Because he neglected to add the election of a new chairperson to the board’s April 26 agenda, Board of Health Chairman Tom Philippou remains chairman, at least for the next two weeks, in spite of a request by board member Sharon McCarthy that the election be held that night.
In an email after the meeting, Philippou said that the omission was not intentional. It “fell through the cracks,” he said, for several reasons: the Town Election, the board’s newly appointed clerk who is still learning the job, and some family issues that he is dealing with. Board member Sharon McCarthy has asked that the election be put on the agenda for the board’s next meeting, scheduled for May 10. In his email, Philippou said he would do so.
McCarthy requested the election Tuesday night before the board had adjourned, but Philippou declined to call it, saying, “It’s not on the agenda.” McCarthy had a brief conversation with Nashoba Associated Boards of Health sanitarian Ira Grossman about whether a vote could be taken anyway. During that conversation, Still River resident Deborah Skauen-Hinchliffe, who attends most Board of Health meetings, told the board that she would file a complaint with the attorney general’s office if the board went ahead with the vote. The attorney general’s “Open Meeting Law Guide” “strongly encourages” boards to postpone action on topics that are not on the agenda and are “controversial or may be of particular interest to the public.”
Last year, a vote was taken on a new chairman at the April 14 Board of Health meeting. Philippou, who was the chairman then, nominated Lorin Johnson, but Johnson declined and nominated Philippou. Phillipou became chairman on a 2–1 vote; McCarthy abstained. The election of a new chairperson was not listed on the agenda for that meeting, which Skauen-Hinchliffe attended.
