Vice Chair Vote Highlights Fissure on Williamstown Select Board
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A seemingly mundane decision about deciding on a board officer devolved into a critique of one member's service at Monday's Select Board meeting.
The recent departure of Andrew Hogeland left vacant the position of vice chair on the five-person board. On Monday, the board spent a second meeting discussing whether and how to fill that seat for the remainder of its 2024-25 term.
Ultimately, the board voted, 3-1-1, to install Stephanie Boyd in that position, a decision that came after a lengthy conversation and a 2-2-1 vote against assigning the role to a different member of the panel.
Chair Jane Patton nominated Jeffrey Johnson for vice chair after explaining her reasons not to support Boyd, who had expressed interest in serving.
Patton said members in leadership roles need to demonstrate they are "part of the team" and gave reasons why Boyd does not fit that bill.
Patton pointed to Boyd's statement at a June 5 meeting that she did not want to serve on the Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity Committee, instead choosing to focus on work in which she already is heavily engaged on the Carbon Dioxide Lowering (COOL) Committee.
"We've talked, Jeff [Johnson] and I, about how critical we think it is for a Select Board member to participate in other town committees," Patton said on Monday. "I know you participate with the COOL Committee, but, especially DIRE, you weren't interested in that."
Patton said Boyd did not demonstrate a willingness to "do the job we're not necessarily dying to do."
She went on to criticize Boyd for a more recent decision.
"An example would be the other week when we heard in a meeting that you had signed the Select Board up for a table at Holiday walk without asking any of us if we thought that would be a good idea," Patton said. "That's where the teamwork comes in."
No one at the Nov. 4 meeting objected when Boyd announced that she had reserved a table at the Dec. 7 event for "town government" and planned to invite other committees, like the Planning Board, to participate in the public outreach event along with members of the Select Board if they so chose.
In June, the Select Board discussed who on the body would fill roles like its seats on the DIRE Committee and Community Preservation Committee. The discussion was held at a meeting that the board annually bills as a "retreat" and which is held on a weekday morning at the Williams Inn, outside the view of the Willinet cameras that videotape and telecast every other Select Board meeting.
At the June 5 meeting ("retreat" is not a word that appears in the commonwealth's Open Meeting Law), the Select Board spent more time discussing the future of the DIRE Committee and whether it should appoint a member to the advisory committee than it did discussing who that member would be. Boyd was one of several members who said they were not interested in taking that seat.
"When I say I'm not going to serve on the DIRE Committee, it doesn't mean I'm not doing the work [of diversity, equity and inclusion]," Boyd said at the June 5 meeting.
Since the DIRE Committee was formed in the summer of 2020, three members of the Select Board have served on the equity panel: Patton, who was chair of the Select Board when DIRE was created; Johnson, who was a member of the first iteration of DIRE and transitioned to the Select Board seat on the committee after he was elected to the Select Board in 2021; and Fippinger, who has been the Select Board member on DIRE since 2022.
In that span, the Select Board has had four chairs: Patton (twice), Hogeland, Hugh Daley and Johnson.
On Monday, the Select Board split down the middle on whether to make Johnson vice chair.
Johnson and Patton voted yea. Fippinger and Matthew Neely voted nay. Boyd, who cast the first vote in the alphabetical roll call, abstained.
Afterward — and with the question of a vice chair still open — Boyd said Patton's comments during the initial discussion made her uncomfortable.
"I didn't step onto the DIRE Committee, but I spend a lot of time working for this town on a lot of things," Boyd said, referencing her work on the COOL Committee and the Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee — a holdover from her prior turn on the Planning Board, where she served before being elected to the Select Board in May 2023.
"Whether you vote for me to be vice chair is not important. But for you to sit there and have a negative list of things to say about my work on a committee … was disappointing. It was unpleasant to hear that."
"I take no pleasure in it at all," Patton responded. "I was talking about collaboration and working within this body. You certainly have been involved in the Planning Board and COOL Committee. But when the group of five [Select Board members] came together, and there were opportunities to collaborate with the group of five and step into a role — twice — you said no."
Boyd, who was still actively involved in helping draft the comprehensive plan in the spring of 2023, also declined to serve on DIRE at that time.
After the unsuccessful vote to appoint Johnson, Fippinger moved Boyd's name for vice chair and Neely seconded.
Boyd, Fippinger and Neely each voted in the affirmative. Patton voted no, and Johnson abstained.
Monday was not the first time that Patton and Boyd have come down on opposite sides of an issue before the board.
In September 2023, she likened Boyd's proposal to use the residential tax exemption as a means to making property taxes less regressive to a "shotgun" solution instead of the targeted tax relief the town needed. In January of this year, Patton was the lone member of the Select Board arguing against moving forward on a bylaw to regulate short-term rentals in the town. And, more recently, Patton was on the short side of a 3-1 vote to appoint Neely over veteran board member Daley to fill Hogeland's seat after the latter resigned from the board.
Patton referenced the most recent point of disagreement during Monday's debate.
Neely and Fippinger each made the argument that the only two Select Board members who were guaranteed to be on the board after May's annual town election are Johnson and Boyd, whose terms do not expire in the spring. It therefore made sense to have one of the pair serve as vice chair to provide some continuity into the 2025-26 term.
"I appreciate that," Patton said. "But the same group said a few months ago that continuity and experience didn't matter that much, and now it suddenly does."
"I'm not blaming. I'm just stating this is not in line with the very passionate reasons why experience, four meetings ago, didn't matter."
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