Tyngsboro board shoots messenger, not the message 

Paranoia, a selectman’s personal safety, executive-session leaks, betrayal, an embattled police chief’s quest for transparency — the town of Tyngsboro has experienced it all in the past few weeks.

It all stems from the Board of Selectmen’s decision in late October to reinstate Animal Control Officer David Robson Sr., who’d been on administrative leave since September for social media posts that Police Chief Richard Howe had deemed racially insensitive and inflammatory.

However, selectmen, in a 3-1 vote, opted to disregard Chief Howe’s objections and return Robson to his former position, even though he’s never publicly apologized for his problematic posts.

Defying the top public-safety official in such a controversial matter would seem to put the three selectmen who sided with Robson — Richard Reault, Hillari Wennerstrom and Steve Nocco — in an uncomfortable, if not untenable, position in town.

Tyngsboro patrolmen, in a release lambasting the Robson’s reinstatement, called the selectmen’s decision an “egregious display of poor decision-making and leadership.” The Tyngsboro Police Union also claimed that the vote put police lives at risk when they are involved in potentially volatile situations.

The three pro-Robson selectmen — Chairman David Robson Jr., the elder’s Robson’s son, recused himself from the entire matter – naively thought their reinstatement vote would remain out of the public domain since it occurred during an Oct. 29 closed, executive session to which Chief Howe wasn’t invited.

The Sun published a story on Nov. 2 that said the board voted 3-1 to reinstate Robson with the above-named selectmen voting in favor. Selectman Ron Keohane voted against.

That story, according to Reault, revealed all the information from the closed-door meeting.

The three selectmen — seemingly more concerned about being identified rather than their questionable decision — immediately pointed fingers at Chief Howe as the source of the leak.

This all came to a head Thursday night, when Howe met in closed session with selectmen about leaks of executive session information to the media.

Though details of how the meeting’s vote were disseminated, the board decided to take no action.

It turns out that both Keohane — the lone vote against Robson’s reinstatement — and Town Manager Matt Hanson both informed Howe about the vote, in varying degrees of detail.

“I had the right to inform the chief about the decision,” Keohane said later. “The chief was not invited to that meeting, and I was disappointed about that. I thought the chief had every right to know if the animal control officer was going to be reinstated and when.”

The chief, Keohane explained, asked to be updated on the outcome.

Howe added: “I certainly have the right to receive information from a source who has the right to give me that information.”

And Howe, who all along wanted this saga aired in public, apparently took it from there.

The other three selectmen saw these actions as a breach of confidentiality, and admonished the chief for alerting the press.

While it’s technically true that executive-session deliberations should remain private until that particular board decides to make them available to the public, in reality that rarely happens.

What these three selectmen perceived as an internal betrayal, many in town saw as a betrayal of the public trust.

Who’s in the right? The residents of Tyngsboro residents will render the final verdict, which will probably occur on Election Day.