Council Bid For Charter Attorney Fails

By Steve Bigham

A plan to hire an attorney to assist the Legislative Council in its dealing with the proposed changes to the town charter was derailed Wednesday evening when the council failed to get enough votes.

In order for the council to hire an attorney it needed 9 of 12 votes. On Wednesday, four members – Peggy Baiad, Dan Rosenthal, Don Studley, and Brian White – voted against the plan.

 The outcome of the vote sent council Chairman Pierre Rochman storming out of the room in disappointment. The meeting had been called to hire Attorney David Chipman and was expected to only last 15 minutes. In the end, however, no attorney was hired and the meeting took an hour.

The council usually turns to Town Attorney David Grogins for legal advice, but opted to seek Mr Chipman because Mr Grogins had provided legal advice to the Charter Revision Commission earlier in the year. As it now stands, Mr Grogins will be working with the council.

Mrs Baiad said she felt Mr Grogins should be the council’s attorney from the start.

“I can only speak for myself. I voted the way I did because we’re both working for the town and should be working together. Why not avail ourselves of the town attorney? If you’re the town attorney you’re working for the good of the town,” she said.

Mr Studley said he voted “no” because he felt there should have been a cap on how much money the council should spend.

“I didn’t want an open-ended legal bill,” he said.

Mr Studley had made an amendment to cap legal fees at $5,000. That motion was voted down.

“I would have voted for the attorney as long as we could cap how much we were going to spend,” Mr Studley said. “I felt it should not be a carte blanche arrangement.”

Some council members supported hiring an outside attorney in order to gain a different perspective. Earlier in the meeting, resident K. Michael Snyder indicated his displeasure with what he had read about last week’s meeting. At that meeting, one council member alleged that the Charter Revision Commission had been formed illegally, while another said it had not done its job completely.

“I hope there aren’t enough votes to do what the council wants to do with the Charter Revision Commission’s recommendations,” he said.