Driving a wedge: How a worksite incident divided Dublin’s planning board

But when a planning board member halted work on the driveway, she began a chain of events that would lead to her being censured and prompt a volley of accusations in all directions. The controversy left in its wake a decimated planning board, with five of seven members resigning over two days.

Donna Garner, the planning board member who lives across the street from the Hulslanders’ property, maintains she did not invoke planning board authority to stop the work. But a contractor who was there that day; Don Primrose, then chair of the planning board; and the Hulslanders all said they believe Garner inappropriately used her role as a public official.

The Hulslanders have been Dubliners for nearly a decade. Two years ago, they were thrilled to buy a few acres on Snow Hill Road, a narrow dirt road southwest of Dublin village, where they plan to build their dream home. The hill is mostly wooded, with a few houses and fields peeking out from the dense, broadleaf forest.

“It was very exciting,” Maureen Hulslander said of acquiring the property.

The trouble in Dublin ostensibly began on Monday, Aug. 19, when Keith Fish and another contractor from KDI Landscaping were putting in the driveway that would connect the site for the Hulslanders’ new home to the street.

Garner approached the workers that afternoon, and asked to see the plans for the driveway. She and Fish disagree about whether she invoked her authority as a planning board member to halt the work. Fish said in a written statement to the Hulslanders that he recalls Garner introducing herself as a member of the board, while Garner told The Sentinel she was acting as a concerned neighbor.

The contractors didn’t have the site plans with them because the driveway dimensions had already been marked out at the site, according to Fish’s statement, which also said Garner told them to stop working because the driveway was in the wrong spot.

Garner told The Sentinel she then called Don Primrose, the chair of the planning board, and Roger Trempe, the town’s road agent, who both came and confirmed the driveway was in the correct location. Trempe told The Sentinel everything was up to code from his perspective.

Fish and Primrose said Garner’s interruption delayed work at the site by about 2½ hours. That delay cost the Hulslanders about $625, according to a complaint they filed with the planning board. Trempe confirmed he was at the site for “over an hour.” Garner said she thought the conversations she had there took about 45 minutes.

Maureen Hulslander feels Garner “abused her power” and “took advantage of her position” that day, unfairly invoking the planning board when she had no reason to do so.

Garner told The Sentinel she had expected to be warned in advance when the construction would begin and was concerned the driveway going in might not match the plans.

The Hulslanders, who thought they were on good terms with Garner before the incident, were confused. Maureen Hulslander said she felt Garner may have been annoyed that she wasn’t able to buy the property herself and frustrated that the land was being developed.

Garner confirmed that she and other neighbors had previously discussed buying the property for conservation and walking trails, but said that her actions on Aug. 19 were motivated solely by her concerns about the driveway’s placement.

Multiple accounts of the incident came before the planning board in early September, and members began to divide based on whose version they believed.

The Hulslanders said their concern was less about the cost of the delay and more about the principle of the issue.

In the complaint they brought before the board at a Sept. 5 meeting, the Hulslanders asked the board to reimburse them and to provide written responses to questions about the incident. These include whether Garner was representing the planning board and, if not, what the repercussions would be for a board member who “would identify herself as such for the purpose of throwing her political weight around.”

According to board minutes, Primrose and Garner both shared their recollections about what had happened, and the board discussed whether it was personal or a board issue. Ultimately, Primrose made a motion to censure Garner for her actions, and the motion passed with just one no vote from board member Archie McIntyre, the minutes show.

“I thought it was too strong an action and there wasn’t enough time to fully consider,” McIntyre told The Sentinel.

A censure is symbolic; a censured board member may continue serving on the board as they normally would.

Chris Raymond, the selectboard’s representative on the planning board, wasn’t present at that meeting. He said he learned about the censure later and had “procedural concerns.”

Garner did too. She said she met with the selectboard in September to discuss her concerns about a lack of “due process” with the censure.

At a planning board meeting the following month, Raymond presented recommendations from the selectboard based upon legal advice members had sought. Raymond told The Sentinel he couldn’t say why the selectboard sought legal advice. The selectboard recommended the planning board notify anyone against whom a complaint has been filed of that complaint and any censure or other disciplinary action prior to public discussion, give the person time to present their side of the story, and wait until the next meeting to impose a censure.

Primrose said the planning board has no formal procedures in place for censures, according to minutes, and noted the board had nonetheless met all of the selectboard’s recommendations except the final one.

Garner and Primrose agree she was aware of the Huslanders’ complaint prior to the Sept. 5 planning board meeting, but Garner said she didn’t know she might be censured.

At the Oct. 17 planning board meeting, Raymond made a motion “to hold the censure in abeyance,” essentially putting it on pause until Garner had an opportunity to say whether she wanted more time to refute the allegations, the minutes show. That motion passed, with only Primrose voting against it.

Last month, the conflict on the planning board came to a head.

Hoping for another opportunity to refute the censure, Garner attended a Nov. 7 meeting, according to minutes. She was offered time to speak, according to the minutes, but told The Sentinel she did not feel up to doing so due to an ongoing health issue. The board agreed she could speak at 6:15 p.m. at the next meeting, minutes show.

In the week leading up to that Nov. 21 meeting, she told Primrose she was considering resigning, Primrose said.

He recalls her saying she felt the best thing for the town would be for her to step down. He agreed, he said, and told her if she did so, he would see no reason to keep the censure in place.

Garner said she would send him her resignation letter, but it never came, and she did not respond to his calls or emails throughout the week, Primrose said.

Garner declined to comment on any interaction with Primrose that week.

That same week, minutes show the selectboard entered a non-public meeting for about 45 minutes.

According to those minutes, the board invoked state law allowing boards to enter a closed-door session to discuss “matters which, if discussed in public, would likely affect adversely the reputation of any person, other than a member of the public body itself, unless such person requests an open meeting.”

Monadnock Ledger-Transcript reporter David Allen said he happened to be sitting outside the selectboard’s meeting room that night and saw Garner go inside.

Garner, however, said she did not meet with the selectboard, only with selectboard member Carole Monroe and Town Administrator Kate Fuller. She declined to comment on the substance of that meeting.

She did not attend the Nov. 21 planning board meeting, but the censure was nonetheless the dominant topic.

Primrose told the board Garner had agreed to resign before the meeting, thus negating the need to reopen the discussion, minutes show, but because she had not stepped down, he wanted to revisit the discussion.

McIntyre moved to lift the censure, according to minutes, and Raymond called the question. Primrose said he felt those actions happened too quickly, cutting off discussion.

The motion to lift the censure passed, 4-3, minutes show. Then Raymond read a brief email to the board in which Garner announced her resignation. Raymond had received that email at 5:45 p.m., the minutes indicate, about 15 minutes before the meeting, but other board members said they were not aware of it before the vote.

The fallout from the Nov. 21 meeting was immediate.

Primrose resigned after the vote. In his letter of resignation, he said he felt that by lifting the censure, the board had condoned Garner’s use of planning board authority to “intimidate her neighbor.” He wrote that he could not lead a board that would do that.

Francis McKenna resigned that night, too. In a handwritten letter scrawled in blue ink on a piece of scrap paper, McKenna offered no reason for his resignation and declined to comment when a Sentinel reporter contacted him. Over the next 24 hours, board members Kirsten Colantino and Karl Eckilson resigned, too.

In her resignation letter, Colantino wrote that while “volunteering for our town has been a meaningful and rewarding experience … the challenges and unresolved issues over the past several months have made it increasingly difficult to fulfill my role in the way our town deserves.”

Colantino wrote that she hoped the board would be able to “refocus” on respectful dialogue and effective problem-solving.

Eckilson said he resigned primarily due to what he felt was a lack of civility on the board.

In his resignation letter, he wrote that “working dynamics among board members have become untenable” and described the behavior of some members as “toxic.”

A text he received on Friday, Nov. 22, affirmed his decision. The text, sent from a phone number belonging to Raymond, states: “The trash took itself out last night. Now the remaining can put a t [sic] back on track.”

Raymond said he did not recall sending the text.

The resignations left the board with three members — McIntyre, Raymond and Caleb Niemela — and three alternates, Katy Wardlaw, Neil Sanford and Brie Morrissey, as well as secretary Matthew Saveliev.

The board is required to have seven members, with a quorum of at least five, Raymond said at a selectboard meeting Monday night.

The controversy of the past few months had both professional and personal effects, leaving the planning board leaderless and driving deep divisions among its members, former and current.

It also cost the board a lot of time, many of the board members told The Sentinel, and some bad press.

Wardlaw, one of the remaining members, said she worries coverage of the recent events may make it more difficult to recruit new members to the board. But she said she is optimistic the board will move on.

The planning board met for the first time since the resignations Thursday in the echoey, blue-and-white town hall basement. The three remaining members appointed alternates Sanford and Morrissey to fill in for the meeting in order to have a quorum and appointed McIntyre as interim board chair. McIntyre read out the resignation letters from Colantino, Eckilson and McKenna, and the board voted to accept their resignations.

The board members spent some time discussing other community members who might be interested in filling in until town meeting in March. They also turned to the future, discussing priorities for 2025.

Garner said she wants to move on, too. The controversy has impacted her health, she said, and she wants it to be over.

Primrose said he felt the way the entire process unfolded was “completely disrespectful to the Hulslanders.”

For them, the controversy has cast a shadow over their plans. “It’s depressing,” Maureen Hulslander said.

She said it felt like Garner had gotten special treatment from the selectboard that allowed her to get away with the trouble she’d caused her and her husband. “She gets to resign without a blemish on her record.”

As of Friday, Hulslander said she had not been refunded the $625, nor received answers to the questions they asked in their complaint to the board.

Nonetheless, the couple says their main desire is to be good neighbors and get on with building.

The driveway is in, although currently buried in snow, and once the house is built and the Hulslanders move, they’ll be driving up and down it for years to come. With time, perhaps it will become just an ordinary driveway in the memory of all involved, just as the Hulslanders initially expected it to be.