Cites lack of energy to meet both business, BOS demands
Recently resigned Selectman Leo Blair campaigns on election day in 2008. At that time, he said he was a “reluctant candidate.” (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Selectman Leo Blair resigned suddenly last week, citing the great time demands of the position as the reason why he has stepped down after less than 17 months as Harvard’s most visible and powerful volunteer official in many years.
The resignation, which was effective immediately, seems to have caught other town officials off guard. And while the four remaining Board of Selectmen (BOS) members say they are confident they can handle the many tasks that crowd their fall agenda, they will likely vote in September to call a special election to fill the empty position.
“I own four companies and I’m just in the process of establishing a quasi-public real estate investment trust in Maine,” said Blair in a phone interview with the Press. “I started working on the trust about three months ago, and I started to realize it was going to take a lot more time than I thought it was going to take and that I’d have to do a lot of work myself.”
“The job of selectman is all-consuming,” Blair added. “It’s meetings four nights a week and countless documents to be studied and understood. [I found] I just don’t have the energy or the interest to give the extra 40 to 50 hours per week the job requires. I wanted to [submit my resignation] now because we have three meetings coming up in September and there’s going to be a lot of work assigned at those meetings and I didn’t want to take an assignment I couldn’t carry out.”
Blair announced his decision in a faxed letter to Town Clerk Janet Vellante last week. In the same letter he also resigned his position as a member of the Municipal Affordable Housing Trust. The resignation also leaves vacant the chairmanship of the Joint Boards of Selectmen (JBOS); Blair was elected to that position for a fourth consecutive quarterly term only last month.
When Blair ran for office, he told the Press that he was a “reluctant candidate” who was running because he was concerned about the town government process. He called himself a pragmatist, not a politician. His website—which is still online—outlines four goals and specific actions to achieve each of them.
Blair leaves behind a record of outspoken, driven leadership that occasionally raised eyebrows but often garnered support. Few town officials have ascended to top leadership positions so quickly. He was elected chairman of the BOS immediately upon joining the board, and last fall assumed the same position on the JBOS. As BOS chairman, he helped get power and communications restored during the December 2008 ice storm; he made sure budget adjustments were made when state aid was cut in the middle of the last fiscal year; and he worked with Evergreen Solar management to ensure that the company’s noise problem was being solved as quickly as possible. On various other fronts, Blair pushed for solutions, new ways of thinking, and greater government efficiency. However, few of the action steps outlined on his web site have been achieved.
Blair was dealt one significant blow when the JBOS-backed proposal to turn Devens’ Vicksburg Square into a housing development was defeated by Ayer voters in May, thereby vetoing the project against the wishes of voters in Harvard and Shirley.
Selectmen Tim Clark (left) and Ron Ricci (seen here at a January 2009 Board of Selectmen meeting) both indicated to the Press this week that they can meet the time demands of their position.
“It [the resignation] just came out of the blue for all four of us, is my sense,” said Vice Chairman Lucy Wallace. “[Leo] never spoke to me and said, ‘Oh my goodness, this really is a lot of work, isn’t it? How do you balance when the demands in your life change?’”
“I was shocked and disappointed,” said Selectman Peter Warren, who along with current BOS Chairman Ron Ricci and Blair was first elected in 2008. “I’m sorry to see him go and I’m disappointed he didn’t live with [the job] at least until [the 2010] elections, and then resign, so we didn’t have to go through the process of a special election.”
The remaining four BOS members must now decide whether to hold a special election to fill the vacant position, and based on telephone interviews this week, a unanimous decision in favor of that step seems likely.
“I think that the voters should have a choice as to the makeup of the board,” said Chairman Ron Ricci in an interview this week. “I think it would be useful to have another person on board and it’s quite a long time before the next election, which is in May, and I think the right thing to do is to give the voters a choice.”
If the selectmen decide to move ahead at their next meeting on Sept. 1, the earliest an election could be held would be November or December, according to Vellante. State law spells out a strict timetable that the town must follow. Vellante said the cost of a special election would be approximately $3,000.
The last time board positions were left unoccupied was in 2007, following the resignations of Randy Dean and Bill Marinelli in November and December, respectively, of that year. The remaining three members decided to wait to replace their colleagues until regular elections in April 2008, when Ricci, Blair, and Warren were elected.
“It’s not a crisis,” said Ricci, who noted that town committee and board assignments have already been reallocated among the selectmen and posted on the town website. Nor were Ricci and the other three members worried that the work of the BOS might be stalled by 2–2 decisions.
“You always run the risk of tie votes,” said Wallace. “But we’re going to have another tight financial year and I think the board would try very hard, whether it was four or five people, to be all together on the same page, because if we’re split, and we’re split from the School Committee and the Finance Committee, then the town will be split.”
“I think that the four remaining selectmen will work together and will continue making progress,” said Warren. “I don’t think we’ll become a 50-50 board.”
