Piermont
In a letter to board members, Teran Mertz said she no longer feels it’s appropriate “to sit on the board until these issues can be resolved.”
Mertz, who goes by Terri, was elected in March, and said on Monday that she tried to work with Selectboard members Randy Subjeck and Colin Stubbings. But both have either ignored her concerns or openly harassed her, she said.
Their actions led her to file a complaint on July 7 in Grafton County Superior Court seeking attorney’s fees and a judge’s order that the Selectboard attend training sessions on the Right-to-Know law.
Subjeck declined to comment on the lawsuit on Monday, and an email to Stubbings’ town email address garnered no response. Piermont’s attorney, Laura Spector-Morgan of the Laconia, N.H.-based Mitchell Municipal Group, also declined to comment. She said the town hadn’t been served the lawsuit yet.
“Until I see the suit and investigate these claims, I’m not in a position to comment on anything,” Spector-Morgan said in an email.
Mertz said her concerns began with the handling of meeting minutes. Under state law, a meeting’s minutes must be made available to the public within five business days. But Metz said the Selectboard has withheld minutes for weeks at a time.
The board’s relationship further deteriorated after Subjeck and Stubbings entered into an agreement with a “town citizen” without Mertz’s knowledge, according to the complaint.
Mertz said she couldn’t talk about the details of the agreement because much of it was discussed in nonpublic sessions. When she found out about the deal, she contends that Subjeck and Stubbings tried to convince her to “go along with it” to mask the impression of preferential treatment.
The lawsuit also alleges the board held an illegal meeting on June 1, which was not properly noticed and was closed to the public.
Meeting minutes read into the record corroborate her complaint. According to the minutes, Mertz left the meeting and encouraged the other Selectboard members to do the same. Her husband, George Mertz, attended and refused to leave, contending that a quorum of the board made it an open meeting. Subjeck had to call on police to escort George Mertz out.
The next day, Subjeck apologized for the meeting, calling it a “genuine mistake” after consulting attorneys at the New Hampshire Municipal Association, according to subsequent minutes.
At the same meeting, Subjeck and Stubbings voted to fire George Mertz as the town’s webmaster. Although the minutes detail much of the discussion beforehand, only one sentence notes that the board discussed the firing.
Previous meeting minutes also point to other issues with complying with the Right-to-Know law. During the June 14 meeting, members of the board were told they can no longer email each other, and all email needs to go through an administrative assistant.
According to the law, communications outside of a meeting among members of a public body cannot be used to circumvent deliberations in open meetings.
“I took this job and accepted being elected because I want to see the town run a little more smoothly,” Mertz said. “Right now, it’s not working.”
She said the dispute with her two colleagues has continued even in her absence. When a friend tried to read her decision to leave into the record, she said Subjeck refused and told them members of the public cannot speak during work sessions.
Mertz also locked heads with Subjeck and Stubbings over business cards she made with her preferred title of “selectwoman.” The cards she placed in the town offices were later taken down because they were unauthorized by the full board.
While her cards have since been put back, Mertz said on Monday that the issue was never fully resolved.
Not everyone sees Mertz’s time on the board in such a positive light, however.
During the July 12 Selectboard meeting, Subjeck read letters about Mertz’s conduct from the town attorney and newly hired administrative assistant Jen Rugar.
A “barrage” of emails from Mertz about a meeting date conflict resulted in the town attorney writing “a stern warning regarding your conduct without solicitation by the town,” Subjeck said, according to meeting minutes. The email from town counsel was not attached to the minutes, however.
Rugar wrote that one of her first interactions with Mertz came on July 11, when the selectwoman stopped by the town office and repeatedly said Rugar’s hiring was illegal.
“At that point I felt that I, and my livelihood, were being threatened by Ms. Mertz,” she wrote in the email. “I asked if she was threatening me. She replied that she was not threatening me, but that I had been hired illegally and she would take care of it.”
Regardless of what people have said about Mertz, her husband said on Monday she has only ever acted in the best interest of the town.
“She has tried very hard over the past (nearly) six months to make this work and despite accusations against her by people in the town … she has bent over backwards trying to work with them,” George Mertz said.
A hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for 9 a.m. on Oct. 11 in Grafton Superior Court.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.