Exeter lawsuits - Part 2

Sorry for this long posting, but a recent post on this blog discussed the four (most recent) lawsuits against the Town. In the previous posting, we wondered about a common thread through all of these lawsuits.  Let’s explore that further.
In the most recent case, a town employee filed a sexual harassment charge against another employee. Sometime after that, the Town Manager approved termination of the employee that had filed the charge.  In this day and age, what competent manager would terminate an employee, no matter the reason for the termination, while a sexual harassment charge was pending? Obviously, the court felt that this was wrong since they agreed with the wrongful termination charge.
The next most recent case was the Pine Road posting.  The Board of Selectmen voted to post the road. However, wasn’t it the Town Manger that told the Board they only had two options: either post the road or forget the issue?  Apparently, there was a third choice. According to legal briefs filed by Exeter’s attorney, there is a state law that specifically addresses situations like Pine Road. Where one town owns a road, but an adjacent town receives most of the benefits of the road, the town owning the road can petition the Superior Court to apportion the costs of maintaining the road.  Why wasn’t the Board told of this option? Did the Town Manager consult with the Town attorney before advising the Board? If he and the attorney failed to research this issue, then doesn’t the Town Manager shoulder the burden of the attorney’s shortcoming?  If the Town Manager did not consult the attorney, then what responsibility does he bear? The point is that the Selectmen were never properly informed.
In the case of Selectman Ferraro suing the Town, that lawsuit was the result of the Town Manager failing to respond, or even acknowledge, a request for information from a sitting Board member.  If this were the first instance of such action, it surely would not have merited such a reaction. However, the Exeter News-Letter has reported previous instances of the Town Manager ignoring requests from Selectman Ferraro.  Should it be acceptable for the Town Manager to willfully disregard requests from his supervisor?  (As an aside, we learned that when Ferraro finally got the information he had requested, he uncovered that the Town Manager had signed a solar energy contract much more expensive than authorized by the Board. This resulted in a $50,000 difference between what the Board voted and what the Town Manager signed. When is the Board going to address this contract issue?)
The final case mentioned in the blog was the lawsuit concerning the illegal amendment of two citizen petition articles at the 2011 Deliberative Session.  A then-member of the Board of Selectmen made a motion to amend the two citizen petition articles, essentially negating any yes or no vote on the articles. The sponsors of the articles pointed to a very recently passed law that specifically prohibited this type of amendment.  The Moderator and Town attorney ignored that point and allowed a vote on the amendments. The Town Attorney was there at the request of the Town Manager who apparently knew that these amendments would be proposed. To our recollection, this was the first time we, or anyone we’ve spoken with, could remember the Town Attorney being on the stage sitting with the Town Manager. The Superior Court found that the amendments were illegal, not just once, but also on the Town’s request for reconsideration.
So, here we have four recent lawsuits that cost the Town hundreds of thousands of dollars. Does anyone else see the common thread through all of these cases?  Are there other cases not reported in the newspaper? When is enough enough?   When is the Board going to hold the Town Manager accountable for his highly questionable decisions and misinformation? They better do something because this is costing taxpayers a lot of money and needs to stop.