A “pretty big mess” is how Chestertown Mayor Chris Cerino has branded the year-long management and aftermath of the now defunct Chestertown Waterfront Task Force.
He put the blame squarely on the previous mayor and council and “profusely” thanked the task force volunteers for their time and “dedication.”
“These are not the bad guys,” Cerino said at Monday’s council meeting. “These people were working for the betterment of our community and we need people like this going forward to be on our side. To lose their support because of the way this ended…is one of the biggest disappointments of this entire process.”
Citing a recent finding of the Open Meetings Compliance Board, Cerino said the task force became a “public body” under the Open Meetings Act when the Chestertown Town Council created it last January. He said the task force should have held open meetings that were advertised and made the minutes of those meetings available to the public.
All task force members resigned unanimously on Jan. 16 as a result of a Public Information Act request filed by the Kent County News. Cerino said the town was committed to cover any legal costs to task force members as a result of KCN’s request.
“This really falls on the previous mayor and council,” Cerino said. “It was their responsibility, and now our responsibility, to make sure volunteers that are helping us are fully informed of their responsibilities [under] the Open Meetings Act.”
During 2013 the task force volunteers conducted private meetings with over 150 individuals—believing the council had sanctioned the private discussions as a way to elicit frank opinions from various stakeholders in the community.
The Task Force was made up of four volunteers from the town and four from Washington College to plan a vision of a public-private partnership on the Chester River waterfront, where WC and the town are the two largest property owners.
“From the very beginning the task force envisioned themselves essentially as a private citizen group that was formed to make recommendations,” Cerino said. “One of the reasons they wanted to have private meetings is because they knew they’d be talking to private landholders and business owners and they wanted frank and honest opinions of what they thought was possible with their properties. Those are topics that often people won’t come and discuss at public meetings.”
“Now [the task force members] are being asked to share the minutes of those meetings with people that thought they were speaking off the record,” Cerino said. “This was supposed to be an initiative to position us for economic success and in fact it could end up costing us a fair amount of money.”
Clearly aiming at the local press, Cerino said the suspicions surrounding the work of the volunteers, and delays in the final report, did not rise to the level of Watergate or Iran-Contra.
“I think we need to use a little editorial common sense here,” Cerino said “This was a group of citizens giving us recommendations.”
Kevin Shertz says
Mayor Cerino couldn’t have struck a better tone. What’s done is done in regards to the original founding of the Task Force and everything that’s come afterward. The past is the past and will be judged as such.
We need to move forward.
William Short says
Editor,
Hats off to to Mayor Cerino he could not have represented Chestertown any better and clearly showed the leadership the town and county needed at this time.These challenges affect all the citizens through out the county we are all one and the same.We all need to work through these challenges head on and the Mayor and council clearly showed this is what they want to do.
Thanks For The Step Forward.
County Commissioner Bill Short
Stephan Sonn says
Editor,
Time to salvage and repair.
That said KCN, showed no mercy, it was fish in a barrel,
and certainly not the crime of the century.
As for the power of media, right or wrong,
I personally can attest to that.
B. Douglas Megargee says
Editor,
Things tend to stall in committee and oft times die. If you want the town to experience many more years of the kind of blight we are now experiencing then ignore the good work of this committee. These people on this committee wanted nothing more than to see sensible best use practices for the prosperity of Chestertown. Their closed door policy was to allow people to be able to express themselves frankly and openly about how they envisioned the future of the town, and not for any other reason.
I feel that they have been vilified by the press like some clandestine development consortium. Our new mayor is to be complimented for his realization of the value of this committee and it’s findings to the town, and for openly recognizing the mistakes that were made in the past. Lets hope that the whole thing can be salvaged and that we can move forward for the long term prosperity and collective betterment of the Town and subsequently the County as a whole.