Former Palmer Town Manger Charles Blanchard accepts interim town manager job in Williamstown
Updated Apr 14, 2021;
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His first day of work is Wednesday.
Williamstown Town Manager Jason Hoch announced in February that he would resign once an interim manager was in place.
His departure is partly related to allegedly not telling the Selectboard, in a timely manner, that a police sergeant had filed a complaint against the town’s police chief with Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
In August, Sgt. Scott McGowan then filed a federal lawsuit naming then police chief Kyle Johnson, Hoch, and the town as defendants.
The civil complaint alleged the police department “turned a blind eye to sexual assault and sex discrimination.”
Anne O Connor, who is a non-voting member of the interim chief advisory committee, told her colleagues on the Select Board that the search group has interviewed three applicants and is hoping to arrange a fourth interview. Outgoing Town Manager Jason Hoch asked the Select Board to form a search committee to make a recommendation to his office for the interim post after then-Chief Kyle Johnson resigned in December. After some initial uncertainty about the level of community interest in serving on the search committee, the town received 22 applications and appointed eight residents to the panel. O Connor said its work so far has been heartening.
Board members said that while they thought both the finalists they interviewed were qualified, they were concerned that Robert T. Markel potentially would be torn between his duties in Williamstown and his current role as interim town administrator in Hampden. “He has a 20-plus hour commitment there which means he’d be limited to a 20-hour commitment here,” Andrew Hogeland said. “When Hugh [Daley], [Town Manager Jason Hoch] and I talked about the job, we thought a part-time job would be OK. “I still feel that way, but I feel differently thinking that’s all we could comfortably get. We’d have competition for the other half of his time, so if our needs go up for more hours and days, he’s less likely to be available, whereas Charlie [Blanchard] would be more available. That’s the deciding factor for me.”
Jason Hoch reported to the Select Board that the town s free cash as of July 1, 2020, was certified by the Department of Revenue last week, effectively closing the books on fiscal year 2020. The free cash approval for the general fund is about $1.3 million, which is up a bit from last year, Hoch said. I offer that just as a way of saying we made it through the fiscal year and the budget hits without dramatically impacting our ability to have flexibility for future hits in the general budget. We basically get to free cash by spending somewhat below appropriations and having revenues that overperform. We ve been fairly consistent at this range the last few years, so it s certainly a good stable place. If that number starts getting higher, that would be a concern. And if it gets significantly lower, it really boxes in our flexibility.
The Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity Committee used its first meeting of the new year to pass a resolution commending the residents of the area formerly known as Colonial Village not only for renouncing the racist covenant that restricted home sales in the neighborhood at its birth but for trying to make it easier for other residents of the commonwealth to do the same. Before passing the resolution, the DIRE Committee acknowledged the harm done by the covenant both as a tool for maintaining white purity in the neighborhood and as an insult to Black people for nearly a century.