Main Street: Vote Leaves Position Vacant

One of the city's strongest volunteer organizations is at a turning point. 

At the end of the Havre de Grace Main Street group's meeting Tuesday night, the organization was still without a manager.

After a motion from Main Street board member Barbara Wagner, the 19-person board voted 8-7 to uphold the executive board’s decision to fire Diana Broomell, the group's manager for 2 ½ years. Two voters abstained, one was not in attendance, and President Bill Price is authorized to vote only in the case of a tie.

Wagner asked the board to consider allowing Broomell to remain on as manager until an adequate replacement was hired and trained, or until autumn’s Graw Days, whichever came first. Her motion also requested Broomell be able to work in flexible hours—not strict, 9-to-5 hours—in concert with her requirements as a recently elected Cecil County commissioner.

Of the eight who voted against the motion, four included the executive board members who acted alongside Price in firing Broomell.

Member Mark Broomell, Diana’s husband, abstained from the vote.

The mayor and four City Council members—all members of Main Street—attended the meeting, which lasted roughly 90 minutes and drew a standing-room-only crowd of organization members to the Havre de Grace Police Department. Diana Broomell did not attend.

Councilman and member Jim Miller objected to the voting procedure. He said that just as Mark Broomell abstained from voting, so too should the executive committee members who fired Broomell.

“I was very disappointed in your vote,” Miller said. “The four of you that made the decision probably shouldn’t have made a vote in the thing. You talk about fracturing the place. You four fractured it with your actions.”

Price—whose opening remarks can be read here—maintained the decision was his, and was based upon the concern for staffing the Main Street office during regular business hours, as well as personnel matters, which he repeatedly refused to disclose. That non-disclosure led one board member to join Mark Broomell in abstaining from a vote.

In a phone call to Patch Wednesday morning, Diana Broomell said she was not privy to any personnel matters that led to her firing. They were never discussed in any meetings leading up to her dismissal, she said. She said she placed phone calls to Price Wednesday morning to clarify his claim that underlying personnel issues played a role, but had not received a return call.

Before she was fired, Broomell was willing to stay on in an interim capacity to help ease the transition for a new manager, she said. It is that willingness, it became apparent Tuesday night, which led to confusion between Broomell and Billee Smith, who has been acting as Broomell’s supervisor as Price has been in Florida.

In a conversation with Broomell within the past few weeks, Smith recalled Tuesday saying, “I said, 'What are your long-term goals, what are your long-term plans?' And she said, ‘I think you need to start looking for somebody else.’ I said OK, that means we need to look for somebody else, meaning ‘I’m quitting.’ She was going to give us three months to look for somebody else. She definitely told me she would not leave us high and dry.”

After that conversation, Smith told board members at the next meeting—the meeting preceding Tuesday’s session—that Broomell would be resigning.

That announcement caught Broomell off guard, and she replied within that week that it was not her intention to step down.

On Tuesday, one board member suggested that if the conversation Smith and Broomell had was the only reason to believe Broomell intended to resign, then there was a serious misunderstanding.

“That’s not tendering a resignation,” board member and local business owner John Klisavage said. “That’s saying, this is planning for the future, and it's giving you a chance for you guys to try and get people in here so I can train them so we can make this a smooth transition.”

Price interjected to say that he had, in a previous discussion with Broomell, “talked her off the ledge” when it came to resigning from her post as manager of Main Street.

“It appeared to me that this was something that was obviously troubling Diana,” Price said.

Councilman Mitch Shank spoke in support of Broomell, suggesting that any concern over conflict of interest should be thrown out. He pointed to the Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway, for which Mary Ann Lisanti serves as the executive director. Lisanti is also a member of the Harford County Council, the local equivalent to Cecil County’s commissioner role.

“The precedent has been set. To say it’s a conflict of interest, I have a problem with that,” Shank said. “I’m just very disappointed in the action.”

Price responded by saying there was no political conflict of interest, rather a time conflict.

A three-person committee was established Wednesday to help find Broomell’s replacement. Bill Watson, Curtis Coon and Lori Maslin will lead the search. At least three applicants submitted resumes to Main Street prior to Broomell’s firing.

Pam Wexler has volunteered to maintain the office on Union Avenue until a new manager is hired.

Broomell made $22,000 in salary with no benefits for the 32-hour-a-week job. She maintains, she often worked well beyond those hours.

Tuesday, her husband Mark, a business owner and member of the Main Street board, claimed even he worked well beyond 32 hours in a volunteer role with the group.

He called her removal from the position “ugly, ignorant and uncalled for.”

“Not only did my wife give everything she had to this for 2 ½ years, but the charge that she didn’t have enough time is ludicrous,” Broomell said. “I probably put 32 hours a week in during the summer, and you know it. That woman worked nonstop. Then you had her removed like a criminal from that office.”

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Editor’s Note: Havre de Grace Patch is a member of Havre de Grace Main Street, but not of the 19-person Main Street board.