Simsbury Board of Selectmen Meeting June 10, 2024

Board of Selectmen Meeting June10, 2024

At every meeting the Board of Selectmen and others, pledge allegiance to the flag.

The pledge to the flag should not be taken lightly, “with liberty and justice for all.”

Liberty and justice for all, places the flag above all special interests.

Adding additional flags on the pole with the American flag signifies the lack of respect for the flag that represents all people.

This appears to be unamerican.

We should not desecrate the importance of the flag by adding other flags on the pole, giving other groups equal status to the American flag.

Chief Boulter disrespected the flag during the Black Lives Matter event in front of Town Hall by “taking a knee” during the ceremony.

The Board of Selectmen has continued to be guided with the desecration to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights with their Rules of Procedure.

First Selectman Wendy Mackstutis has not rescinded the undemocratic rules of Public Audience, ignoring the ACLU findings that the rules should be changed to comply with the First Amendment to the Constitution.

At the May 13, 2024 meeting of the Board of Selectmen, I asked the Board to investigate whether Chief Boulter was truthful when giving testimony at the Trombly hearing.

Have my concerns been reviewed with Chief Boulter?

According to SCTV the Trombly hearing has had 197,000 views, the largest viewing numbers for SCTV programs.

The Police Department recently contracted with Certus Solutions to study the Workplace and Scheduling within the department for $30,000

The Certus Report was a 93 page analysis of the workload and scheduling within the Police Department.

Recently Certus Solutions finalized a report after thoroughly interviewing many members of the Police Department within the charge of investigating Workplace and Scheduling issues.

However, after the report was submitted to Chief Boulter, the findings were scrutinized by him with mass editing of the report under the guise that the final report was a draft and in need of changes, page by page.

The study that was initiated by the Police Department was to have an independent professional service review and report on their findings under their contract, Workplace and Scheduling study.

The report included recommendations for changes in staffing support departments and recommendations on the internal staffing within the Police Department.

The submitted report were recommendations and findings not mandates for Chief Boulter to either implement or ignore.

There appears to be no need to scrutinize a report generated by unbiased professionals to improve the quality of service within the department and the community.

According to my FOI request, it appears that Chief Boulter had extensive emails to and from Jim McCabe, the investigator for Certus, asking for changes to the final report.

The Police Commission was tasked in these emails to review the Certus Report as a draft and make changes as did Chief Boulter.

In all, there were over 80 emails under the subject: Workload and Staffing Study.

Some of the emails reflect this interaction with Jim McCabe on the final report, treating it as a draft to be edited before becoming final.

“The second version is the clean version with all the edits accepted and comment bubbles removed.

Please make your comments/edits on either version and I will address them and reconcile both versions accordingly. And please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

From a management perspective, you are free to interpret what has been written and develop your allocation and deployment strategies around it. We have given you plenty of options to consider for possible implementation.

Answering the comments from the "small group" and addressing your concern about community policing, attached is what we would like to consider the Final version of the report. I removed the "draft" watermark and all the side‐bar comments, and included a PDF version for your use. “

The emails also reflect an appointed work group by Chief Boulter to review the initial findings in the report for input before the report is finalized.

It appears unusual that over 80 emails are required to change the findings of a consultant report.

This reflects Chief Boulter’s micro- management style of managing the Police Department and control over content and has led to a toxic work environment.

How many of the recommendations in the Certus Report will be implemented and how many recommendations will be sitting on the shelf along with all the past reports?

It appears that all the time spent on re-writing a consultant report did not add any value to the finalized report.