Council President Withheld Information From Colleagues
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It is no secret that Town Council President Lynn Griesemer wants the Jones Library demolition/expansion project to happen. She takes every opportunity to make her opinions known. Her most recent letter of support to the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC), however, was written on behalf of the council. The letter, for which she did not have the council’s consent, includes patently false assertions, and suggests the inappropriate use of political influence. Recently uncovered email communications obtained through public records requests also confirm that she was aware of rejected historic tax credit applications but did not share this information with her council colleagues or the public (see e.g., here, here, and here).
In December 2023, the Massachusetts Historic Commission (MHC) notified Library Director Sharon Sharry that it had significant concerns about the impacts of the proposed plan on the historic building. The MHC reminded her that a Section 106 review process is required before federal grants from the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) could be approved or construction contracts signed. An application for $2 million in historic tax credits was rejected months earlier because it was incomplete. Just weeks after the Town Council took their vote to authorize $46.1 million in borrowing for the project, a second rejection of the tax credits was received from the MHC, this time because the plan violated 5 of 10 standards of the Secretary of the Interior for the rehabilitation of historic properties. Sharry withheld this information from the Town Council during their deliberations over the appropriation of funds for the project. Town Manager Paul Bockelman and Library Trustee President Austin Sarat were also aware of these facts, as evidenced by emails acquired by record request, and they, too, withheld this information from both the Town Council and from the Amherst Historical Commission, which was also deliberating and taking votes on the project.
After the sole construction bid came in several million dollars over budget in April 2024, project proponents sought an extension of the MBLC deadline to sign construction contracts so that they could make cuts to and re-bid the project. Several town councilors, however, objected and brought a vote to prevent the extension. In the meantime, the historic tax credit application had been resubmitted and rejected a third time, information which, again, was known to Sharry, Bockelman, and Sarat but withheld from the Town Council. The council motion failed by a single vote and the extension was granted from June 30 until December 31, 2024.
Record requests were made to try to determine who else knew about the tax credits and when they knew it. It took three months and an appeal to the Massachusetts Secretary of State to obtain emails that demonstrated that Town Council President Griesemer was also aware of the rejection of historic tax credit applications prior to the council’s deliberations and vote in June 2024, meaning that she also withheld that information from her colleagues. In a March 29, 2024, email chain, Griesemer, Bockelman, and his assistant discuss document preparation to re-apply for historic tax credits that had been rejected at least twice. In a subsequent email chain in early April among these same people plus Library Trustee Lee Edwards, Sarat, and Capital Campaign leaders Kent Faerber and Ginny Hamilton discuss plans for a meeting “regarding progress on Library FundRaising and Historic Tax Credits.” Griesemer reported none of this to the Town Council during its deliberations in June or in her regular reports to the council.
In November 2024, Sarat and Bockelman requested a second extension from the MBLC because the Section 106 process was far from complete, having only begun the month before. The request was made without the Town Council, Library Building Committee, or Library Trustees having any public discussion or taking any vote. The MBLC granted the extension on December 5, with none of the commissioners asking a single question. The commissioner who made the motion did say that he was swayed by the letters they had received from elected officials writing in support of the extension. One of those letters was from Griesemer and it specifically stated that it was sent “on behalf of the Amherst Town Council.” The Indy reached several Town Councilors who confirmed that there had been no discussion about this letter or agreement by the council for Griesemer to speak on their behalf on this matter.
In addition to misrepresenting the Town Council in this way, Griesemer went on in her letter to mischaracterize the process and reason for the extension request. The project team was aware for more than a year that the Section 106 review had to be completed before contracts could be signed. Indeed, the regulations state that it should be initiated early in the planning stages to allow sufficient time for what can be a long process of consultations with stakeholders, negotiations to arrive at an agreement, and design modifications to avoid and minimize adverse effects on historic buildings. But the Section 106 process did not get underway until October 2024, after the project had gone out to bid not once, but twice. Griesemer’s letter, however, stated that “Despite having initiating (sic) the required reviews well in advance, these processes are taking more time than was anticipated.”
Finally, Griesemer implied that members of the MBLC should exert influence over the MHC to make sure the Section 106 process goes their way, writing “And, if I may be so bold, I would encourage you at the MBLC to reach out to your colleagues in state government at MHC and ask for them to come to the table in good faith and in a timely manner in order to bring this project to fruition.”
Town Council President Greisemer is certainly entitled to her opinion about this project. She is likewise free to advocate for it as an individual as well as an elected official. But withholding critical information from her colleagues, other town committees, and the public and speaking for others without explicit permission is a different matter, as is misrepresenting events and suggesting that members of a state funding agency should attempt to exert influence over another, independent agency.
When does the current President’s term expire? Is the president role embedded in perpetuity while in office or does the Council have the flexibility to reassign that position?
Are term limits for Council Members incorporated in the Amherst Town Charter?
Kathleen,
The Council President and Vice President are elected each January by the Town Council. Only one individual has ever served as President since this form of government began. There are currently no term limits for Councilors or officers of the Council; the Town Charter is silent on this matter.
Maria
The Council President is elected by the Council for a term of one year, according to the Charter. The Charter Review Committee could recommend an amendment to the Charter to create a term limit for the office of Council President. I recommend a two year limit, which would give other councilors the chance to serve and the opportunity to share council duties that Griesemer has taken on of her own accord and does not delegate. A limit would also prevent the President from consolidating too much power.
Griesemer has been the only Council President since the inception of the Council – for 6 years. And as I have mentioned before, she has a huge conflict of interest, having come from working 30 years in the UMass President’s office. UMass is wonderful but its interests are very different from those of year round Amherst residents.
She is up for election for Council President again in January. Will the Council vote her in yet again?
I think Lynn handles her relationship with Umass just fine ,and her past employment there doesn’t affect her decision making .
This so called conflict, has been common in Amherst politics for many years.
She is not the first to hold office, and have been, or employed by, Umass or any of the other Educational institutions.
The issue is not conflict of interest; Amherst is a college town and elected or appointed officials are obliged to make their potential conflict public but in the absence of malfeasance that is the extent of their responsibility.
However, I strongly believe that term limits are an important feature of democratic governance to avoid concentration of power or undue influence. In the case of Amherst, the Council President has great power by virtue of her office, as did the Select Board Chair before her. This tends to be a feature of local governments everywhere which frequently posit too much power in their chief officers. And, sadly but understandably, residents frequently pay little attention to issues which do not affect them directly – like democratic governance,
The Charter Review Committee should recommend term limits for councilors as an amendment to the Home Rule Charter. Short of that they should recommend term limits for councilors who serve as officers of the Council. But if they do not, the Council itself can propose term limits for its officers at any time under its Rules of Organization.
The long presidency on our Town Council reminds me that in family businesses (my field), the average term of the CEO/President is 24 years, while in non-family businesses, the term is 4-7 years. And research shows those longer terms lead to less strategic regeneration, also contributing to the high death rate of family businesses. Whatever stability is perceived in the longer terms is offset by how it inhibits necessary strategic change and adaptation to market conditions.
I am saying that no term limits for Amherst’s Town Council’s presidency probably tends to make our town less competitive and innovative, no matter who is in charge.
It’s interesting that the average lifespan of any business is 24 years. So in an “average” family business, the founder leads it the whole time, and they and their company are finished simultaneously. Part of the problem is that the most successful family businesses (the Japanese spa Hoshi Ryokan, running for 46 generations, for instance) take years to prepare successors. That is the opposite of no term limits.
It is mind boggling how we as a town have managed the Library project so poorly. Now we have to complete the Section 106 process that should have been completed long before the first bid and pay our designer to alter the bid documents and go out to bid a third time. Having to force a Councilor to release a public record is the icing on this steaming pile.
This article, “Council President Withheld Information from Colleagues,” is very damning in its content, essentially accusing the president of our town council of dishonesty. I’m not ready to make that leap, even if it’s a small one given the detail of the information that Ms. Kopicki presents. I like to hear both sides of an issue, and I didn’t read any statement saying Ms. Griesemer was given an opportunity to respond. Any major newspaper would have asked for a response before publishing such an inflammatory piece. If that was done, I’d like to know it. If that wasn’t done, I encourage the Indy to change its policy about publishing pieces that are replete with serious accusations against an individual. And if all the accusations turn out to be true, well… Ms. Griesemer has a lot of public explaining to do, and she should no longer be president of the Council.
The fact that members of the Town Council had not been informed of rejections of the historical tax credits before they took votes has been well established. It took a direct question from a Town Councilor in July 2024 about an invoice for consultants hired to help seek these tax credits for the Library Director to finally admit that the tax credits had been rejected. It took multiple record requests over several months to find out who knew about the rejections and when they knew it. During those months, the question about who besides the Library Director was aware was asked during public comment at multiple meetings of multiple boards and committees. There are standing Town Council agenda items for reports about the Library project and reports from the President. There has been ample opportunity for the Town Council President, Town Manager, Jones Library Trustee President, and Library Director to talk about this topic since the first rejection in August 2023 until now.
The planning board , didn’t inform its own members of the vote for the dormitory in downtown, until minutes before the meeting .
What is the difference here ?
In addition to the above ideas for strengthening local democracy, I propose these changes to Amherst’s Home Rule Charter:
1. No official should write or speak “on behalf of” a town board without that board authorizing the remarks with a majority vote.
2. Attendance at the Town Council President’s monthly meetings with state legislators should be open to all Town Councilors and should be viewable by the public.
3. Public referenda should carry the weight of the town legislative body (i.e. the town council) as was the case in the previous charter. Had this provision been in place for the November 2021 voter veto petition, Amherst would have avoided three years of acrimony and wasted time and money, as the borrowing authorization for the Jones Library project would have failed for lack of a two-thirds supermajority as required by state law.
This is not the first time that Council President Lynn Griersemer has withheld critical information from the town council. For example, in 2023, prior to a Town Council vote committing the town to install an artificial turf athletic field (or otherwise none at all) at the high school, Griesmer withheld information from the council about a pending law that would ban all PFAS- containing products, including artificial turf, from sale in Massachusetts. The proposed ban was motivated by the widely acknowledged public health and environmental dangers of PFAS (and turf) and Griesemer received a personal heads up from the bill’s sponsor, State Senator Jo Comerford, because of the upcoming town council vote. (That communication was discovered in a public records request.)
In addition, Griesemer rushed the vote on turf before a report from the Amherst Board of Health recommending unanimously against the installation of artificial turf (a decision subsequently affirmed unanimously by the Boards of Health in Pelham,Leverett, and Shutesbury), could be heard by the council, even though the council had originally requested that report.
Details are here: https://www.amherstindy.org/2023/01/27/griesemer-failed-to-share-information-on-proposed-state-pfas-ban-with-town-council/
And see below for additional reporting on the town’s suppression of information about the failed applications for historic tax credits, of which Griesemer’s complicity is documented in the letters cited above.
https://www.amherstindy.org/2024/09/20/repeated-rejections-of-library-funding-from-state-historic-commission-were-hidden-from-town-council-and-the-public/
https://www.amherstindy.org/2024/08/30/letter-critical-information-was-withheld-from-amherst-historic-commission/
https://www.amherstindy.org/2024/07/19/failure-to-preserve-library-historic-features-leads-to-2m-fundraising-setback/
Who attends the Town Council’s president’s monthly meetings with state legislators? Agenda? Minutes? Expense?