Entire Sherborn Personnel Board Resigns At Selectmen's Meeting

Personnel Board Chair Grace Shepard read a five page statement in response to Selectmen Chair Tom Twining and Selectman Paul DeRensis stating that the current Personnel Board were ineffective in their minutes and left the town liable and open to litigation, at the Selectmen meeting Thursday night.

Visibly upset at the end of her reading, Shepard handed the Selectmen a copy of her speech, informed them that the resignations of all three of the Personnel Board members, Grace Sherpard, Ron Arigo and Judi Miller, were included and left the room.

In summary, Shepard said the Personnel Board was accused of leaving, “the town vulnerable to litigation and liability regarding our handling of two sexual harassment complaints, our lack of oversight of pay practices resulting in a federal audit by the Department of Labor at the Sherborn Fire Department and keeping incomplete meeting minutes.”

She also said she agreed with Twining in his statement that a Personnel Board should be proactive, “However, it is difficult to be judged retroactively, as it were, for not doing what was never within our scope and was never discussed with us at the time.”

Shepard called the mandate of the Personnel Board “modest, yet suitable to a volunteer board comprised of qualified town residents.”

She added that the Personnel Board is not guilty of what the Selectmen accused them of.  

Shepard provided copies of Selectmens’ minutes, the by-law that explains their mandate and e-mails between the Personnel Board members and Selectmen, totaling in 23 pages, which see said informed them of the matters in question. 

After Shepard left the room, Sherborn resident Charles Young said, “I’m disappointed in the way Grace has been treated by this board.” He described her as “ethical and honest,” and sees, “the politicization of the process,” as, “troubling.”  Young added that it was a, “sad day when your whole Personnel Board resigns.”

Later in the evening the Selectmen voted to add Sherborn resident Bruce Jamerson as the Personnel Board’s now singular member. 

Initially when voting, Selectmen George Pucci abstained from the vote because he said he never met him, knew nothing about him and had only seen a one sentence e-mail regarding his interest in being on the Personnel Board. “Do one of you know him or have met him?,” he asked. 

“He’s a good guy,” said DeRensis, “We need a Personnel Board that is gonna be part of our team,” he added. DeRensis said that Jamerson has been a CEO of several companies.

After hearing DeRensis’s affirmation of Jamerson’s merits the Selectmen voted unanimously to add him to the Personnel Board.

In his e-mail, stating his interest in being on the Personnel Board Jamerson said, he was the CEO of three companies and served on the board of directors of “a number of companies.”

“During the last 35 years I have obtained a great deal of experience in personnel related matters and would be happy to serve the town,” he wrote.