Concord Mayor warns city councilor over ‘improper and unprofessional’ conduct

Two months after an initial inquiry into removing City Councilor Stacey Brown from office, Mayor Byron Champlin issued a written warning that she would face future disciplinary action if she does not cease behaviors that have broken city rules and disturbed her peers.

In a letter to Brown, Champlin accused her of “improper and unprofessional” conduct, including an overzealous pursuit of claims of financial wrongdoing by city staff, invoking her status as a councilor inappropriately, disruption of staff members’ abilities to do their jobs, and overall overbearance in council meetings.

“It is my expectation that you will cease the conduct outlined in this letter immediately,” Champlin concluded. “Should the council fail to see efforts to correct these issues, we may proceed to a formal disciplinary action in the future.”

Brown said she wasn’t able to respond to Champlin’s four-page letter until Thursday.

Public accusations

Champlin’s letter began by citing Brown’s “insinuations of malfeasance” against the city manager’s office and others in recent months.

Brown claimed that city administrators have moved hundreds of thousands of dollars from reserve accounts without council approval.

Money from the recreation reserve has gone towards the parks and recreation department’s operational budget for the last several years, including $100,000 of such support this year. While the council did not explicitly discuss those transfers during its budget meetings, and while they aren’t noted in the official budget accessible online, documentation of them was available to the council in budget detail records.

In another instance, Brown questioned whether $244,000 from the community improvement reserve had gone missing. City Manager Tom Aspell applied that money to lower the tax rate this year, after the council directed him to make “back of the budget cuts” at his discretion. Aspell’s strategy for doing so was not openly discussed by the council at the time, and the transfer appears without context in the budget meeting minutes.

Brown argued at Monday’s council meeting that the council hadn’t approved the use of transfers, but a true cut.

“Your actions erode the public trust in our City administration and the Council itself,” Champlin said. “Further, your accusations are unsupported, unfair, and harmful to the employees who carry out the day to day functions of our City’s government.”

The mayor also criticized Brown for falsely claiming in a constituent newsletter that the Friends of the Beav, a new non-profit raising money to help spot the costs on a new clubhouse at the city’s golf course, had lied about passing its first $25,000 in fundraising on to the city. City Hall has said the donation was made, and Champlin again criticized Brown for making an untrue public accusation that she could have first verified by examining city financial documents.

Leveraging her position

Champlin went on to accuse Brown of using her position for inappropriate influence and to gain access to city information that otherwise might be considered non-public.

Brown recently appeared outside the Merrimack County Courthouse in January wearing her councilor name badge.

Champlin wrote that doing so violated the city charter’s prohibition on councilors taking action as individuals, as it may have made court staff or grand jurors arriving for the day believe she appeared on behalf of the city.

More broadly, the mayor said he had been “advised” that Brown testifies before city boards and committees without making clear she speaks as a citizen and not as an official, which violates the council’s rules.

Champlin’s letter also states that, several years ago, Brown attempted to interfere with a city employee recruitment process by directly contacting an unnamed vendor.

The mayor said that Brown has sought unspecified records from city staff that are exempt from public disclosure, which he said “could be construed as an attempt to use your position to gain access to information that is not publicly available to all citizens” without using the correct process.

Wasting time and resources

Other councilors and city hall leaders have previously criticized Brown for levying excessive questions and requests for information from city staff, particularly the deputy city manager for finance and especially related to the city’s golf course.

While differentiating between “legitimate questions and people wanting to find out information” and “questions that have been asked with no veracity and no truthfulness,” City Manager Tom Aspell said Monday that Brown’s tactics had wasted staff time and, by extension, public money.

“The taxpayer should be very concerned about that type of behavior,” Aspell said.

To get a clearer picture of the volume of Brown’s staff inquiries and their responses, the Monitor placed a records request for all of her communication with city staff last year. A fulfillment is expected in early May, according City Hall’s response.

Champlin went on to say that Brown’s frequent removal of consent agenda items for further discussion was too often tied to a personal or political point Brown hoped to make rather than a desire to engage on the item at hand.

“It appears that you have been operating with an undisclosed personal agenda and that the removal of consent items is merely a tactic to allow you to address ‘your’ items even when these are not on the Council’s agenda,” Champlin wrote. “Such behavior is neither appropriate or productive.”

One example of this, which wasn’t cited by Champlin, occurred when Brown accused at-Large Council Amanda Grady Sexton in January of having a conflict of interest. Brown pulled from the consent agenda an outline of new guidelines for the city’s committee on homelessness. She went on to question Grady Sexton’s position on the city’s public safety board.

The actions referenced in the letter and those claims led the city council in January to have the city solicitor look into potential actions against Brown, including removal. No official result of that inquiry has been shared publicly, but Champlin’s letter Tuesday evening was the apparent result.

The city charter states that the council may suspend and remove any of its members “for cause, including, but not limited to prolonged absence from or other inattention to duties, crime or misconduct in office, or as specified in the Charter.”

Chapter 27 of the charter states that the city council acts exclusively “as a body” and that individual members shall not try to influence the city manager or interfere with the work of any city officer. Violations would result in a “forfeit” of office.

The mayor’s letter is attached in full to the online version of this story.

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