Selectmen Slam Coppola for MBTA Remarks at Walpole Meeting

FOXBOROUGH, MA — Selectmen Chairman David Feldman warned the board that his update during Tuesday night’s meeting was going to be uncomfortable but necessary following comments made by a fellow board member at a Walpole Board of Selectmen meeting. What followed was a heated discussion aimed at a member who spoke at another town's selectmen meeting.

Feldman slammed Selectman Ginny Coppola Tuesday for comments made during an MBTA presentation in front of the Walpole Board of Selectmen, telling Coppola “Regardless of the intent, the reality is you showed no respect to the people of Foxborough or the public process. You absolutely showed no respect to your fellow board members. Your appearance at the Walpole Board of Selectmen was premeditated and calculated.”

On Nov. 29, the Foxborough board voted to back a Commuter Rail pilot program at the Gillette Stadium stop under multiple conditions including no overnight storage of trains in Foxborough. Coppola was the only person to vote against the station.

“I know I’m not going to be too popular with my fellow selectmen but you know what, sometimes you have to be able to sleep at night and sometimes you have to make decisions for the right reasons and you really have to questions whether these decisions that they're asking for are the right decisions. Is this the right project for this area? I can tell you I don’t think it is,” Coppola said at the Walpole meeting, with Feldman adding that she told Walpole Selectman David Salvatore in a phone call from Salvatore that she couldn’t sleep at night thinking of the people of Walpole after the decision Foxborough made.

“You need to ask yourself do you represent the people of Foxborough or Walpole?” Feldman said.

Feldman said that by speaking as a member of the board, Coppola violate four sections of the town’s code of conduct for the selectmen that states members should carry out board decisions once they are made, board members represent the town at all times, members should communicate the position of the board with the press and state officials only if the board agrees with the decision and the language, and board members will treat others will respect the rights of all board member despite opinion.

Coppola said she had no intent on speaking but inaccuracies in the MBTA presentation moved her to speak.

“I went to that meeting because I was going to that meeting anyway. I was not on the speaking agenda. I had absolutely no intention of speaking,” Coppola said.

“This is how you operate. This was the final straw, this has happened many times,” Feldman said. “You made a decision to speak on behalf of the board.”

“No I didn’t. I said they were my personal remarks,” Coppola said.

“You never once said theses are your personal remarks. You said we we we every single time,” Selectman Mark Elfman said. “If you started your comments by saying 'I’m here as an individual not representing the town,' things might be a little different.

When former Selectman Lynda Walsh spoke, Coppola commented “I don’t have to listen what you have to say. You’re going to chastise me too?”

“I was going to make a simple statement to try to help you out as much as you try to help us out. I don’t like that attack Ginny, that just threw me way off,” Walsh said, There were many times when I sat on the board, majority boards. I didn’t like it but you have to get along. When you went to Walpole and made your comments I heard the selectman Ginny Coppola asked to speak,” Walsh said.

“I did not ask to speak. I raised my hand to speak but I had no intention of speaking when I got there,” Coppola said.

“I just think that it’s difficult enough of a job, but if you’re losing sleep over it, recuse yourself from any decision. If it’s hurting you that bad and you take it that personally that you’re going to attack me when I stand up here, something’s wrong.”

Selectman Jim DeVellis, who was at the same Walpole meeting but didn’t speak, tried to calm the waters following the discussion.

“We’re five volunteers, we’re all doing what we think is best for the town. Ginny is passionate and she did what she thought was good for the town. I don’t want to go through meeting after meeting with anger. We did that with the casino, people lost friends over it,” DeVellis said.

After the meeting, Coppola told a reporter from the Foxboro Reporter that her comments were her own and she was trying to state that she might take some heat from the rest of the board.

Image: file photo