file in the Town Office vault, and thereby for public use, were for a meeting in August 2012. She also said she preferred not to use the term “backlog.”
Town Clerk Pamela McFadden, also reached by telephone, confirmed she had not been given any new minutes from the DRB since August 2012, looked into it further, and called back to say she had apparently been “left out of the [email] loop.” The minutes exist, she said, and she was working to make them available to the public.
“We need to make sure we're [the DRB and her office] on the same page, and that I get copies. I'm going to fix that,” she said.
McFadden emphasized that formal DRB decisions, in contrast to meeting minutes, always come to her; those are always up to date, she said.
State law classifies the DRB as a “quasi-judicial” board, which means that its hearings and decisions are more formal than other town boards and commissions.
“While our proceedings are a bit more formal, we strive to make all participants comfortable while hearing all points of view,” the DRB notes on its town webpage.
This reporter has observed that meeting agendas and minutes from many Selectboards in Windham County are not given consistently on their respective town websites, though Dummerston's draft Selectboard minutes are posted in a timely fashion.
Brattleboro Community Television regularly streams and archives coverage of town meetings, though as far as recent Dummerston DRB-specific coverage goes, BCTV's Playlist feature appears to log only a Nov. 10 Dummerston/Putney DRB hearing (on the proposed Park and Ride to be built near the Putney fire station).