garrett

NARRAGANSETT — The issue that’s drawn more attention than any other this election season took another twist Monday, with the Town Council putting the brakes on a plan by Town Manager Jeffry Ceasrine for a restructured tax collector’s office.

By a vote of 3 to 1 the council filled the tax collector’s post with Christine A. Beck, the Town Hall employee who thought she was going to get the job back in April.

Council President T. Brian Handrigan voted with George F. Lenihan Jr. and James P. Durkin to appoint Beck, saying she had been led to believe she had the job, only to be left hanging after the council postponed its vote on April 21.

In the months that followed, Beck’s name came up time and time again as Lenihan and Durkin pointed to a delay in issuing tax bills and began asking why the plan to appoint her was quietly shelved — a scenario that embarrassed her, Handrigan said.

“For that, I want to apologize,” he said at Monday’s meeting. “The sad part of all this, and it really is the sad part, is that Christine only applied for a job.”

The vote followed a 70-minute workshop at which Ceasrine and Finance Director Robert J. Uyttebroek explained why they decided after the April 21 meeting to have Uyttebroek serve as tax collector, overseeing a deputy tax collector and two clerks who handled daily operations.

Ceasrine said he began to have second thoughts about filling the post and ultimately decided that the town could save money by having Uyttebroek oversee the office.

“In my mind, the old days of just taking a vacancy, filling a vacancy, don’t work anymore,” he said.

The council delayed its vote on April 21 after Councilman Christopher Wilkens approached Handrigan before the meeting and said he had questions about the qualifications required to fill the post. Handrigan, elaborating Monday on earlier previous statements by Wilkens, said he then told Ceasrine the appointment probably would not happen that night, prompting Ceasrine to tell Beck the same thing.

The issue did not come up again publicly until July, when tax bills went out late and other problems surfaced, including some duplicate bills.

“Any one of us should have brought that back and put” the appointment back on the agenda, Handrigan said, referring to council members, Ceasrine and the town clerk.

Ceasrine eventually put a motion to withdraw the appointment on the Aug. 18 agenda, saying he had filled the position with Uyttbroek because it would save money.

He defended the decision during Monday’s workshop, saying emphatically that the late tax bills stemmed from the installation of new software, not from the people in the office. He also said many Rhode Island communities have a finance director or another financial person who also serves as tax collector. And he rejected suggestions that the late bills caused a tax flow problem for the town.

“Those rumors spread around out there. That’s all they were,” he said.

Despite the assurances, Handrigan, Lenihan and Durkin took turns raising concerns.

Handrigan said that while a written report from Ceasrine last month concluded that the new setup was saving $63,252, that is only when the new setup is compared with an old setup in which the office had a tax collector and three clerks. When compared to the setup originally called for in this year’s budget — a tax collector and two clerks — the savings was only about $10,000, he said.

“Ten thousand is not a whole lot of dollars to be saving in place of having a tax collector,” he said.

Lenihan, who led the way in asking questions over the summer, said it didn’t make sense to install new software when the office had just been staffed with new people.

“The whole thing wasn’t done right, and that’s why I’m going to vote for her tonight,” he said, referring to Beck.

Durkin asked about the potential for the deputy tax collector, who is in the same union as the two clerks, to transfer on short notice to another position.

Ceasrine acknowledged that possibility but said anyone appointed to the tax collector’s post has the option of leaving.

Wilkens, who cast the dissenting vote, said he was “not crazy about the way things went down,” but wanted to focus on the larger issue of saving money and not just doing things the old way.

“We’ve been trying to move away from the typical municipal staffing that we have in Rhode Island … We all know what kind of economy we’re in,” he said.

Councilwoman Krista J. Garrett, who found herself at the center of the controversy when Lenihan and Durkin suggested she interfered with Ceasrine’s decision because her daughter was one of 22 applicants for the post, sat silent through the workshop and the discussion at the regular meeting, where she recused herself from voting. Garrett and Ceasrine have each said that Garrett did not attempt to influence Ceasrine’s decision on how to staff the office.

Beck, who has been working in the tax assessor’s office, smiled yesterday when asked about the turn of events and said she starts her new job on Tuesday. Her comments were interrupted by John D. Majeika, the tax assessor, who said he did not want Beck talking to a reporter on town time.

redgar@projo.com