Petition Asking Bill Black to Resign From Office
1st Selectman Bill Black
If you serve in public office, what clues might you gather indicating that you may be doing a poor job? Suppose you fire someone without following proper protocol, and that person then sues the town, where you waste taxpayers dollars in a legal battle. Suppose you call in OSHA to get new carpeting for the town hall, bypassing the established Board of Finance to fund the expenditure. Suppose you lease an office for five years to move the probate court out of town hall, then subsequently work to move the probate court out of the town completely, leaving the taxpayers on the hook for the lease payments.
Suppose you’re in office during the most expensive town project ever undertaken, like a sewer, and appoint people to a managing board who don’t accurately represent the people their decisions affect. Suppose you never attend either of the two public hearings on that project’s regulations, where outraged residents express their substantial concerns. Suppose those residents become so upset that they mobilize and submit not one, but two petitions, to let their fellow residents weigh in on the issues. Suppose you then spend $15,541.00 of the taxpayers dollars on a directed legal opinion, to squash those petitions.
Suppose a disabled veteran is entitled to tax relief, and the people you serve are in support of that relief, but you prefer to distort the how the relief is applied so much so that you attract another lawsuit, costing taxpayers even more money.
Lastly, suppose that through all of this, you think now is the time to revise the town’s charter, as you have the power to populate a charter revision committee with whomever will bow to your wishes.
Those may all be clues that you’re not doing such a great job. One might think that such an official works for a town located solely in a taxpayer’s nightmare.
You can call it a nightmare, but we call it Marlborough. If you’ve had enough, come by on Halloween and sign the petition asking Bill Black to resign from office.
David Durel
Marlborough
I wholeheartedly agree with David Durel. Bill Black is doing a horrible job managing the town. He does whatever he feels like doing. He must believe that he doesn’t need to follow rules, or listen to the people that he is working for. I think that town residents should be able to fire their leader. If Bill were a town manager instead of first selectman, he could be fired, like the town manager in Hebron and East Hampton.