City likely to approve farmers market move

SOUTH PORTLAND — It appears city councilors are set to approve moving the South Portland Farmers’ Market out of Thomas Knight Park, where it struggled though its first summer last year, and onto Hinckley Drive, when the growers come out of winter quarters at the old Hamlin School gym sometime in mid-May.

Four of six councilors present at a workshop Monday spoke in favor of the move, which would require closing the road that runs alongside Mill Creek Park, between Ocean Street and Cottage Road, on Thursdays from 2-7 p.m. Only Councilor Rosemarie De Angelis voiced reservations, although she made clear that her support for the market remains as strong as when, during her term as mayor, she helped spearhead its creation.

“I support the market with my dollars and in other ways wherever it needs to be,” she said, “but we have to think about parking. People think of Mill Creek being just full of parking, but it’s all private lots.”

The council will conduct a first reading on the proposed move at its May 7 meeting, along with changes to insurance requirements on participating vendors. The street-closing concept will then go to the Planning Board on May 8 for a special exception permit. However, whether that permit is needed, as well as the next steps after the Planning Board visit, remain unclear.

Also unresolved is whether the move, if it’s made, will last.

“Maybe a one-year trial is a possibility,” said Councilor Tom Blake. “We need to be flexible – not just this year, but every year. It could change again. Who knows?”

Still, those who spoke Monday, including both property owners and potential vendors, were more concerned about this season.

Tom Noyce, owner of 170 Ocean St., where Town & Country Federal Credit Union is located, joined everyone at Monday’s meeting by saying he “fully supports the farmers market.” However, he joined De Angelis in expressing concern over what an influx of traffic and a closed road would mean for his property.

“It definitely will change traffic flow through my private parking lot,” he said. “I’m concerned about displacing employee and customer parking to those viable businesses. It’s a very good cause but, again, these are private businesses.”

One plan aired Monday calls on 24 vendor booths to be located on either side of Hinckley Drive, between Ocean Street and the Hinckley entrance to the credit union. Another, designed for 41 booths, would extend “around the bend” on Hinckley Drive to the People’s United Bank entrance.

Although the larger layout would block his tenants’ access to Hinckley Drive, Noyce said he preferred that option, as it would limit people trying to shortcut to Hannaford from Ocean Street. De Angelis backed the larger plan, as well, citing safety concerns over motorists not seeing the market until they “whipped around the bend.”

Meanwhile, Dan Mooers cautioned that extreme care has to be given until motorists acclimate to the change. As a Rotary Club member, Mooers chaired February’s inaugural winter festival, which also blocked off Hinckley Drive for its activities.

“I can’t tell you how many cars came around the barricades,” he said. “I had a car full of four nuns that I had to flag down in the street before they hit our hockey net.”

Despite logistical issues, participating farmers say the change is needed to make their wares more visible and attractive to passing motorists on Broadway. The Thomas Knight Park location was faulted for its relative solitude, although other issues, including a late-season start, regular Thursday rains, and ankle-wrecking cobblestones also have been blamed for low market attendance last year.

Regardless, farmers say they need a change.

“Knightville was a great idea,” said Dick Piper, who sells grass-fed beef raised on his Buckfield ranch. “But it failed as far as I’m concerned. I’m grateful for the people who started it, but I can’t afford to keep coming here to lose money.”

Debate over a home for the market has raged behind the scenes in South Portland since Feb. 27, when De Angelis asked the council to approve a sign on Broadway advertising its Waterman Drive location. Some councilors, like Jerry Jalbert, questioned if such city-sponsored promotion would send the wrong signal to other Knightville businesses.

As an alternative, Jalbert suggested the Hinckley relocation to market manager Caitlin Jordan, a Cape Elizabeth town councilor and a principal partner in her family’s Alewives Brook Farm. Jordan acknowledges she jumped at the idea, having favored the Mill Creek location from the start.

However, Jalbert’s self-described “offhand suggestion” touched off a firestorm of acrimony, in which he was accused of lobbying his peers outside the public process, while two groups created by the market’s enabling ordinance – the farmers market association and the citizens advisory committee – argued over which ranked higher in the decision-making hierarchy.

In emails provided by two committee members, a general breakdown in diplomatic relations appears to begin with a March 31 email in which Jordan allegedly wrote that she was “sick of the advisory committee.”

The Current filed a Freedom of Access Act request for those emails on April 11, and then filed an amended request on April 19 when the city claimed the initial request for emails to and from the seven-person farmers market advisory committee generated 380,000 hits.

Still, based on documents provided by committee members, growing resentment among the farmers’ faction appeared to hinge on accusations that De Angelis and/or Mayor Patti Smith was delaying consideration of the Hinckley proposal until acquiescence to Thomas Knight Park could be restored.

Smith said Monday, “There was no stonewalling.” The delay from introduction of the issue in late February was simply a matter of poor timing, she said, observing that the annual budgeting process had to take precedence though March and April for workshop time.

At Monday’s meeting, Jordan said that while 19 farmers have verbally committed to the South Portland market this year, only five have submitted written applications.

“The rest are waiting to see what’s going on,” she said. “And of the five, three have told me they are going to pull their papers if something doesn’t happen soon.

“If we don’t get going soon, there won’t be farmers at the farmers market,” said Jordan. “It’s getting very late in the season for them to being doing the planning they should have done last month. They are not going to ride this out.”

But while the Broadway sign issue that launched the discussion appears to be resolved – Jordan said the market association can’t afford it – other issues arose Monday. Jordan and Town Manager Jim Gailey reported different advice from the city planning department on whether a Planning Board waiver would be required to close Hinckley Drive. The decision appears to hinge on whether the South Portland Farmers’ Market is simply a market that happens to stage in South Portland or if, based on specific zoning language that allows it to exist, it is an official function of the city.

“I really don’t know the answer to that right now,” said Gailey after Monday’s meeting, when asked for an interpretation.

During the meeting, Gailey did say that, based on the farmers’ eagerness to open, they might be able to do so before second reading and final passage May 21 to set the Hinckley Drive location.

Councilor Alan Livingston said he was “not comfortable with that,” stumping instead or a special meeting May 10 to wrap things up.

However, no decision was made beyond pushing the market issue to the council’s May 7 meeting.

Learning to lead:Memorial Middle School students take on educational adventure

COW ISLAND/SOUTH PORTLAND — On Thursday, Amber Escobedowinkle was not at her computer, in front of the television, or any other place she might ordinarily spend a spring vacation afternoon. Instead, the South Portland seventh-grader was several dozen feet up in the air, atop a zip line staring down at a vast expanse in front of her, with a line of screaming students behind her.

“Everyone was freaking out because of how high it was,” she recalled, moments later, back on earth. “But once you get on you know there’s no turning back, so you just go with it and it turns out to be pretty fun.”

Escobedowinkle was one of 15 Memorial Middle School students who spent last week on 26-acre Cow Island in Casco Bay, at an adventure-based leadership seminar hosted by Ripple Effect, nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting young people to the natural world around them.

“Kids are so plugged in these days, the whole idea in getting them out here is that it does get them out of that rut,” explained Ripples Youth Program Director Leah McDonald.

“More kids than ever are just sitting at home on the computer, so it’s our job just to get them out finding sea urchins, doing artwork and, really, just playing together,” said Ripple’s executive director, Anna Marie Klein Christie.

Although Ripple Effect has been around for 10 years, this is the first season South Portland students have participated in the school program, and it begins with a six-week community service project. At Memorial, the students began learning to work together under Ripple guides by creating a community garden.

Ripple also customizes each five-session orientation leading up to the expedition, with elements based on each school’s specific needs, whether it be team-building, learning to become pro-active, or anti-bullying.

Then the school program moves to Cow Island in the fall and spring, and to the White Mountains during the winter, to learn wilderness and conservation skills, alongside the fun and games.

Ripple Effect targets student who may face alienation in their school community, but have the potential to make positive change. Like Portland’s King Middle School, where the waitlist has grown to 85 students, Memorial was selected due to high poverty rates coupled with the challenges of living in a highly diverse neighborhood. The program also focuses on seventh-graders, said Klein Christie, “because that’s the time, about halfway through seventh grade when kids are making critical choices about their goals, and about their peer groups, that will affect their rest of their lives.”

“Inspiration is the key to transformation,” said the organization’s lead guide and island manager, Toby Arnold. “We are constantly working to create an atmosphere where kids can be moved and touched and inspired, because this is a safe place. I think it’s even safer here than the environment many kids come from in terms of their emotional safety in their homes and schools. Being secure allows them to learn and create.”

Although it costs nearly $1,000 to put each student through the program, students pay only $50 – and even that is based on need.

“Because we have such a large scholarship program, there is a real, rich diversity of kids, from all backgrounds here. It’s not just the kids who can afford it,” said Klein Christie. “And, because our programs have such diversity, and because of the skill level of our guides, we’ve actually been able to grow even during the recession thanks to a wonderful donor base.

“Of course, the needs have grown exponentially in that time, so we feel privileged to be able to provide those opportunities,” she said. “But when parents send their kids out here, it not just about playing all day. They learn leadership skills, and about island life, and how gardens work and how to work together in team to achieve a common goal.”

Interestingly, the students seem to get that, and revel in it.

“We’ve been learning about leadership and how to take charge,” explained Zachary Baker, adding, “It’s not about being bossy or anything, it’s basically about helping others to achieve goals.

“I think in my career, in the future when I’m an adult and a video game designer, I’ll be able to help my coworkers do tasks that would not be able to complete on their own, because of what I’ve learned here about helping others,” Baker said.

“We’ve been learning how to work together as a team and how to come up with new ideas to get things done together,” said Serena McKenzie, citing a group project aimed at identifying sea life around the island’s shore.

“If we can learn to understand how other people think about things, if we can understand how others look at things, it can help with the whole team,” she said, adding that building that kind of empathy should help her as an aspiring actress. 

MacKenzie and her twin sister, Amber, also point to one of the more challenging team projects – climbing a rock wall while blindfolded. That task is just as hard on the ground as it is on the wall, said Serena.

“It’s really, really fun,” she explained. “It’s about helping each other, but when someone us depending on you, you really learn to think about what you say before you say it.”

“Here, you actually get to experience things that you wouldn’t in school,” Amber said. “In school, we don’t really focus on helping people, we kind of are more focused on our own work.”

“Yeah, we don’t really do a lot of leadership stuff in school,” agreed Brandon George, who looks forward to a career as a truck driver, like his father. “I don’t think I’d really learn stuff like this anywhere else, where you’re not just told how to do something, but you actually get to do it.”

“And, even if your not interested in doing some of the things, like the zip line and the rock wall, others will help you,” continued Amber, “even if all you want to do is get in the harness and get a foot off the ground.

“If you help people to achieve their goals like that, they’ll help others, and that kind of makes a big chain that goes on and on.”

Fireworks store coming to Scarborough

Ohio company to open 8,000-square-foot retail operation by early June

SCARBOROUGH — Maine’s largest fireworks store is slated to open “by the first week of June” in The Gateway Shoppes complex in Scarborough that houses Cabela’s, among other retailers and restaurateurs.

“We’re very excited,” Bill Weimer, vice president of Ohio-based Phantom Fireworks, said on Monday. “We think Scarborough is a great area. We’ve been treated very well by everyone we’ve dealt with.”

The Scarborough site is the fourth-announced fireworks store in Maine, and the first in southern Maine, since the products became legal Jan. 1.

“This has been a long time coming,” said Weimer. “We’ve very happy that the Legislature finally decided to make our product legal, as it is in so many other states.”

Founded 30 years ago, Phantom operates 54 showroom floors in 14 states selling so-called consumer fireworks – low-powered noisemakers between the novelty items previously legal in Maine, such as hand-held sparklers, and more powerful items like M-80s and “cherry bombs,” which remain against the law in Maine.

Phantom specifically targeted Scarborough as its first Maine location, Weimer said, as part of a new company strategy to open near Cabela’s stores. Although Maine is the first link, more pairings will follow in other states, said Weimer, noting, “We have a very similar clientele to Cabela’s.”

Among restrictions created when the state de-criminalized consumer fireworks effective Jan. 1, any retail space set up to sell the product must be located in its own, free-standing building. That will cause some shuffling at the Gateway Plaza.

According to Greg Feldman, vice president of Feldco Development, parent company to The Gateway Shoppes owner New England Expedition – Scarborough LLC, Phantom signed a lease for the 8,000-square-foot building that currently houses Haven’s Candies and the Thai 9 restaurant, along with two vacant shops.

To accommodate the fireworks store, the two businesses will close for “about a month,” said Feldman, while new digs are outfitted in now-empty storefronts in Gateway Building 2, alongside Portland Pie Co. and Kitchen & Cork.

Thai 9 closed Sunday. Haven’s Candies was slated to close Wednesday, after The Current’s deadline.

“We will be pushing hard to reopen as soon as we can,” Haven’s owner Andy Charles said on Monday. “Any time you close down and relocate a store it’s a risky proposition – some people may think we’re gone and not coming back – but I’m confident that this will be good for all of the merchants.”

The new Haven’s shop will be slightly smaller, said Charles, adding that he hopes clustering restaurants and food stores together will help all to “achieve critical mass.”

“I believe that our customers will find our new location equally or more compelling,” he said.

Haven’s Candies has 30 employees among its Scarborough, Portland and Westbrook locations. Generally, up to four people are stationed in Scarborough at any one time, said Charles. All will be given jobs at other Haven’s sites during the month the store is closed, he said.

Thai 9 owner Sourasay Senesombath said most of his six full- and part-time workers will temporarily relocate to one of two other Thai restaurants owned by his mother, in Bar Harbor and New Hampshire.

All will return when Thai 9 opens “in early June,” he said, confident despite an expected loss of seats, from 46 to 38.

“We will come back a little smaller, but we really like that we will be on the side of the complex with Portland Pie, where all the action, all the foot traffic, is,” said Senesombath. “We also think having the fireworks store will be a big benefit to everyone.”

Once the move is complete, The Gateway Shoppes will reach 85 percent occupancy, said Feldman.

“When we first opened the project with Cabela’s and started renting spaces, they went pretty quick,” he said. “But then with the economy and everything, things kind of fell off. Every place, but especially in Maine, has been slow to rebound, but we are now starting to see an uptick.”

A Maine-owned franchise of Phantom competitor, Pyro City, opened Maine’s first fireworks store March 1 in a 2,700-square-foot Manchester site located in a former auto dealership. Pyro’s second store, at 1,500 square feet, opened April 16 in Edgecomb. A third 5,500-square-foot store is expected to open in Winslow by mid-May in a former Ken’s Restaurant.

The fear of such stores sprouting up sent many Maine municipalities scurrying last fall to take advantage of a provision in the new law that let them pass local restrictions.

Portland was first out of the gate, adopting a ban on sale and use of consumer fireworks on Sept. 19. Locally, South Portland followed suit on Oct. 17, while Cape Elizabeth passed its own ban Nov. 14.

In Scarborough, however, there was far more hand-wringing over the law, with town councilors divided between safety concerns and a desire to encourage business growth.

In an informal consensus vote Sept. 7, the council backed Town Manager Tom Hall, who said the town should avoid enacting an outright ban on fireworks, instead limiting its reaction to a requirement for sprinkler systems in any store set up to store or sell fireworks in town.

The council adopted the new sprinkler rules Dec. 21. However, in the meantime, councilors Karen D’Andrea and Carol Rancourt broke ranks and introduced a full ban, saying Scarborough needed to be “a good neighbor” and not allow sale or use of a product its neighbors were outlawing. That attempt failed Nov. 16 in a 3-2 vote.

Then on Jan. 31, with cooperation of Council Richard Sullivan, a Portland firefighter who has previously adopted a wait-and-see attitude on local restrictions, the Rancourt-led ordinance committee tried again, this time allowing the sale of consumer fireworks, but limiting use in town to five days during the year – Dec. 31, Jan. 1, and July 3-5.

Those limitations passed unanimously March 8, with the council easing noise ordinance rules to give a free pass to dogs and other animals that react to fireworks explosions.

Weimer said he is not concerned that his product can only be used in Scarborough five days of the year. After all, he allowed, his company’s business model is geared toward a single day.

“Our product is primarily sold for use around the Fourth of July anyway,” he said. “In other states we see some use on New Year’s Eve as well, but I’m not sure even that will apply to Maine, because of the weather.” 

Conflict charged in pesticide flap

New rules governing use in Scarborough overthrown after improper vote

SCARBOROUGH — Within 24 hours late last week, Scarborough did two 180-degree turns on an updated pesticide-use policy, ending up exactly where it started – with the exception that one town councilor now faces a censure hearing regarding conflict-of-interest charges.

When the Town Council appeared to overturn its nascent pest control policy April 18 with one less restrictive of chemical use, Councilor Karen D’Andrea had her protests gaveled out of order. In response, she declared with a flourish of the arm, “You’re all out of order.” She then grabbed her jacket and left the meeting before it was over, telling a group of 37 residents gathered for the decision, “Sorry, folks. I tried my best.”

But within 24 hours, Town Manager Tom Hall circulated an email advising that the decision had not carried after all, despite a 3-0 vote. Scarborough’s Town Council Policy Manual requires four affirmative votes to pass any measure, he said. That was impossible thanks to the absence of Council Chairman Ron Ahlquist, the decision of Councilor Richard Sullivan to recuse himself because of conflict-of-interest charges, and abstentions by D’Andrea and Councilor Carol Rancourt.

Councilors James Benedict, Jessica Holbrook and Judith Roy all endorsed the update,  which had been sponsored by Sullivan and is less demanding of organic pesticide use than the earlier version, written by D’Andrea and adopted in September by a 4-1 vote, with only Sullivan objecting.

“I have to view the existing policy to be still in effect and will act accordingly unless directed otherwise,” said Hall, on Friday.

That resets the status quo on the use of chemicals to fight grubs and other insect infestations in Scarborough – i.e., don’t – but leaves Sullivan subject to censure proceedings for suggesting a different path.

In separate letters submitted by D’Andrea and Rancourt, Sullivan was accused of failing to disclose that his brother, Dan Sullivan, holds a $40,000 contract with the town to mow lawns at Scarborough’s public library and three elementary schools.

The council policy manual calls on each councilor to file with the town clerk by April 1 the name of any person holding a town contract worth more than $1,000 from whom the councilor “or a member of his/her immediate family” received $1,000 or more during the preceding year.

Sullivan volunteered to recuse himself from the vote, subsequently winning a 3-2 decision – with D’Andrea and Rancourt opposed – that allowed him to take part in debate. However, the fate of Sullivan’s policy proposal has no bearing on disciplinary action leveled against him. Although not yet scheduled, a censure hearing will be held, said Hall.

“There’s no pulling back,” he said. “An ethics charge is a very serious thing. They made those allegations and it has been my advice to the council chair that they [the full council] should convene as a body, deliberate, and make a ruling.”

ORGANIC POLICY

The drive to ban synthetic pesticides in Scarborough began several years ago with local businessman and philanthropist Eddie Woodin. A lifelong birder, Woodin questioned if chemical pesticides could travel from weeds to worms to birds, much like the infamous, but once widely used insecticide, DDT. Woodin has more recently raised the specter of upwind turf chemicals being behind unexplained illnesses at Wentworth Intermediate School, rather than the aging building itself, as commonly supposed. In 2010, Marla Zando, then executive director of the Scarborough Land Trust, sounded a similar note of concern for children, citing reports that appear to link certain synthetic pesticides to an array of childhood cancers, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

That prompted D’Andrea to draft an ordinance banning the use of synthetic pesticides, which, after a year of debate and the formation of Citizens for a Green Scarborough, eventually saw life in diluted form as a council policy, applicable only to town-owned lands.

Still, it specifically banned the use of synthetic pesticides without a waiver issued by a newly created pest control advisory committee or an “emergency” application approved by the town manager.

That was seen as a win by members of Citizens for a Green Scarborough like Mark Follansbee, who has a doctorate in pharmacology from Penn State. As a 15-year contracted toxicologist for the Environmental Protection Agency, Follansbee was concerned that, prior to policy adoption, no apparent preference was given to the use of organic pesticides in public parks and athletic fields.

“During one Ordinance Committee workshop, Community Services was kind enough to give us an accounting of products used in 2010,” recalled Follansbee on Friday. “The information provided showed that only synthetic herbicides were being applied. No less-toxic approaches were apparently even attempted.”

Follansbee was first to sign up for the seven-member advisory group created in the new policy. However, in addition to relaxing restrictions on synthetic pesticides, Sullivan’s policy also knocked the committee from seven to five members, specifically targeting posts for which Follansbee and Zando had been nominated.

“They are out of control – absolutely against any kind of synthetic pesticides,” Sullivan explained in an interview before Wednesday’s debate.

INTEGRATED POLICY

A career landscaper when not fighting fires for the city of Portland, Sullivan first tried n March to present an “integrated policy” – one that encourages but does not absolutely require the use of organic pesticides.

Sullivan’s first draft, based on “best management practices” adopted by the Maine Board of Pesticide Control in February, was pulled at the last minute from the March 21 agenda when questioned by Elizabeth Peoples, an attorney for the citizens group and a Scarborough resident.

Among other issues, Peoples argued that by voting against D’Andrea’s organics-only policy in September, Sullivan was prevented from presenting any alternative for at least one year.

In an April 18 memo, Town Attorney Joel Messer of Bernstein Shur said rules on reconsideration apply only to the first meeting immediately following a decision. The one-year limit applies only to citizen petitions seeking to repeal an ordinance vote, he said.

Once the question of standing was sorted out, Sullivan tried again, albeit with a few changes. His initial proposal, for example, had completely exorcised the citizens advisory committee. Sullivan also took time to incorporate a matrix from the state plan that separates soils into four classes, advising the type of pesticide treatment best suited to each under certain circumstances.

Elisa Boxer-Cook, a member of the green group, chided the council by saying, "You can't go half way on organics – it's all or nothing.” But Sullivan countered that it takes both time and money to prep soils for organic treatments.

That transition can be expensive, he said, and cost taxpayers more than an approach that tries to prevent infestations, rather than fighting them.

VIOLATIONS OF POLICY

Sullivan was not the only person accused of trying to overturn the organics-only policy. D’Andrea also suggested Hall may be culpable.

“It is perhaps another violation of our rules when the town manager is directed to implement a policy and does not do so,” she said, referring to the seven-month lag between creation of the pesticide advisory committee and presentation Wednesday of a slate of appointees.

Hall said Friday there simply weren’t any applicants until word circulated of Sullivan’s initial plan to eliminate the committee, other than Follansbee and Zando, and they were invited to comment on bid specs for this year’s turf work. However, Hall did admit the openings “were not well advertised,” adding that “as early as March,” when he learned of Sullivan’s proposal, he slacked off on filling a committee that might cease to exist.

Still, Hall said, no pesticide of any kind has been applied to public property in Scarborough since September, other than one “emergency” grub treatment in the days after the new policy passed. Therefore, there was nothing for the advisory committee to advise on.

But Peoples said Citizens for a Green Scarborough members were being discouraged as early as January.

“We were told by [Community Services Director] Bruce Gulifer not to worry about it, that the policy probably would never be implemented,” she said, following Wednesday’s meeting.

Hall said that after Sullivan’s first attempt to alter the pest policy was pulled in March, the citizens group was invited to a work session to craft a compromise policy.

“They’re the ones who refused to work with us,” agreed Sullivan.

But Peoples said there was a good reason for that.

“Tom Hall requested that it be a private meeting and we thought that was a violation,” she explained, saying only councilors Ahlquist and Sullivan would have participated, to keep from triggering public meeting laws. “He wanted it kept quiet and we thought it should be a public process, just like the first policy went through for more than a year.”

Despite clamoring about conflicts of interest, which Sullivan called “showboating” to derail his proposal, most of the dozen speakers at the meeting last Wednesday seemed most concerned with an apparent rush to judgement. In fact, more than one person, including D’Andrea and Rancourt, said the two policies share more in common than not.

Even Follansbee, in comments Friday, acknowledged that the best management practices at the core of Sullivan’s approach “are outstanding.” The only concern, he said, is that the new policy would have “turned back the clock” to a time when Scarborough supported organic treatments in principle, but not practice.

“I am mostly disappointed that the opinion and will of one individual is being put ahead of the will of the citizens, disappointed that a quick and closed approach is being used to circumvent policy that was established after a year-long, inclusive process,” he said.

“I am very well aware of the policies and procedures of the Town Council,” agreed former two-term councilor Sue Foley-Ferguson. “They are put there so that there is a public process – not just for one individual who is concerned about a policy that they didn’t win the vote on.”

“We sat on this policy for six months and not one person had a complaint,” said D’Andrea. “Then, all of a sudden, boom, one day there’s a new policy. We get to vote on it once. There’s no time for public process. There’s no workshop. There’s no explanation. All we hear is, ‘It’s a new common-sense approach.’ That’s baloney. It reeks of horse hockey.”

“Well, that’s quite enough of the superlatives at this time,” said Roy, acting as chairwoman in Ahlquists’ absence, as she called for the vote.

In his email about Wednesday’s vote, Hall pointed out that abstentions by D’Andrea and Rancourt were improper under the policy manual. Outside of a “real or perceived conflict of interest,” the rules say, “every member of the council present must vote” on every issue.

“Nobody can force me to vote on something that I consider [to be] an illegal action,” said Rancourt in a telephone interview on Friday.

Still, neither woman faces disciplinary action at this time. Instead, it is Sullivan who is on the hot seat and predicting he will be “completely vindicated.”

Sullivan said after the meeting last Wednesday that he would decide after consulting with his attorney if he wants his hearing held in public or in executive session.

Sullivan argued he has no conflict of interest because he makes no money from his brother’s business, and because his brother only mows lawns. His proposals would not have impacted his brother’s contract with the town at all, said Sullivan, adding that he had not registered the relationship in the clerk’s office because he interpreted the rule to mean he had to benefit personally from the business to warrant giving notice. Also, he pointed out, Gulifer only presented a bottom-line dollar figure when bringing lawn care contracts to the council.

“We barely talk to each other,” Sullivan said of his brother. “He could have lost that contract for all I’d have known.”