Response to Denise Daigle

Feb 4th, 2016 Select Board Meeting

At this meeting we were going over some of the Open Meeting laws and Public Records Act. So in the course of our discussion while I had the floor, I mentioned my first experience on a Public Records request with the Town Clerk, Denise Daigle.

She was new to this as well. I asked for bank statements and she said the Selectboard wanted to remove the account numbers from the statements and it would take a day. So anyway I went in the next day to pick them up. I assumed the account numbers had been removed.

I mentioned this experience during the meeting not to criticize. I was pointing out how we were all adjusting to the new laws. She was getting a bit excited and said she never gave me bank statements with account number removed. Steve Barrup took it a little further out and said I was accusing him of falsifying documents. Denise demanded that I produce the Bank statements.. I agreed .. So I went back to my files and I see that she did not give me bank statements. She gave me the check warrants report which looks like a bank statement. When I got them from her, since I did ask for bank statements and told me the select board wanted the account number removed, I assumed that is what she gave me….So I apologize for the confusion on this issue. It all boils down to my original thought on the discussion. We were just getting used to the new laws.