It wasn’t exactly a Kumbaya moment, but tensions on the Lompico Water Board did ease somewhat last week after board member Sherwin Gott issued a public apology to board president Rick Harrington over the previous week’s kerfuffle, which saw rattled boardmembers call a recess in order to restore decorum in the tiny meeting room.
It wasn’t exactly a Kumbaya moment, but tensions on the Lompico Water Board did ease somewhat last week after board member Sherwin Gott issued a public apology to board president Rick Harrington over the previous week’s kerfuffle, which saw rattled boardmembers call a recess in order to restore decorum in the tiny meeting room.
At issue at the Jan. 11 special meeting was a disagreement over whether the board had in fact ruled out using a certain type of valve in the repair of the broken water main on Lake Blvd., which failed in 2006. Gott said the board had decided against the valve. Harrington, who had put an item on the agenda asking for $260 to pay engineers to assess the valve, said it had not. Evidently the rest of the board agreed with Harrington, as the motion ultimately passed, but not before Gott reportedly accused Harrington of lying.
“It escalated into Sherwin yelling, ‘You have a problem with honesty, you have a problem with the truth,’” says resident and regular meeting attendee Merrie Schaller. When Harrington told Gott he was out of order, Gott opined loudly that he was not; at that point cooler heads prevailed and a recess was called. (Gott did not return the Weekly’s messages by press time.)
Not a great turn of events for a district notorious for infighting, openly hostile board meetings and irregular procedures. Last year’s headline-grabbing developments—the district secretary charged with embezzlement, the longtime manager fired and a grand jury report detailing a history of poor management—weren’t even the most dramatic moments. That may have come in 2009, when then-board president Rob Hansel called the sheriff to intervene in a meeting that had devolved into swearing and shouting.
Perhaps it was PTSD stemming from that episode that had three community members voice concerns about civility at the opening of the Jan. 18 meeting and call on Gott to apologize. And he did. At the end of the meeting, Gott apologized for his conduct and made reference to the Tucson shootings, which he said had made a big impression on him.
Harrington is eager to put the matter behind the board and “put the best foot forward.”
“He did apologize for his actions,” says Harrington, “so I’m reluctant to make a big deal out of it at this point because I want to work together as a team and not as a divided board.”
