An open letter to the Select Board, Town Meeting Members, and concerned citizens.
Dear Select Board members, Town Meeting members, and Concerned Citizens:
For Better Belmont is a newly formed group of Belmontians who are increasingly concerned about our town’s current well-being and long-term future.
The focus of the Collins Center report is on the town’s financial health. There are other key components that are outside the parameters of the Collins project that may possibly be the core cause of Belmont’s dire financial situation. The purpose of this email is to draw your attention to an important issue that can no longer be ignored and should be considered the town’s utmost priority.
Simply put, our town desperately needs a true leader. A proven, ethical professional who has the ability, knowledge, experience, and a successful track record to build a strong team. Someone with integrity, and humility who fosters mutual respect in the workplace. A leader who has the credentials and capacity to supervise and manage a finance team that includes a finance director who appoints, trains, and evaluates the town accountant, treasurer, and assessors. S/he is capable to help resolve the long overdue inequitable taxation issue in town. Is there anyone in our current town government who has the knowledge and qualifications to take charge of this role? Sadly, no. However, all of our comparable towns do. (here – finance director role as defined by Mass DOR/DLS).
There are significant ongoing community concerns related to the sitting town administrator (Garvin) regarding her lack of leadership, professionalism, and management skills. During her tenure with Belmont, there were protests and grievances raised by employees and unions for her condescending and disparaging attitude toward them. Here at the 5:20 &19:50 minute-mark and Here. Being a lawyer, Dash is fully aware that there’s no legal implication to acknowledging to the public whether an investigation was conducted or not. “People don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” There is a myriad of citizens’ complaints about Garvin’s credentials, excessive compensation, and unprofessional behaviors. People also question her knowledge as she dodges many straightforward questions and she constantly acted in ignorance of basic procedures and by-laws. It’s also incredibly alarming to find none of the key employees (Garvin included) who run, oversee, and make decisions of the day-to-day business of the town, has the necessary working experience, skills, and proper accounting/finance degree. (See attachment 1).
Before Belmont, Garvin worked as the town administrator (TA) for the town of Shirley (Shirley) for four years. This is her first time working as a TA serving a small population of 5,300 with an annual budget of about one-tenth of Belmont’s. Prior to that, she was an assistant to the town manager of Groton.
Garvin doesn’t seem to have a good rapport with town residents other than the ones who have influence and/or authority over her job performance. During her second year in Shirley, voters twice rejected her guaranteed COLA salary raise. However, two Shirley SB members made up the difference by giving her perks in benefits and citing the actions were approved by the town legal counsel. Long story short, their legal intimidation didn’t work. A citizen’s petition was launched and aimed at giving voters the power to oust elected officials who ignore “the will of the people”. It is now a STATE LAW. Never underestimate the power of a few committed citizens. Read here
Garvin has been job-hopping more often than most people in leadership roles. In the second two years of her tenure with Shirley – she applied for jobs from Ashburnham, Upton, Easton, and Leicester with salaries ranging from $95k-$100k; all of which decided to hire someone else. Shortly after Belmont SB signed another lucrative 3-year contract for Garvin late last year, our local newspaper revealed that she was one of the finalists for Reading’s town manager’s position. Once again, Reading offered the job to another candidate. These towns must know something about her that our SB doesn’t. Here
Belmont was Garvin’s lucky break, especially since one of the three finalists dropped out at the last minute. Dash & Paolillo were impressed with Garvin’s interview and Williams prefers the other candidate who was Maynard’s town administrator for 5 of the 9 years he worked there with a town budget 3X of Shirley’s. Despite that, our “affluent” town SB gave Garvin an 85% pay increase with starting salary of $168k plus a $2,400 car allowance — more than doubled the average TA salary in Massachusetts.
In less than 17 months, the SB gave Garvin a “merit” salary increase as they claimed — “bring her compensation closer to her peers”. Not only did she get the regular 4% salary increase (2% COLA & 2% merit) retroactive to 07/01/18 (less than 6 months from her start date). The SB increased her car allowance to $7,500, and a salary increase of $18,900 (or 11%) to a total compensation package of $189,300 effective 07/01/2019. Here
As ridiculous as it is, the SB continued to claim that Garvin was still slightly behind the average compensation for city/town managers of 14 comparable nearby municipalities. It’s unbelievably shortsighted on their part to only compare salaries and completely disregard the more important factors for making a fair and meaningful comparison; was it complete ignorance or intentional misleading? The key factors that should be considered are — (1) many of the “comparable” Cities/Towns on the list have a population size several times larger than Belmont’s; (2) roles and responsibilities for City/Town managers’ are much higher than town administrators; (3) education and experience; (4) accomplishments; and (5) job longevity with growth within the municipality. It’s absurd that Garvin was comparing her salary to town managers all with years of stellar experience in a leadership role.
On 10/20/2020, during the peak of the pandemic when the town’s hiring and spending freeze was still in effect; and the primary discussion in every SB meeting was to impose a large permanent override, Garvin successfully negotiated another 3-year contract. Her salary was increased to $190,500. In addition to a $7,500 car allowance, her new contract allows her to sell back 2 weeks of vacation which is worth around $7,330 as her vacation time was increased from 4 weeks to 5 weeks. She will continue to receive a minimum of a 2% COLA increase each year plus an annual performance review with a merit salary increase on May 1st. Can anyone figure out how many salaries increases Garvin gets each year? Here It’s also worth mentioning that while Garvin secures her multiple raises each year, Belmont’s firefighters are working hard through the Pandemic without a contract for 800 days!
Research shows the key factors that drove municipalities to insolvency are poor management, pension obligations, and excessive salaries. With a significant tourist-driven commercial base and being one of the largest affluent counties in the nation, it still took Orange County taxpayers 22 years to finally paid off the bond that get them out of the Ch. 9 bankruptcy. Our debt-ridden small town is heading in that direction at full speed and our leaders are adding fuel to the fire incessantly.
During Garvin’s tenure of 4 ½ years with Belmont, her office with a staff of 5 has directly sourced a little over $1M in grants. One of her job responsibilities is “seek out state and federal municipal grants and other funding sources”. They receive public and private grant notifications on a regular basis. One of the grants our SB raved about was the $25,000 Belmont received from the Community One Stop for Growth Program. The program awarded $88.7M to 122 communities in FY22 Here. A couple of notable ones — Watertown received 3 awards totaling $3.7 million and the total for Burlington was $1.1 million. If the town wants to demolish 50-year-old buildings and build much larger ones, Garvin needs to get grants to cover about 1/3 of the cost like other towns. Here is another recent Globe article about municipalities receiving library building grants.
Garvin kept using Arlington and Winchester’s town manager’s pay for her raise negotiations. Winchester is probably the only nearby town that’s comparable in terms of size and population. Arlington may be a stretch as its population is almost twice Belmont’s, but let’s make a fair comparison of our nearest two towns.
Winchester’s town manager was a four-term mayor for the city of Fitchburg. When she took office, the city was on the brink of financial ruin with only $10,000 in cash reserve. When she announced not to run for the 5th term, the city had millions in the bank, and the city’s bond rating was upgraded twice, from BBB- to AA stable. She attracted jobs including reinvestment in vacant mills and the $100 million development of an indoor water resort. She received numerous recognitions and awards Here and here. Her salary as Winchester’s town manager was slightly less than Garvin’s. She has a car allowance, but it’s capped at $2,000 for business-related expenses only, a common practice for government officials. She left Winchester late last year due to family relocation. It’s been over a year and Winchester is still searching for a new town manager to fill her shoes.
Arlington’s Deputy Town Manager/Finance Director (Pooler) was recently promoted to the Town Manager’s position here & (attachment 2). If you compare Pooler’s credentials to the three of Belmont’s key financial staff combined (attachment 1) and Pooler would be still ahead by a large margin. Pooler’s salary was $150,000 and he oversees the town’s financial departments, including Assessors, Comptroller, Treasurer, and IT. Garvin’s current compensation is $209,000 and the salary for Belmont’s newly hired assistant town administrator/finance director (Hewitt) is budgeted for $160k in FY23 (attachment 3).
Needless to say, Belmont way overpaid Garvin and Hewitt for their capacities and credentials. However, when people complained about Garvin’s excessive compensation package, she was the first to use “gender bias” as her only defense and all three SB members followed suit. Here at the 17:25 minute-mark and here at the 11:15 minute-mark. Without a doubt, a formal public apology is warranted for the baseless claims and repeated defamation of character.
With Pooler’s law training and expertise in town by-laws and other legal matters, he has saved a good portion of Arlington’s taxpayers’ money in legal fees. Garvin, on the other hand, seeks advice from legal counsels and consultants on a regular basis. It’s evident the SB knows her competence level as they are hesitant to delegate simple tasks to her office. Here On p.3 – application to join class action in Purdue Pharma bankruptcy settlement that 47 states participated. The town counsel’s law firm solicited the service but admitted it’s a simple process that many municipalities filed themselves. On p.6 hoist the India flag to celebrate their Independence Day. The SB voted unanimously to seek town counsel’s services for both issues.
Pooler is the chair of the Arlington High School Building Finance Subcommittee. They review every change order with a net total to date of $1.1 million. Garvin is Belmont Middle High School Building Committee (BC) member. Belmont BC allows Owners Project Manager (OPM) to review all change orders and the BC chair would only check a few selected ones. Belmont’s net change orders to date is $15.9 million. Here See the below chart and attachments 5 & 6.
BTW, do you know there’s $2.37 million in the School Building budget for West of Harris Field (WoH) work? Do you also know that BC voted to eliminate the WoH work but kept the money to cover School Project cost overruns? The WoH money was not even enough to cover one month’s worth of change orders (attachment 7). The SB and BC are all familiar with this deceiving “practice” as the BC originally wanted to do the same to the $2.6 million Solar budget, but the fraudulent idea was shot down by a group of diligent solar/climate activists. The BC did get an additional $1 million ARPA fund from it thanks to Garvin.
Why do credentials matter?
Here’s an example of the 2022 Treasury’s final rule of the ARPA Fund (American Rescue Plan Act):
| Date | Description / Remarks | Belmont | Arlington |
| ARPA Funds Allocation | $7.8 million | $35.25 million | |
| 05/07/21 | US Treasury announced the ARPA Interim Rule | ||
| May & Jun ’21 | Arlington’s Deputy Town Manager/Finance Director (Pooler) discovered a revenue recognition issue that would put Arlington and most Massachusetts municipalities at risk of claiming a good portion of the ARPA funds | ||
| 07/02/21 | Pooler submitted a letter directly to the Treasury that clearly outlined the issue and suggested increased flexibility to allow communities to exclude Debt Exclusion revenue. Here | ||
| 07/16/21 | Following Arlington’s letter, Massachusetts Secretary for Administration and Finance also submitted a letter to the Treasury on behalf of all Massachusetts municipalities suggesting excluding MSBA reimbursements from revenue loss calculations. Here | ||
| 08/12/21 | Arlington shared a video presentation of the ARPA framework as well as a spreadsheet to clarify how the town will use the $35.2M ARPA funds to help the community. They also launched a month-long public comment period Here | ||
| 12/06/21 | Belmont town-hired auditors finally discovered the revenue loss issue that Arlington had already submitted a letter DIRECTLY to the US Treasury SIX months ago (see above 07/02/21 Arlington). Click here P.2 – Belmont ARPA discussions. | ||
| 12/09/21 | Shortly after the auditors’ discovery, Belmont Town Administrator (Garvin) quickly put the blame on the failed override election as a preemptive measure for the lack of action on her part if the town has to return a portion of the ARPA funds. Here | ||
| 12/13/21 | Will Brownsberger shared an article with his followers “ARPA Funding to replace Municipal Lost Revenue”. The article also included links to Arlington and the state’s letters to the Treasury. Note: Arlington is not Brownsberger’s legislative district. Here (The top blue portion of the article is a postscript after the Treasury’s final rule) | ||
| 12/20/21 | It is evident that the town leaders did not have a grip on the issue at the last SB meeting of the year. They were still trying to figure out how to get more information on the ARPA issue. All three SB members suggested that Garvin reach out to other towns to see if they have any information/solutions to share. Garvin continued to claim that she was in frequent communication with Brownsberger et al, however, had she done that, she would find out from Brownsberger about the letters sent to the Treasury by Arlington and the State SIX months earlier. Click here – at 7:40 minute-mark | ||
| 01/06/22 | The Treasury announced its final rule to address issues raised by each state. | ||
| 01/10/22 | At the SB meeting, instead of a straightforward announcement of the ARPA final rule. Garvin first mentioned a letter that was sent to the Treasury by the Congressional Delegation of Massachusetts during the week of Christmas (as if the letter has something to do with the US Treasury’s Final Rule released on Jan 6th that was clearly next to impossible). There was also NO trace of such a letter posted on the US Treasury’s website. As ridiculous as it sounds, the SB congratulated Garvin for a job well done! Watch here – at the 19-minute mark | ||
| 1/13/2022 & 01/20/22 | The ARPA final rule also validated the No-Override group’s initial study of the ARPA rules that Garvin faulted. Instead of a public apology, Garvin quickly took credit for the $7.8M ARPA fund. Read here – Garvin claiming on the same media outlet that her long hard work paid off for the town. | Read Arlington’s local newspaper article about how Pooler convinced the Treasury to modify its rule that also helped other Massachusetts municipalities. Here |
Garvin is up for another performance review (one of her annual salary increases) at Monday’s SB meeting. It’s a clear case of Peter Principle that Garvin has reached a level of her competence before taking Belmont’s TA role. Garvin’s current compensation package is $209,066 (attachment 3). To give you a perspective. the average TA salary in Massachusetts is $90,000 here. Furthermore, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average local government employee benefits accounted for about 62% of their salaries. Undoubtedly, Garvin’s benefits are far superior here. Divisive leadership is toxic for our small town. We Deserve Better.
Belmontians for Better Belmont
P.S. To answer an SB member’s email suggesting if we want to change, we should volunteer or run for office. Let’s use the Structural Change Impact Group (SCIG) as an example. The SB allotted 4 resident slots to address numerous public claims that the town is controlled by a small group of self-appointed “elite”. The SCIG starting 4 “residents” are Paolillo and two men both are newer residents in Belmont between the age of 35-40. The fourth person was solicited by an SB member and she is NOT on the town resident list. It’s hard to forget the ugliest and most contentious election we had in April. There were countless baseless personal attacks on the challenging SB candidate. Even his children were verbally assaulted in school. The incumbent SB candidate even found money for road repair five days before the election (attachment 4). Speaking of Abuse of Power, remember Dash publicly accused Epstein of abuse of power at a Warrant Committee meeting? Whether the legal implication of such a serious accusation is justified or not, one of the SB members needs to step down.
