ROCKLAND, Maine — A Rockland City Councilor said Monday that she will ask for an investigation into the abrupt, unexpected resignation of the community development director.
“While the resignation of Audrey Lovering from her position as community development director is a personnel matter, it is important that the taxpayers of Rockland do not pay a $20,000 severance package to an outgoing department head without light being shed on this situation,” City Councilor Elizabeth Dickerson said in an email to the Bangor Daily News. “And it is essential that the city manager’s role as the supervisor of department heads, and sole decider in matters affecting the employment of department heads, is understood to the taxpayers of Rockland.”
After reaching an agreement with the city manager, Lovering resigned officially on Oct. 10, but she had not worked since Oct. 1. She signed a severance agreement in which she received $21,666 as four months salary. The city also agreed to pay her health insurance through Jan. 31 and agreed to pay her legal costs of $2,000.
Lovering is barred from saying disparaging things about the city, per the agreement. She also drops any potential claims she may have against the city.
City Manager James Smith has declined to comment, saying that it is a personnel matter and state law does not allow him to talk about her departure.
Dickerson said Monday she knows that the city council does not have authority over the department heads of the city of Rockland. That responsibility lies with the city manager who also is personnel director.
“But the council does have authority over the city manager. As such, it is my wish that an investigation of the city manager’s role in this matter be conducted by the city council,” Dickerson said.
Mayor Brian Harden said Dickerson has yet to inform him of her request.
Harden said the council has the ability to do two things with the manager in his role as personnel manager. He said councilors can ask questions about a personnel process or it can call for a formal investigation into the action that the manager has taken.
“I need to find out which thing Lizzie is asking,” Harden said.
He said that because it is a personnel matter, such a discussion with the manager would be done in a closed-door, executive session.
The mayor said that the manager informed councilors on Oct. 10 of the issue concerning Lovering’s resignation. The announcement was made as councilors were in an executive session to conduct their review of the manager.
“Questions were asked. A fair amount of time was spent on that. The council was satisfied with the answers,” Harden said.
Smith said Monday he has no comment on Dickerson’s call for an investigation.
Deborah Johnson, director of the Maine Community Development department within the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development, said last week that she was not aware of the internal action within the city over the department head’s departure.
Johnson said the state had no problems with the city’s community development department. She said the state had a good relationship with the Rockland department.
Former Rockland community development director Rodney Lynch said Lovering has done a good job including on finalizing the downtown improvement project and on planning for the future of Camden Street once Walmart moves to Thomaston next fall.
“She has represented Rockland well,” Lynch said. He served as Rockland’s community development director for 14 years.
Yeah, let’s probe. good call…
I hope that we learn the facts of this matter. Lovering is first rate and Rockland is the poorer for her dismissal. There must be more to this than meets the eye, so often the case with Harden.
Word on the Street is my way or the highway…………………
Sweet severance package.
When do I start working there, so I can plan
When to quit working there?
The public has a right to know why this money is being spent. She just earned my vote.
Earned your vote because of one singular issue? That’s the American way I guess. What about all the other baloney she pulls? She is one of the most unprofessional public servants I have ever come across…
True enough.
When the county administrator left, front page news of her allegations against commissioners was reported in local papers. She left with an amazing severance pkg, although she was still in her probationary period. It is amazing how local government has no problem with monetary rewards for leaving
The county had an administrator that left with a severance pkg, even though she was still in her probationary period. Her grief with the commissioners was front pg news with the local papers. It appears that local government decides what when and how
I am delighted that Councilor Dickerson has asked for an investigation. Whether or not such review occurs behind closed doors, I fervently hope that its conclusion will be made public at least in the form of lessons learned, and measures taken to forestall their repetition.
Last night (Monday), during the time reserved for public comment preceding the executive session of the Council, I asked the Council to review whatever may have gone wrong in the relationship between Ms. Lovering and the City in order to address publicly what the City should and will do to correct the problem.
I also reviewed the four possible reasons I could imagine for such a major settlement that will, apparently, cost the tax-payers of Rockland something approaching $25,000–$21,666 as four months’ salary, plus $2,000 to offset the cost of her legal fees, plus health insurance premiums for four months. Though other possibilities may exist, the four that I can construct are:
1. Ms. Lovering committed an offense for which she could be fired, and the City decided to buy off litigation that it might have faced in trying to dismiss her; or
2. Ms. Lovering resigned, and the City wanted to reward her for her service over the little more than a year she has worked for Rockland; or
3. Ms. Lovering brought a complaint to the City, whether or not unreasonable, and the City decided to buy her silence with the settlement, rather than risk greater loss in litigation; or
4. The City was not able to provide a constructive place of employment, resulting in the improper dismissal of Ms. Lovering, and the City had to pay for the error by purchasing her compliance.
None of these possibilities reflect well upon the City, a conclusion I can hardly imagine evaded the imagination of the members of the Council, or any others involved in the situation.
I concluded my remarks last night by repeating my plea that the Council look into the matter carefully, and with transparency, publicize its conclusions, at least as can justify to the public the expenditure of funds that could have gone, I hope, to much better use, and constructively avoid repetition.
If the Council does not follow through on what I see as its responsibility, I intend at a future opportunity for public comment to raise the points I did not make last night.
Among these points, I would review each of the four possibilities I outlined last night to assess justification for such a large settlement.
Particularly if her departure were not voluntary and initiated by her, I would raise the query of what investigation was made of the performance of Ms. Lovering’s work by inquiring from those who had business with her. From my first-hand experience (that extensively includes the REDAC, the successful Brownfields’ planning grant, the development of the Harbor Trail, and the evaluation of potential for mass transit), I am aware of no one who had a complaint with the way she did her work. To the contrary, I think those who worked with her either wholeheartedly endorsed her work, or must have stifled complaint. If the latter, such failure to communicate should constructively inform a change in administrative procedures.
Also constructively, I would ask the Council to address fully any question that might exist in the replacement of Ms. Lovering (or abolition of the position) about the definition of Community Development, to assure that our citizens and our community will benefit from badly-needed assessment and action focused on social justice and quality of life.
I contribute these thoughts, perhaps prematurely, in my hope that the Council will see its responsibility to us, as its electorate, and as the citizens of Rockland, to move all of us forward to as positive a resolution as is possible of what I currently see as a very bad outcome.
George B. Terrien
I very much appreciate that you are following-up on this matter.
Regardless of outcome, the matter has made it clear that I want to place my vote for City Council with someone who, at minimum, has the least-vested interest in maintaining any sort of status quo.
He said that because it is a personnel matter, such a discussion with the manager would be done in a closed-door, executive session (b harden)…well that is just shocking!