CHINA — Selectman Jeff LaVerdiere formally resigned Monday afternoon, citing frustrations over an ongoing funding dispute with the town’s volunteer fire departments and a feeling of ineffectiveness in reducing municipal expenses.

Jeff LaVerdiere

LaVerdiere, who was in his second term, walked out of a previous select board meeting Oct. 15 following a conversation about the town’s memorandum of understanding with its three volunteer fire departments over stipend distribution.

LaVerdiere’s exit comes a week before Election Day, when voters will choose two people to fill term-expired seats on the select board. But LaVerdiere’s vacancy will not be filled at that time, leaving the board without a tie-breaking vote.

Instead, according to Town Manager Dennis Heath, LaVerdiere’s replacement will be selected in a special election either at the same time as the presidential primary in March or earlier in a single-race ballot, which Heath said would be significantly more expensive. The Select Board will determine which route to take during its Nov. 12 meeting.

“While I have enjoyed my time on the board I have not had any impact on reducing spending and I am not needed to make ill informed decisions,” LaVerdiere wrote in his resignation email to town officials Monday afternoon.

But the dispute with the fire departments seems to have weighed heavy in LaVerdiere’s decision and shows no signs of being resolved anytime soon.

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The independently incorporated fire departments have not yet received voter-approved funding for their stipends this year, which totals $40,000 and is to be split evenly between the China Village, South China and Weeks Mills stations.

Heath has said as early as March 2019 that in order to legally disburse the funds, the chiefs of each department need to outline their method for calculating payments to members. If not, Heath said, they could risk losing their volunteer status with the U.S. Department of Labor by violating the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which states that volunteer stipends cannot exceed 20% of what a full-time employee would be paid.

China Town Manager Dennis Heath, at his desk at the China town office in August 2018.

To ensure accountability, Heath also recommended that the chiefs sign a memorandum of understanding to “memorialize what we agree to be our respective responsibilities,” which he said is standard practice between municipalities and volunteer fire departments. The selectmen then voted July 8 to release the stipend money to the fire departments only after both the Maine Department of Labor approved a stipend calculation method of the chiefs’ choice and the three chiefs signed the memorandum of understanding.

Since March, these steps have been met with firm disapproval from the fire chiefs, who rallied numerous members of the public around their cause.

LaVerdiere wrote in his resignation letter that the proposed memorandum of understanding “is written with a negative tone in my opinion.”

“If town officials had residents’ best interest in mind, we would be working in good faith toward a positive outcome for our town. All I see is a power struggle!” LaVerdiere wrote.

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Some members of the select board have said they felt that under the previous system, chiefs and ranking officers were “double dipping” into town funds by accepting flat-rate stipends for their leadership and also compensating themselves on a participation basis, which town officials said was meant to encourage participation from non-ranking volunteers. On quarterly reports to the select board, the three chiefs would list the total amount of money they spent on stipends but would not specify how the figures were determined.

Scott Cotnoir, director of the labor department’s wage and hour division, approved the chiefs’ calculation method on Aug. 27 and said it did not violate state labor laws, according to an email obtained by the Morning Sentinel. The method maintains that ranking officers will still be paid per-call ($3.11) in addition to a flat rate stipend ($1,000 for chiefs, $500 for deputy chiefs and assistant chiefs and $250 for lieutenants and captains).

As of Tuesday, however, none of the three chiefs has signed the document.

“The thing that’s soaring around town is that the town manager is holding the stipends hostage, and people need to understand that this memorandum of understanding was something that was agreed to by the chiefs, they agreed to sign it and now suddenly they haven’t signed it,” Heath said. He said that the chiefs agreed to sign the document at a meeting that took place before the special select board meeting July 8, when the officials agreed on conditions under which funds would be disbursed.

China Village Fire Chief and state Rep. Tim Theriault said Tuesday that he and the others do not plan on signing the document and will take the issue up after the new select board is chosen next week.

“It’s an ongoing saga that just doesn’t want to end,” Theriault said.

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Tim Theriault, the China Village fire chief, center, and Richard Morse, right, vote in favor of Article 9 during Town Meeting April 6 at China Middle School.

Theriault said the chiefs never agreed to sign the memorandum in connection with their current budget. “We’ve had a budget for 70 years and never had a memorandum of understanding for it. They want control, and we’re not going to give it to them.”

“We are going to wait for the new board,” he added, “because every time we make a deal, there’s a new board and they don’t remember.” 

At the meeting LaVerdiere walked out of two weeks ago, the select board had been discussing taking the next step toward giving the fire departments their stipend funds by putting the money on a warrant, pending the chiefs’ signatures on the memorandum of understanding. The board approved that idea at a special meeting the following day, Oct. 16.

In his resignation letter Monday, LaVerdiere concludes, “I pray for you all to have a good year and work through the ongoing strife.”

In an interview Tuesday morning, LaVerdiere said that while the memorandum of understanding was the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of his resignation, he had been frustrated as a selectman for a long time.

“When I joined (the select board), I wanted to cut spending and try to look at things from a more business perspective,” he said. “The first thing I noticed was health insurance. We spend a lot of money on health insurance (for town employees) and I have basically zero support for that. Everybody has had to tighten their belt. Nobody has a super Cadillac plan, especially in the private sector. (Town employees) have almost zero copay and no deductible. It’s BS. But it’s been one thing after another. I feel like everything is: ‘Let’s see what we can spend,’ not, ‘What can we pay for (a certain thing),’ and I just don’t feel like I’ve been effective at all there, I really don’t. It’s been really frustrating to me.”

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LaVerdiere said he was also upset at the select board’s decision to run three-phase power to the transfer station for a cost of about $80,000 when he felt it was unnecessary. He added that he hopes his departure from the board will not cause too much of a ripple.

“I really don’t want to get in a big fight with all these townspeople (and selectmen),” he said. “They’re my friends, and I made my point to them. The thing is what’s right is right, and in my opinion I’m right and in their opinion they’re right. They think we need (a memorandum of understanding) for control of the fire departments and I say we don’t. Some of the people on our fire departments have been there over 40 years, and we’re trying to treat them like they’re not members of our community, like we don’t trust them, and that’s not right.”

Cotnoir, from the Maine labor department, deferred questions about the stipend calculation method’s compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act to the U.S. Department of Labor. Heath said a representative from that agency spoke with him on the phone and requested more information at the end of September, but he is unsure of whether their conversation will continue. This will not impact the disbursement of funds, though, according to Heath.

The only thing standing between the money and the chiefs is their signatures.

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