In a letter presented to me by Town Manager Christopher Clark at 7pm on Thursday, May 10, 2012, that is dated May 12, 2012, it states: “The Town has concluded its recruitment process for the Cable Access Operations and we have selected a permanent Station Manager/Production Director.” What was not stated in the letter was the true reason, that, in Mr Clarks opinion, I was”not a team player”. To be a team player, you must be part of a team. For a long time, I never felt part of his team. When two parttimers were hired, against the recommendation of myself and Cable Advisory Committee Chair Bob Cantara, I began to train and work, as a team with these two people, Mike Montigny and Stacey Renaud. Stacey and I had cleaned up the office dramatically, to the notice of many of the school department personel and other town hall employees. I gave Mike his first training session on directing a school committee meeting with great success. At no time in the last 3 weeks did the TM appear
in the access office to notice the appearance of the office. He only had ever come up at my requests.

I feel that my dismissal has much to do of my questioning the “indirect costs” that the TM charges to public access. There will be more to come as to the facts surrounding the indirect costs.

As to Town Council Vice-Chair Denise Clemence, she was not in attendance to my termination meeting with the TM. She was in and around the TM’s office at this time. As was Chairwoman Catherine Nikolla. I spoke directly to both women to express my pleasure of serving the community of SB as I was no longer station manager. Both woman expressed shock at the news of my dismissal.

The new station manager is, according to the TM, will be starting Monday May 14th. I do not know the identity of this person.

I want it to be crystal clear, as I will report to other media outlets, that all of my actions and work was directed towards the residents and businesses of SB. Being a non-resident of SB, I have never had ANY political agenda, ambition or the like. In fact, in an article by Gus Geeves of the SB evening news, I pledge a professional looking cable operation and that “politics” would remain outside my office door. I feel that my record of bringing life back to public access tv speaks for itself. It is interesting that the TM doesn’t have an assistant in his office so as to conform top his “team player” concept of operation. MANY other communities with a TC or Selectman form of government have a TM or Town administrator WITH an assistant. So the TM assertion to me of his opinion that my performance was more about me than the team.

I hope you report this as I have reported. There will be more to come in local media very soon.

Barry Davis

He later added the following:

“I stand by my statement as a true accounting of happenings of yesterday. I would like to add that I have already turned in my keys and have taken home what personal items I had brought to the town hall in the presence of Bob Cantara. I would like to have known that I feel that the Cable aadvisory committee with Bob Cantara as its chair has little or no influence on any decisions made by the TM, and that is a shame since they are, according to the contract with charter, suppose to be part of the day to day operating system of public access. Bob cantara assured me that he went to bat for me with the TM and told the TM that I was his (Bob’s) man for the position.

Let it also be known that when I was formally interviewed for the permanent position, TM Clark had stated to me and I partially quote….” I (TM Clark) can do one of two things, I can hire you now or I can do my due diligence and wait for the posting of the position on MassAccess and then hire you. MassAccess is a state wide group of public access communities that meet to enhance public access television. The position is still posted and the posting still indicates apply by 3/31/12. The TM’s due diligence was designed to make sure he would follow due course of action in the hiring of the position so as to not have the appearance of favortism in certain members of the public. The posting of the position was to be made much earlier than Mid-march due to a member of MassAccess not performing her duties and getting the job posted.

One has to wonder as to the TM’s hiring of 2 parttimers before making me permanent. One would think that the station managers postion would be the first to be made and then have the station managers input as to the hiring of his staff. The hiring of these two people went against the recommendation of SCAC Chair Bob Cantara.

I want it known publicly that Bob Cantara was a vital part of my success at SCTV through his explanation of the technical aspects of the station. He and I had the same vision for SCTV. Without Bob, the on-air look of the station would not be what it became as quickly as it did without ob training me so well. Our communications between the two of us is what helped me make the look of the station what it is today.

I feel very sorry for the residents of Southbridge in the future, not only in the public access cable tv side of the town, but in life in general. I have learned a lot about the town and the actions of the TM. Although the TM told me directly to my face during my early weeks that he was not a micro manager and wanted the public access operation to run on its own, I feel that he is indeed a micro manager. I don’t know if it because of the Town Charter, but not having an Assistant TM has the appearance that the TM is both a non-team player and a micro manager.

I wish the residents of SB the best. I highly enjoyed my time as station manager. I apologize to those groups that I have been working with that I will not be able to follow through with my work for those organizations (Relay for Life, Southbridge Fest and the Senior Expo).”

I for one would like to wish Mr. Davis the best of luck in all of his future endeavors.   In his tenure with Southbridge Cable he proved to be an incredibly dedicated and professional individual, spending many long hours both in the office and at local events in the community.

Council Vice-Chair Denise Clemence was reported to be present alongside Town Manager Christopher Clark at the time Mr. Davis was notified of his termination.
CORRECTION: This part of the rumor was debunked by Davis himself;
see update here, with apologies to Mrs. Clemence.

No other information is available at this time.

(A brief editorial aside:  if this story is true, it’s utterly bonkers.)

Here’s the video from Monday’s Town Council meeting:

As I mentioned previously, the agendas for the meeting videos are now embedded into YouTube.

In other news, it’s been quite an eventful week in local politics. I snapped a photo of the scene at 5pm in the Clerk’s office on Monday, the deadline for submitting nomination papers for the June election:

What had previously been shaping up as a four-person race for three seats on the Town Council is now a seven person race, with last minute entries from Steve Lazo and Dennis Martinek.   Other challenger candidates include myself, Shaun Moriarty, and Jean Heid.  Incumbents Denise Clemence and Larry Spinelli are also on the ballot.  The third incumbent, David Livengood, chose not to return nomination papers.

On the School Committee side of things, Incumbents Jack Jovan and David DiGregorio are joined by LeeAnn Pate, Lauren McLoughlin, and Kara Donovan in a five-way race for two seats.

Town Clerk Maddie Daoust will be running unopposed.

I initially chose Vimeo for streaming municipal meeting videos, because of their generous weekly upload quotas, the ability to upload video files more than ten minutes long, and the availability of these files to be downloaded by members of the public.

That being said, everyone who has sat and waited for a long meeting to load in order to get to the snippet of video they wanted to see this year has let me know that the service wasn’t ideal.  Fortunately, YouTube now allows users with a mobile number on file to upload long videos, and not only can you easily skip ahead to the part you want to see, you can even even embed your desired video at any starting point you like.

On that note, I’ve created a YouTube channel for Southbridge municipal meeting videos, and I’ve separated it into two playlists:  The Southbridge School Committee and the Southbridge Town Council, so you can subscribe to whatever specific area interests you the most.

In the interest of increased usability as well as making my life easier, I’m going to stop offering a separate PDF download for meeting agendas.  They’re now posted directly into the descriptive data for each video uploaded to YouTube.

I’ve currently got meeting videos for the month of April uploaded (including the April 19 Trash Forum) and I’m working on the month of March.  I eventually want to  switch all of my Vimeo content over to YouTube, but it’s going to take some time.

Since these videos are public records and therefore not subject to copyright, I’ve got them tagged with a Creative Commons – Attribution tag, meaning they’re  available for remix use in the YouTube Video Editor.  I would still like to have these files directly available for download, however, and there’s no easy way for general users download them directly from the site; I’ll have to work on this.

In the meantime, enjoy the videos and please tell your friends!  Transparency and open government and great things, but only if we have an engaged and informed citizenry to make it work.

Edit: Here’s the meeting video:

Southbridge School Committee Meeting, April 10, 2012 from Amelia P on Vimeo.

I’ve spent the last year focusing on the Town Council side of our local government, but as I’ve gotten more familiar with how that side of things operates, I’ve decided it’s time to start learning about how the School Committee works as well.

I’ve often wished there was some kind of “Local Government 101″ crash course for town residents; my strategy has been to attend every meeting I possibly can, ask lots of questions, do background research, and write about my experiences as I go along. I’ve really enjoyed the process of doing this and I feel I’ve gotten a lot out of it, but I spend a lot of time thinking about what we as a community could do to make it easier to follow and get involved with local politics and government. Local government is the level that most directly affects your life and it seems utterly backwards to me that it ends up being the level with the least amount of public participation and oversight.

…and here’s the meeting agenda if you’d like to follow along at home.

Here’s the agenda for the meeting:
SC Agenda 3-27-12

Here’s the meeting agenda if you’d like to follow along at home.

I just got back from a rather fantastic vacation visiting my Dad in California.  My daughter Eve was particularly impressed with Yosemite, although I am still rather taken with the lemon trees in the backyard.

Anyhow, I missed the 3/26 Town Council meeting while I was gone, but I’ve got the meeting video digitized and I’ll be able to post it sometime tonight once it finishes uploading.

In the meantime, I’ve got the Revised 2012 Draft Body Art Regulations document from the Health Department, for anyone who might be interested in reviewing it. The Public Hearing on these regulations has been scheduled for April 26th, 6:30pm in the McCann Room at Town Hall.

In other news, yes, there’s other news brewing. Hats off to Ken O’Brien for scooping me on my own story; he posted less than two hours after I left the Clerk’s office, before I even arrived back at my house.

(Stay tuned for for more information on that front, we’re looking to get the party started within the next couple of weeks.)

Enjoy this beautiful Spring weather, everyone!