WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — One member of the Finance Committee on Wednesday made a last-ditch call for transparency around expenses incurred by the town to settle a series of issues that arose in 2020 regarding the Williamstown Police Department.

 

The committee held its final regular meeting in advance of May's annual town meeting and voted its recommendations to town meeting members on all of the spending articles on the warrant.

 

The Fin Comm recommended passage of all the articles on its plate – mostly by unanimous votes but with a couple of significant exceptions.

 

Dan Caplinger, who has in the past raised concerns about how the town funded settlements with former employees that arose out of a series of lawsuits against the town again stated his case on Wednesday night.

 

At issue this time was a $36,500 line item for what has previously been called "special projects" of the Select Board. The budget line has drawn little discussion in past years and amounts to 0.4 percent of a $9.3 million article to fund general government spending, but Caplinger ended up voting against recommending town meeting pass the fiscal 2023 $9.3 million Town Hall budget to make a point about how the Select Board overspent its project line in FY22.

 

"I have advocated all year that the Select Board and we should recommend to town meeting some way of acknowledging these extraordinary expenses and raising the funding for them by going directly to the town – either through special town meeting or we could have adopted it at regular town meeting," Caplinger said on Wednesday.

 

A week earlier, it appeared the majority of the Fin Comm was siding with Caplinger's objection to giving the Select Board an unrestricted pot of money for projects that may come up in FY23.

 

But in the interim, Select Board Chair Andrew Hogeland reached out to the Fin Comm with an email that listed some of the ways the "projects" line was spent in the last four fiscal years, including, "hazard mitigation planning, broadband feasibility planning, fireworks, Destination Williamstown digital marketing, support of police accreditation, human resources audit and policies, Town Manager search consultant and funding diversity training organized by the Chamber of Commerce."

 

"I don't take issue with any of the things Andy Hogeland has listed," Caplinger said. "The money that has been used from this line item in the past has gone to admirable projects that do good for the town.

 

"But when the Select Board chooses to spend almost $200,000, according to numbers [Town Accountant Anna Osborn] gave us as of Dec. 31, for expenses that are just not that ... then I feel like our financial watchdog duty is to say, 'No. You did that wrong, and we're going to constrain your ability to do so. When you have future projects, you can come and we can talk about it in terms of using Fin Comm reserves or some other mechanism.' "

 

Osborn told the Fin Comm on Wednesday that she had to "park somewhere" the expense for a settlement with former Police Sgt. Scott McGowan, and she chose to put it under the line currently designated "other contract services," creating an overage of nearly $170,000 in the current fiscal year.

 

That settlement of the second lawsuit by McGowan in as many years was reached during the current fiscal year, long after the FY22 budget was approved.

 

On the other hand, severance agreements with former Police Chief Kyle Johnson and former Town Manager Jason Hoch were reached long before the FY22 budget was sent to town meeting, and that budget – drafted by Hoch and recommended to May 2021's annual town meeting by the Select Board – included no funding for those severance packages.

 

That led to a second "no" vote by Caplinger on Wednesday night.

 

Just after he voted in the minority of an 8-1 vote to recommend passage of Article 16, the general government expenditure, Caplinger again voted no on Article 17, which funds the Finance Committee Reserve Fund to the tune of $75,000.

 

On Thursday, he clarified in an email to iBerkshires.com that his vote against recommending the Fin Comm reserve appropriation to town meeting is rooted in the fact that the reserve is intended, by law, to cover "extraordinary or unforeseen expenditures."

 

Caplinger said he anticipates the Finance Committee in late May or June once again will be asked to transfer money out of its reserve to cover expenses from the Hoch and Johnson settlements, which were "foreseen" by Hoch, who negotiated both deals and the Select Board, which negotiated the agreement with Hoch and supervised him at the time he negotiated the buyout with Johnson.

 

"I've requested all year that a regular or special town meeting expressly vote those amounts rather than tapping the Fin Comm reserve," Caplinger wrote in Thursday's email. "If the Fin Comm reserve is essentially open to correct overspending that I maintain was known or should have been known this time last year and therefore should have been in the 2022 budget, then I'd rather see that [Fin Comm reserve] money back in the hands of the taxpayers who can then choose whether to spend it at town meeting."