Detective Sgt. Ronald Goodmaster wasn’t at last Thursday night’s meeting of the Seymour Board of Police Commissioners.
But the question of whether he will be allowed to stay on the force past his 65th birthday was a hot topic for discussion regardless, with one commissioner raising questions over the “eerily odd” circumstances surrounding the issue.
Background
Goodmaster will reach the retirement age of 65 on March 8, 2013.
On Sept. 13 the Police Commission voted 2 – 1 to extend his employment with the town until March 8, 2014.
Two of the five members of the Seymour Board of Police Commissioners could not attend the Sept. 13 meeting. Goodmaster’s bosses — Chief Michael Metzler and Lt. Paul Satkowski — also could not attend the meeting.
The specific request was not listed on the agenda posted prior to the meeting. Goodmaster attended the meeting and requested that the issue be added to the agenda and that the commissioners take action on it.
The move put him in line to hit 25 years of service under the state’s municipal employee retirement system.
Review
But the day after the meeting, First Selectman Kurt Miller watched a video of it posted online by Frank Loda, a private citizen, and asked the town’s attorneys to review the action.
“I did watch the video and as I was watching the video, I had some questions on the motions that they took and the way they went about transacting the business,” Miller said Friday. “I sent the video over to town counsel, who looked at it, and town counsel said the bigger issue is they’re not the legislative body, they don’t have the authority to do that.”
Miller announced the development at last week’s meeting of the Board of Selectmen.
The chairman of the police commission, Lucy McConologue, said she heard about what had happened while recovering from hip replacement surgery and called Warren Holcomb, one of the town’s attorneys, asking for a written explanation that she could relay to her members.
Holcomb’s letter to McConologue is printed below. Article continues after the document.
Seymour Police Commission Letter.pdf
State law “provides for mandatory retirement of police and firefighters at age 65 but allows them to work after age 65 with the annual approval of the legislative body of the employing municipality,” Holcomb’s letter says.
The lawyer goes on to write that the Seymour charter states that the selectmen are the only people so empowered.
“In sum, the only board that has the statutory authority to consider a request by a policeman to continue in the employe of the town beyond age 65 is the Board of Selectmen,” the letter reads. “The Board of Police Commissioners does not have the authority to grant such a request.”
Reaction
Commissioners discussed the Goodmaster issue for more than 20 minutes during Thursday’s meeting.
Lucy McConologue, the board’s chairman, was recovering from hip replacement surgery and was one of the members absent from last month’s meeting, so she said she asked Holcomb for the letter so the board could be kept in the loop.
“I became aware of the action that was taken and that supposedly the first selectman requested an opinion on this,” she said. “I called up Warren and asked him if he would send me a copy of the opinion he gave the first selectman, because I felt I wanted a hard copy for our board, also.”
Board member James Simpson, one of the the two commissioners who approved the extension at the meeting last month, asked several questions about the process — whether McConologue’s request to Holcomb was in writing or not, and how much Holcomb’s research cost, for example.
McConologue said she’d try to find out for him, but also suggested that if Simpson has concerns he should bring them to the Board of Selectmen.
Simpson said he found it “eerily odd” that the commission extended service time for other members of the department and there was never a problem before their vote to do so for Goodmaster last month,.
“Then the next day … Kurt, the first selectman, gets involved, and yet now there’s a big firestorm over this,” Simpson said. “Absent the name attached to it, this would have gone through seamlessly. It doesn’t really look good, it doesn’t smell good, and it’s just not good.”
“I can’t really comment on that part of it,” McConologue replied. “I was not here at the time. It was not on the agenda, I don’t know what took place.”
Click the play button on the video above to see the end of Thursday’s discussion. And click the play buttons on the videos below to see the rest of the board’s discussion in its entirety. The video is split into two parts.
After Thursday’s meeting, Simpson said he wasn’t alleging that anything untoward took place.
“I just question the timing of it,” Simpson said. “There appeared to be a firestorm and in my opinion, it’s more with the name attached to the event rather than the event itself. And it’s just very, very troubling to me.”
Goodmaster had been subject to disciplinary action in recent years — and had even been demoted — but he fought back through a series of grievances and complaints. One complaint alleged age discrimination.
He and his lawyer negotiated an agreement with the town that saw him reinstated as Detective Sergeant. Two suspensions against him were also reversed.
Click here to read his agreement with the town.
Miller said Friday that the bottom line is that Goodmaster should just make the same request of selectmen as he did of the police commissioners.
