NORTHAMPTON — Leaders of major member towns are raising concerns about the future of the Hampshire Council of Governments, and one is formally considering withdrawing from the quasi-governmental agency.
Belchertown Town Administrator Gary Brougham said Wednesday he will argue for a warrant article on withdrawing from the council during a Select Board meeting Monday.
“I personally have seen enough so I think it would be in Belchertown’s best interest to not be part of the council anymore,” he said. “My list of concerns is so long and the unkept promises are so significant. And I’m not alone on this.”
If the board decides to advance the article, it would go to a Town Meeting vote in May.
Council Vice Chairwoman Eileen Stewart said new things are in the pipeline, but declined to elaborate Wednesday. Executive Director Todd Ford rebuffed the concerns.
“That’s nothing new — I have no response to Gary’s ongoing comments,” he said. “I think it’s definitely in Belchertown’s continued best interest to stay part of the Hampshire Council of Governments. But we respect their decision-making process.”
The COG, with a budget of approximately $12 million, handles bulk procurement and purchasing of items such as sand and asphalt for member towns, and also has tried to set up a bulk power purchasing plan. Member towns pay fees to the organization, which also makes money from supplying power to private companies and municipal governments..
Molly Keegan, chairwoman of the Hadley Select Board, said Wednesday that Ford will field questions from her board during its meeting next week. She said the council appears to be at a “tipping point,” and as the board ventures into budget season, it’s a good time to ask about the COG’s direction.
“This year in particular we are interested in the future of the Hampshire Council of Governments — we want to give (Ford) the opportunity to talk to us in person about that,” she said. “There needs to be a viable way forward, and certainly looking at the financial statements is giving me pause.”
Brougham said not only have the concerns town leaders posed in an October letter gone unanswered, but they’ve grown. At that time, he and other town leaders called for answers on what they termed high turnover rates at the organization and mismanagement. The COG lost another new staffer on Tuesday, and Brougham said the council showed him it has “tuned out” his concerns by awarding Ford a new contract.
“Not only has he not been held accountable, but they’ve given him a raise,” Brougham said. “The executive committee, in my opinion, is not managing this organization appropriately.”
Member towns with the highest populations are Belchertown, South Hadley, Hadley and Southampton. Municipalities with the highest populations in the county — Northampton, Amherst and Easthampton — are not members of the Hampshire Council of Governments.
South Hadley Town Administrator Mike Sullivan said last month he’d like to see change at the council. He joined others in his skepticism of the COG’s venture in energy and said he’d like to see the agency’s model reformed. Sullivan said town administrators or other officials who serve the towns more broadly should also have seats at the table. That way, he said, leaders could argue for services that are more of a help to member towns.
“The things we face are unfortunately much more mundane than harnessing the sun,” he said, offering shared inspectional services and regionalized animal control officers as an example. “If the government is really committed to regionalization, why are they not looking to county government being reformed in some way — to really encourage regionalization? That’s what county government could be doing.”
Amid questions about turnover, the council lost another employee on Tuesday — salesman Barry Zamer, who confirmed Tuesday he was no longer working for the organization but declined to comment further.
Sparks flew between Ford and councilors when they voted in August to form the position and hire a salesperson.
“I was the sole person that voted no against hiring a salesperson because I didn’t think it was morally the thing to do for a governmental agency — to try to sell electricity to the private sector. I still believe that,” said Mike Sarsynski, who has since resigned from the council.
“There’s not a competitive product to sell. It’s a real shame that this guy quit a job to come to the COG — a secure job to come to the COG — and now is apparently jobless.”
Stewart declined to comment on the specifics of Zamer’s departure, and said she is not concerned about the rate at which the organization is turning over employees.
“This is a more entrepreneurial entity that we’ve got, and when you have a more entrepreneurial entity more people leave,” she said. “Some of the people who left the council got better jobs, and God bless them.”
Former deputy director Lee Frankl — hired for his background in business and marketing — said Wednesday he had urged the council not to hire the salespeople.
“Before resigning my position, I strongly recommended that the council find a way out of the electricity business for two reasons: first because our prices were no longer competitive with other suppliers, and second because the organization’s past failures in the space had tarnished its reputation,” Frankl said, referencing the failed municipal aggregation program shot down by the state’s Department of Public Utilities.
“Even stronger was my recommendation against hiring commissioned salespeople. Based on everything I saw in the market, anyone coming into this role was doomed to fail. I thought it was unethical to hire people under these circumstances, and I still do. Any prudent business that cared about its shareholders and employees would wind down this program.”
Frankl resigned in October, shortly after Zamer was hired.
Ford said Tuesday he stands by his recommendation to hire two salespeople, that the decision was “a logical step to increase sales.”
“We continue to set goals, evaluate and work together as a team to drive sales, to increase revenue,” he said Wednesday.
Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.