A former vice president of the Winthrop Town Council, Hannah Belcher, has resigned from all five town committees on which she served, in a protest of the tactics by a faction of council members to override the positions of the body’s elected president.

The former council member, Hannah Belcher, said she acted after deciding the session Tuesday evening – a special meeting called as the body’s current president, Jim Letterie, was headed out of town for a family wedding – showed a council that’s not trying to act in the public interest.

“What took place was not simply a difference of opinion or approach, but a troubling display of disregard for the responsibilities of elected office, the town charter, and the residents of this community,” Ms Belcher, an opponent of Mr Letterie in the last town election, said in her resignation letter.

The Town Council meeting Tuesday was led in Mr Letterie’s absence by Patrick Costigan, who put forth a series of motions by another council member, Joseph Romano, to weaken Mr Letterie’s presidential power over council operations and to limit rules governing housing construction.

As part of that process, Mr Costigan and Mr Romano joined three other council members in denying the meeting’s interim leadership to the room’s longest-serving council member, Max Tassinari, and in then setting aside legal challenges to their convening of the meeting.

Rising disgust

The Costigan faction has been leading a sustained opposition to the state’s 3A housing law and other pro-housing policies. Yet even some of its allies on political issue protested the extent of the attempt to sidestep the governing authority that Mr Letterie won in last November’s election.

“People are getting disgusted with the temperature of the new council,” said Rob DeMarco, a former town-wide member of the council. “People are getting upset over the departure of previous norms,” he said.

Mr DeMarco, while a persistent critic of the 3A law, said he doesn’t consider himself aligned with any Town Council faction. But he did plead for compromise, and suggested the entire council take some kind of vacation together – “not talk politics, and have dinner and laugh,” he said.

Ms Belcher was one of two lifetime residents of Winthrop – along with civic fixture Karin Chavis – holding seats on five different town committees. In her resignation letter, Ms Belcher told the Town Council that she serves on such committees “with the belief that the time, effort, and thoughtful recommendations of their members would be given the consideration they deserve,” before adding: “I no longer have confidence that the current council is willing or able to do so.”

Painful decision

In an interview, Ms Belcher said the maneuvering seen Tuesday solidified an attitude that emerged immediately after the new council’s inauguration in January. “In reality, it doesn’t feel materially different, and therein lies the problem,” she said. “They’ve been behaving as such since the beginning of their term.”

Ms Belcher said her committee work took an average of about 15 hours a week. And yet quitting “was possibly one of the most painful things I have decided to do in recent times,” she said.

“I have been willing to stay involved and do my part, but it has become clear to me at this point, 10 months in, that this is the tact that they are committed to,” Ms Belcher said. “I think I’m better served resting for now, until I can be of use,” she said.

Her departures involve her posts as chair of the Firehouse Reuse Committee, secretary of the Commission on Disabilities, and member of the Affordable Housing Committee, the Firehouse Building Committee, and the Scholarship Committee. She lost to Mr Letterie in her bid last November to move up to the position of Town Council president.

Housing battle

Even before the new Town Council took office this year, the town’s Citizens Advisory Commission on Climate suspended its operations, saying the council has shown little to no interest in solving the problems it investigates, due in part to the fight with the state over the 3A law.

Winthrop is among just eight eastern Massachusetts communities still fighting 3A compliance and enduring the costs in state aid and legal fighting. And town voters in the election last November overwhelmingly chose a slate of six council members who promised to persist in that battle.

But soon afterward, Mr Letterie and two of the newly elected members suggested the 3A fight had run its course and backed away from it. Mr Costigan’s faction responded by challenging Mr Letterie on that issue and beyond, resisting some of his appointees to town committees and hunting for additional ways to weaken the president’s control over council meetings and their agenda.

Mr Letterie came to this week’s confrontation already under criticism for not forwarding committee applications to the council. A prominent case involves the Board of Registrars of Voters, which has remained at two members since its chair, Paul Reardon, was elected to the Town Council last November. The board under Mr Reardon defied state rules in a bid to assist the attempted removal of another council member, Max Tassinari, over his willingness to comply with the 3A law.

Appointee concerns

The Town Council president did allow a vote on Ms Chavis’s daughter, Debbie Chavis, who serves on two other town committees. But she lost in a tied council vote due to Costigan faction opposition led by the council’s vice president, Suzanne Swope, who wanted her own daughter, Diana Viens – the head of anti-3A efforts in Winthrop – to get the registrars seat.

Mr Letterie has acknowledged that the seat should be filled by someone not registered as a Republican, in the interest of political balance, while the town Democratic party leadership has said that Mr Letterie has not sent to the council candidates that they proposed months ago.

The proposals to limit the power of the Town Council president, that were outlined Tuesday by the Costigan-Romano faction, included requirements for candidates for town committees to submit resumes and submit to questioning of their qualifications by the full council.

Mr DeMarco said he saw no problem with appointments to town committees based on personal familiarity. “That would be normal,” he said of the practice.