The Town of Chatham Continues to Struggle with Transparency

The town’s own policy says all corrospondence is to be included in public record and Town Board meeting agenda. It still is not.

Last month I wrote a letter to the Town of Chatham. The new policy promised it would be shared. In writing. “The Town announces that all correspondence submitted to the Town Board will now be considered public record and included as part of the official Town Board agenda packet.”

It wasn’t.

I said so. I also wasn’t surprised. And the moment I posted on the Chatham Community Board, Tammy Shaw was quicker to draw than Doc Holliday. The town has “procedures on correspondence.” “There has to be a cut off date to be added to each agenda or they would be revising agenda repeatedly.”

The exchange between Tammy Shaw and myself on the Chatham Community Board last month | Facebook

You’d think she was drowning in a million emails. There were six. Six missives, dribbled in over a month. And we all know what the agenda actually requires. Someone scans it. Someone posts it. Nobody is putting a paper to bed. There no running into the pressroom screaming to stop the presses. The revising-agenda-repeatedly crisis exists only in Tammy’s telling. Besides, it’s not like people have to discuss the letters. The just has to provide them.

Last month’s emails | Town of Chatham website

This month there’s more emails. Eighteen pieces of correspondence. Eight of them about transparency and ethics. 44%. I’ve read several. People share them. People still don’t believe they’ve gotten an honest word about Bashford Road, or the conflicts stapled to it. Be a Donal Collins loyalist if you like. Pretend there’s no there there. The transparency problem doesn’t care what you pretend.

This months emails. The actual emails were not included.

Here’s the sketchy part. The policy says the correspondence goes in the packet. The town wrote the rule and then broke it in the same breath.

What we got instead is a grid. Names and subjects. A menu with no meal. The letters sit in town hall and in the senders’ outboxes, right where they can’t do any damage. Hand them to the public before the meeting and the public comment portion turns into something real. An open, frank reckoning between citizens and the people who work for them.

But Fox Hill Vineyards was built in the dark. Donal’s hand was on the switch the whole way. Now that the thing is nearly done, don’t hold your breath waiting for him to flip on the lights. Besides, there’s more pressing business. Hudson Valley Homets Youth Softball Program Resolution is far more important than ethics and transparency.

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