Franklin mayor stands by city manager, police chief following no-confidence vote

FRANKLIN — Franklin Mayor Jo Brown and City Manager Judie Milner are sticking by Police Chief David Goldstein after the Franklin Patrolman’s Association released a statement of no-confidence in his leadership last Monday. The statement also pointed to a lack of confidence in Milner, and described an atmosphere of cronyism for Goldstein’s allies and retaliation from department leadership.

Goldstein has remained silent on the matter, and did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Brown and Milner say the vote represents a minority of the department, and have previously criticized the union for publicizing the letter instead of discussing the situation with city leadership behind closed doors.

Franklin Patrolman's Association President Jacob Drouin said the decision to publish the letter came after a 60/40 vote within the union.

“A recent vote of no confidence of our Franklin Police Department leadership team and our City Manager reflects the opinion of a minority of police department employees,” Brown wrote in a statement distributed Saturday. “The 5 votes of no confidence for Chief Goldstein represents only 32% of the union eligible employees and only 18% of the entire police force.”

At the time of the vote, there were about a dozen union members, according to Drouin.

The vote of no confidence came after Drouin conducted a leadership climate survey.

“I got more than two-thirds of participation from the members we had in both the survey and vote,” Drouin said. “The overwhelming majority said 'let's have a vote of no confidence.'”

Brown dismissed the unprecedented nature of the vote and said city leadership “had no concerns” regarding the matter during an interview last week.

“We've had a lot of issues just trying to find relief and resolution through our contract-negotiated grievance procedure,” Drouin said. The procedure states that they must first go to their immediate supervisor. If no relief is found, they can submit a written statement to the department head, who has one week to reply in writing. If that fails, or if the employee feels that “further review of the grievance is justified,” they can submit a written statement to the city manager within “10 working days.” From there, it’s up to the city manager to facilitate a meeting to resolve the grievance. The procedure says the city manager “shall render a decision within 10 days of the appeal hearing.”

Even then, an employee can still request the city manager bring the appeal in writing to the city’s Personnel Advisory Board.

“At each step, it just didn't feel like we were getting adequately heard with everything,” Drouin said. “This displeasure built over time over people being affected by decisions made by command staff and administration.”

The mayor's written statement continues, “The Mayor and City Council support the City Manager as evidenced by the overwhelming recent affirmative vote of the council (8 of 9 councilors) to offer a second five-year contract to the City Manager and an unanimously vote of the Council last spring to provide the City Manager with the salary increase which was both recognition of her accomplishments and assisted in her retention.”

“The reason we included the city manager is because relief wasn't found there either,” Drouin explained. “She's been advised by multiple members of inequitable treatment complaints of retaliation by command staff and administration and she fails to act in appropriate time and manner.”

The mayor's statement says that due to an ongoing personnel investigation, she is limited in her ability to provide further comment on the matter.

The subject of that personnel investigation is Drouin, who was placed on administrative leave shortly before holding a meeting to discuss leadership within the department. Drouin said he scheduled the meeting for Dec. 17, 2022.

“I posted that Dec. 1 and it created a stir,” Drouin said. “I sent out an email to all the local members. It was common knowledge within the department there may or may not be a vote of no confidence. It had been out there for a while that we're discussing it. The night prior [to the meeting], I was placed on administrative leave without any reason why or charges listed.

"It's an ongoing investigation. What I can say is, I was on administrative leave and it's paid, if that makes a difference.”

Drouin was unable to attend the meeting in person, so he sat outside the department in his car and attended virtually.

Drouin isn’t the first officer to experience recent investigations by the department. Last week, a letter of warning penned by Goldstein against a former officer surfaced. Drouin described the letter as an example of retaliation. The document revealed an internal investigation was conducted against former Officer Mark Faro for dating Miriam Kovacs, a local business owner who has been publicly critical of the department.

The investigation was opened shortly after Kovacs filed a complaint against Lt. Daniel Poirier, who also was named in the statement of no confidence.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify the number of union members who participated in the vote and the date of a meeting scheduled by Franklin Patrolman's Association President Jacob Drouin to discuss department leadership.