Letter: Bita, Satterthwaite For More Honesty, Oversight On Board

Reading MA

05 April, 2021

4:12 PM

Description

READING, MA — Reading voters can help seat a more effective Reading Municipal Light Department (RMLD) board by electing Marlena Bita and James Satterthwaite on April 6. They are the only active challengers on the ballot for two open seats. (A third challenger has declared she is not running.) Their statements, and numerous local endorsements, speak for themselves. As a member of the board, I am confident we can do a better job—and that Ms. Bita and Mr.Satterthwaite, working with incumbents Bob Coulter and Phil Pacino and me, will workcollaboratively and in the ratepayer interest for better governance and a cleaner future.Why is change needed? As a resident noted in a letter the other day, the incumbent, JohnStempeck, used his power as board chair last month to try and appoint a new chairman beforethe election. Decades of practice holds that the new board, not the old one, "reorganizes" andchooses its officers. He also moved a raise and bonus for our General Manager without puttingany of the evaluation materials or salary comparisons on the public record. These documentswere only shared by email to board members. And unfortunately, he's made misleading statements with respect to RMLD's enormouscontract with a highly controversial proposed wood-burning power plant in Springfield called"Palmer biomass." Last month Mr. Stempeck named me and wrote that at the February 2020RMLD meeting "[Talbot] and the Board approved Palmer in the energy portfolio." Nothing ofthe kind happened. As the meeting minutes show, there was no vote to approve Palmer, nodeliberation on the matter, and not even any mention by any Board member of the project. By the date of the meeting Mr. Stempeck cited, the enormous contract (well over $100 millionover 20 years) between the RMLD and Palmer had already been signed by the RMLD managerwithout any prior Board involvement at all. The only thing that came up in subsequentmeetings were passing references---not anything for us to discuss, deliberate on, or approve.(Our only public session Board vote on Palmer came months later – and was a 5-0 vote to revisitthe deal. Not approve it.) Yet as recently as a week or so ago, Mr. Stempeck was still sticking to his guns that the processwas fine and the proposed plant "state of the art." Hardly. On Friday, the MassachusettsDepartment of Environmental Protection confirmed how bad the project always was byrevoking its permit, in part over major air quality concerns. Lest someone respond to say "biomass" is something RMLD was okay using under one policy(#30), this is true but beside the point. We also have a policy (#19) saying the Board approvesnon-timely power supply projects and a 20-Year-Agreement between the four towns we servesaying our Citizen's Advisory Board first gets input on the matter. Whether we do a deal should depend on the specifics of the project—and the level of investment, controversy, and risk involved. In recent months RMLD management has been diligent about bringing power contracts beforethe Board. But we have more work to do. For more public disclosure and input, adherence toprocess, stronger oversight, and cleaner energy, Marlena Bita and James Satterthwaite are yourbest choices for RMLD board on April 6. David Talbot 75 Linden Street The writer is a member of the RMLD Board of Commissioners and was its chair from April of2019 to March of 2020.