Extenuating Circumstances

Throughout the debate regarding the residency requirement in Seekonk the Board of Selectmen (BOS) have put a lot of faith in touting the “Extenuating Circumstances” clause in the Charter. The BOS seems to think that this clause gives them a free pass to hire whoever they want, regardless of what the rest of the Charter says, and then claim “Extenuating Circumstances”.

This is not meant to be an attack on the New Town Administrator. The purpose of this is to outline the flaw in the argument of the BOS.

What exactly qualifies as “Extenuating Circumstances”? The legal definition is:

• Surrounding factors (sometimes called mitigation) which make a crime appear less serious, less aggravated, or without criminal intent, and thus warranting a more lenient punishment or lesser charge.

Well that does not sound like it applies. I don’t believe the BOS is committing a crime. So let’s look at some other examples. A googling of the phrase brings up all kinds of definitions and examples. Outside of the instances where and actual crime has been committed the primary models used to define “Extenuating Circumstances” are as follows:

• Extenuating circumstances means a circumstance or set of circumstances that lessens or mitigates the consequences of failure under these rules to report as required in accordance with established due dates. Extenuating circumstances include but are not limited to unusual or infrequent events like an unforeseen natural event, labor dispute, or a computer system failure.

• Extenuating circumstances are normally defined as circumstances which are unexpected, significantly disruptive and beyond a persons control.

• unforeseeable - in that you could have no prior knowledge of the event concerned, and

• unpreventable - in that you could do nothing reasonably in your power to prevent such an event.

Now let’s outline the scenario:

1. In 1995 the Home Rule Charter of Seekonk was accepted by the Seekonk residence as the Constitution of our town.



2. In November of 2007 the BOS began excepting applications for new Town Administrators. (Notice I am not mentioning Lemont that is a whole case study in itself)



3. In November of 2007 Town Meeting was held and those attending were notified that new applicants were about to be interviewed. Town Meeting also agreed to put the proposal to amend the Charters’ Residency Requirement on the April Ballot for the Seekonk Residents to vote on.



4. In January 2008 the new Seekonk Town Administrator started his new job. He is not a Resident of the Town of Seekonk.

The BOS has stated that if the proposed amendment does not pass they will simply claim “Extenuating Circumstances” for the next three years until the current Town Administrators contract has expired.

Based on the definition above, this is out of line. There is no way that the BOS can reasonably say if the amendment does not pass that it was unforeseeable. Considering such a proposal failed less than a year ago by a very large margin I would say it is more likely that it will not pass. And this is unforeseeable? The very fact that this is a vote to overturn a policy already in place makes it highly likely that is will fail, or at least more likely that it will not pass. It would not be a surprise, and it would certainly not be unforeseeable.

Unpreventable? Well that is easy. They knowingly hired a candidate who did not meet the current guidelines. That was certainly preventable. The BOS just made a choice not to follow the rules.

So it seems to me that the BOS needs to find another angle.