George R.R. Martin, the prolific novelist (Games of Thrones), grew up in a small house in Bayonne, NJ, a peninsula just south of Jersey City. When asked what inspired his imagination to create fantasy worlds as a child, Martin said he used to stare out his living room window at the lights across the water and imagine a Shangri-La. He later found out he was starring at Staten Island.
I regularly bike down Bellevue Road to the ferry and gaze out at Oxford across the Tread Avon River. Oxford is the quaintest town on the eastern shore. It is a Chesapeake Shangri-la accessible by ferry, one of the oldest in the land, a short eleven-minute ride. Our favorite activity is taking friends, family, and out-of-town guests on the ferry to Oxford or boating to Capsize in our clunky pontoon boat for water-view dining and a tasty Creamery ice cream cone afterward. I have many good friends who live in Oxford.
Sadly, town mismanagement has tarnished Oxford’s tranquility, turning this picturesque town into a political mess. Earlier this year, an Oxford resident, Scott Rensberger, a TV journalist by trade, frustrated by a lack of transparency and accountability on several issues, began producing cleverly crafted and controversial video reports.
Having been stonewalled by the town regarding his home’s flooding issues, he began using his significant media and investigative skills to focus on a lack of transparency regarding the town’s governance. Why was Town Manager Cheryl Lewis’ compensation with bonuses (est $179,000), not a line item in the town budget, a fairly standard practice? Why was it so much higher than the same job in towns of a comparable size? What was the context of Lewis’ daughter being hired by the Town, among other issues? The lack of a coherent, satisfying response from the Town prompted Rensberger and others to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) submissions as a last resort to get information being withheld by the town. Where there is smoke, there is sometimes fire.
The reaction to Rensberger’s video reports was mixed. Many people applauded his efforts. Others were offended out of loyalty to those town officials singled out they had known for years. Another group could not handle the in-your-face social media content, which combined factual reporting with some needed entertaining snark and popular culture references to keep viewers’ attention since Rensberger could not get the key players to go on camera. This genre of independent grassroots journalism is not new, especially in places with limited local news outlets.
More importantly, the criticism of Rensberger’s videos was mostly about style rather than the substance of the central facts, which have not been disputed.
Oxford used to remind me of the 1950s black-and-white TV show Mayberry R.F.D. Today, it is closer to the more contemporary TV comedy series Schitts Creek, another small-town soap with its local drama and complex relationships.
Undoubtedly, Lewis has done some good things for the town during her long time in office. However, transparency was not her priority. When we learned that her salary, the highest of any town employee, was not listed as a line item in the budget or included on the town website, it should have been a red flag about transparency.
By the way, the current Town Manager job description shows a salary range of $90,000–$110,000 compared to Lewis’ base salary, which was about $164,000 (without bonuses). This indicates the Town is getting its Town Manager’s salary in line with the market rate and maybe using the freed-up funds to hire more staff.
Staying with this theme of openness, when the Lewis controversy erupted earlier this year, why didn’t the Town Commissioners immediately update the website and add a line item showing the Town Manager’s salary? And defend her higher-than-market compensation and daughter’s employment, explaining that it didn’t violate any ethics laws. And let voters decide if the Commissioners handled the issues appropriately when the Commissioner’s three-year terms expire and elections are held.
Instead, they stonewalled, I assume, waiting for things to blow over, for Lewis to retire in June, and hoping to hit the reset button with a new Town Manager. Things did calm down. Summer on the eastern shore has that effect. That ended last week when Oxford shockingly parted ways with its newly hired Town Manager, Micheal Calvert, only a week and a half before his scheduled swearing-in ceremony.
Rensberger, after doing some simple internet sleuthing on Calvert, forwarded to Town Attorney Lindsey Ryan a 1994 Washington Post story reporting that Calvert was charged with “Indecent Exposure,” a criminal offense, and “Prostitution,” a misdemeanor offense. Connecting the dots, I’m guessing this new information resulted in frantic conference calls, more diligence, and the decision to end the Calvert relationship before he was sworn in.
The Town quickly issued a “Dear Residents” statement about Calvert’s sudden departure, explaining, “We mutually agreed to the part-ways” with Calvert, adding that it was “not a good fit.” The statement also added to the PR word salad that because the Town’s background checks are confidential, personal records are not subject to disclosure – code for: “We will not discuss this in the future, and when we do, it will be in closed session.” This is unfortunate since it would be interesting to know the extent of the vetting failure as residents wait for an “interim” Town Manager to be named.
This should have been a squeaky-clean search process, but Oxford Commissioners chose not to hire a search firm that vets candidates as part of their statement of work. It has been reported that Commissioner Katrina Greer wanted to hire a search firm. However, Tom Costigan and departing Commissioner Susan Delean-Botkin did not, due to the cost directly leading to this egg-on-face moment. They preferred having their controversial outgoing Town Manager, Lewis, handle the search. How did that work out? Sadly, all Lewis or someone else had to do was ask the town’s police unit to do a criminal background check.
The Town of Oxford should thank Scott Rensberger.
Calvert’s sudden departure has generated a loud collective: “Are you kidding me? The Town Commissioners must clean up this mess, hire a search firm, and generally be more transparent and accountable.
Hopefully, Norm Bell, the incoming Commissioner, will bring a fresh voice and temperament to the Town’s governance and make Oxford more like Shangri-La than Staten Island. No offense intended to Staten Island.
Hugh Panero, a tech and media entrepreneur, was the founder & former CEO of XM Satellite Radio. He has worked with leading tech venture capital firms and was an adjunct media professor at George Washington University. He writes about Tech and Media and other stuff for the Spy.
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