WESTFIELD – The City Council placed more than 30 pages of email, exchanged between members following the Dec. 5 vote to reduce the tax levy by $1.7 million to lower the tax rate, on public record.
The email exchange occurred after the state Department of Revenue (DOR) overturned that vote and approved a 3.4 percent tax increase for all property classes in the city.
At-large Councilor David A. Flaherty, who is the subject of an open meeting law violation complaint for his participation in the email exchange, last night requested that the entire email stream be made part of the council’s public record.
Stephen C. Dondley of 10 Kane Brothers Circle had filed a complaint with City Clerk Karen Fanion that Councilor David A. Flaherty violated the law when he responded to an email communication sent by City Solicitor Susan Phillips regarding a vote taken by the City Council on Dec. 5, 2013.
The complaint is the second filed by Dondley charging Flaherty with circumventing the open meeting law. The Attorney General’s Office found last summer that Flaherty has violated the open meeting following a Dondley violation complaint.
Flaherty, in making his motion Thursday night, said that he wanted to file and release “30 pages of emails related to the Dec. 5th meeting, which some have claimed violate the open meeting law. More than half of the members of this body expressed an opinion.”
Under state open meeting law the members of a municipal board can exchange factual information, but cannot express an opinion or attempt to persuade other members of that board to adopt a specific action.
“Maybe we could have done something different,” Flaherty said of the vote to cut the levy to reduce the tax increase to less than 1 percent. “Come to a different solution to give taxpayers relief. We should slow down when we get pressed to make those decisions (without time for thorough consideration).”
Ward 4 Councilor Mary O’Connell said the line between the city’s executive and legislative branches is becoming blurred. The DOR was requested to issue an opinion of the council vote to cut the levy by executive branch officials.
“We did not ask for an opinion,” O’Connell said. “I am disgusted. Our process was hijacked. It’s very disheartening when a vote we took was discounted.”
O’Connell said that the vote to appropriate $1,254,368 from the stabilization account violated the council’s rules. A stabilization account appropriation requires a super majority (9) of council members voting in the affirmative. The first vote was defeated by a vote of eight affirmative and four negative votes.
Under council rules an immediate reconsideration motion has to come from the winning side of that vote, which in the Dec. 5 vote was the four negative vote block. The losing side can also make a motion, which if approved, would bring the issue back onto the floor, but at the next council meeting
O’Connell, who voted no on the initial vote, then made that motion, but later withdrew it when Ward 5 Councilor Richard E. Onofrey Jr., who voted in the eight affirmative block, also made a reconsideration motion.
“There was a little confusion on the rules of the City Council. That second vote was illegal,” O’Connell said.
“We trample on our rules all of the time,” Onofrey said. “Whether we ran over our rules or not doesn’t make the vote illegal. It wouldn’t hold up in court.
Council President Brian Sullivan said that he erred in procedure.
“I made mistakes, I missed things, but the intent of every vote would have been the same under any rules,” Sullivan said. “We tried to do something that was new. Nobody knew that (levy cut vote) was coming until that night.”
“The state (DOR) said good try, but no go,” Sullivan said. “We had to give it a shot for the taxpayers of Westfield. Lesson learned. June is the time to do that (levy or budget cut), not November or December.”
The City Council voted 13-0 to pass Flaherty’s motion to place the email communication on file as public record.
