Franklin mayor applies for city's vacant manager position

FRANKLIN — Mayor Desiree McLaughlin has applied for the position of city manager, according to draft minutes of a non-public session of the city council on June 23. The minutes were unsealed at the July 7 council meeting by unanimous roll call vote.

McLaughlin, according to the minutes, believes it would be a conflict of interest to serve as the contact for Municipal Resources Inc., the organization in charge of reviewing candidates for the job. She recused herself from the hiring process. Acting City Manager Scott Clarenbach is now the point of contact for MRI staff.

Clarenbach did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

McLaughlin, who didn’t expect to see her confidential statement in the minutes, said Tuesday she wanted to clear the air.

“I thought it was better to inform the public body, like the whole governing body at once, in a controlled fashion as the right and ethical thing to do.”

Councilor Al Warner (Ward 3) said while the council voted to unseal the minutes of the non-public session, they never voted to approve them. While not unprecedented, Warner believes this to be improper, and a major faux pas.

“The minutes are unsealed, but they have not yet been approved. And we do not post minutes that have not yet been reviewed and approved by the city council,” he said. “In other words, the city council hasn't said that that's what actually happened in the meeting.”

Who posted the draft minutes on the city's website was not immediately clear.

Approving minutes allows time for amendments and corrections to be made. Warner did vote to unseal the minutes, saying it was because information about what happened in the meeting was already circulating in public, having seen discussion about it online. He believes someone present in the non-public meeting broke confidentiality.

“I think it should have stayed non-public, but that confidence was violated by someone that was present at the meeting,” he said.

New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know law specifies those who disclose confidential information from a non-public meeting violate their oath of office, and are subject for removal. But once information becomes public, confidentiality no longer applies.

Present at the June 23 meeting, according to the minutes, were Ward 1 Councilors Delaney Carrier via phone, Timothy Johnston and Ted Starkweather who resigned Monday; Ward 2 Councilors Tom Boyce, Glen Feener and Susan Hallett-Cook; and Ward 3 Councilors Ed Prive, Warner and Leigh Webb; along with Clarenbach. Minutes were taken by staff secretary Nicole Havey.

Clarenbach said during the council meeting on Monday that the deadline for applications for the city manager position closed on June 23, and there are 32 candidates for the job. He intends for the council to review candidates in the first or second week of August, after MRI staff narrow down the list.

McLaughlin believes that due to the confidential nature of the application process, the minutes should not have included information about her interest in the job. State Right-to-Know law requires only that non-public minutes include the names of members present, a brief description of what was discussed and any decisions.

“There's a lot of candidates, so there's a good chance I wouldn't get it,” McLaughlin said. “But at this point, they've shed a shadow over that, because did I not make it because my confidentiality was breached as an applicant?”

The state Right-to-Know law offers exceptions for internal personnel matters, including hiring. But Carrier doesn't think this includes McLaughlin’s announcement about her application.

“We would have to be talking about actually hiring a specific individual or talking about their specific employment,” he said. "But we weren't talking about that. She was simply announcing that she had applied for the position.”

McLaughlin is the second Lakes Region mayor to seek employment as a city manager, after Andrew Hosmer recently shared his intention to resign from his post as mayor of Laconia to pursue employment as city manager in Lebanon.