Remarks by Marc Laplante
101 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 2 of 5
“I did. Prefer. I said that, prefer. I said it several times for the whole thing. Okay. A minimum of five years experience as a municipal planner with one to three years of supervisory experience. So let's move on. A minimum of five years of experience as a municipal planner. Do you have five years of experience as a municipal planner?”
“Okay. I don't even have to go through the second part of that. And then what it looks for is an equivalent combination of education and experience. And it would appear to me that that is not met as well. I've had a chance to look at your record. I actually spent some time late this afternoon in the personnel office looking at the records because there's other things that are of some interest. One of the things on issues like this and OPD is an important position in our city. And so I wanted to make sure that was thorough and as fair as possible. When I woke up this morning, I had no idea how…”
“Thank you. I paid attention to the answers, and I appreciate the candor. A couple of things that are just, I think, of concern, and I would feel like I'm not doing my job if I didn't express it. so i had a chance late today to look like i said to do my due diligence to do just because it is an important position i agree so i had a chance to take a look at your application in january 18 2022 for the police department position i had a chance to take a look at your application and resume for july 14 2026 for this position and then i had a chance to take a look at the july 20th 2026 application…”
“I appreciate the explanation. It rises the question why it wasn't placed in 2022 or why you would put N.A. No one says all that and then says N.A.”
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“They don't need to stand up. I know who they are. Thank you everybody on that team. And they're very good people. I know them all and have a lot of respect for those individuals. The people who you used as references are one of them. It was somebody on the team. That's not true. Somebody that you used as a reference was on this interview committee, that's true. I don't know if I need to name the names. If a counselor is aware, I'm willing to go ahead and do it. I don't think it's top secret. Also, there's people that are on. I will mention the people who are on the interview committee. Martha…”
“I don't doubt that, and I believe that. I really do, because it's not your job to create the interview committee. Of course you wouldn't know unless someone told you, hey, and I believe that you didn't know that. But when you do something like that, it would leave someone like me who's looking at this, who looked at the scores, who looked at these things, right, to say, the way that we conducted this don't you, it would appear like that's a leaning a little bit of an advantage. Someone that is a professional person that you've described one of these individuals as, that's serving now to judge…”
“That I don't know, but I would certainly say that.”
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
“Are you aware of what you're getting yourself into?”
“Okay. I mean, we are about to enter a crazy time in the city. Correct. And we are about to. I think we are in a crazy time right now. So we are in... WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CRAZY TIME AND SOME OF THIS CRAZINESS MAY REACH YOUR DOORSTEP. AND SO I JUST, YOU KNOW, IT'S A TOUGH POSITION. THERE'S EXPECTATIONS. FORTUNATELY, UNLIKE THE BOARD OF REGISTERS, WE ARE ON TELEVISION EVERY NIGHT OF THE WEEK. YOU CAN SEE US. YOU CAN HATE US EVEN MORE AFTER YOU WATCH US TWO OR THREE TIMES OR YOU CAN LOVE US. Which other way it goes. You're not going to have that. But the decisions you make are going to be…”
“can a second set discussion discussion personal plan very simple uh... we all have it i would you know it's late well i just need your attention now for just a few minutes we all have at our desk requested this council or regarding whether or not this location is fought zoning the technical turn is preferential zoning that's that's the legal term and we did receive the opinion from the City Attorney. Do you mind reading it for the record? Sure. I've been asked, this is from the City Council, from the City Attorney, dated today. I've been asked to review this request for a zoning change to see…”
“So a case law in the Commonwealth, and I think we've got other land use kind of planners here that are more involved. can say that things are tossed out or at the court levels are, judgments are that if you have a parcel like this that is called preferential zoning, it is unlawful. So it's not a criminal act, just unlawful. It's, we shouldn't be doing that. There are laws against this by case law. Don't ask me, I'm not the city attorney here. I'm not gonna be able to give you the case law and the matters, but there is a treasure trove of case law that talks about in great detail what spot and…”
“That was a simple question to the city attorney. Yes.”
“thank you madam chair members of the council uh as you know every two weeks i come here and i mention uh the individuals who we're going to be honoring as part of the lawrence square project this upcoming week this thursday will we be remembering and rededicating the sign for phil moore phil moore was a world war ii uh infantryman he received the bronze star he's lived to tell the tale came back to lawrence And he worked at Cedar Crest, which you may or may not remember. But he was very active in veterans organizations and was very much a very strong veterans activist. And so we'll be…”
“Thank you. So this is going to be a motion to go into executive session. I'd like to just repeat one more time. Why are we going into executive session? What legal authority are we going to executive session? And have we got any legal guidance for going in and doing that?”
“AND WHOSE OPINION WAS GIVEN ON AND WHOSE OPINION WAS GIVEN ON THIS?”
“THE CITY ATTORNEY? MR. HOOTON. MR. HOOTON. HE'S GOING TO BE JOINING US.”
“But what, but there was a clause in there. You said clause five. Can you read clause five? Do you have it?”
“Are we planning on investigating causes of criminal? Isn't that what the courts are doing? We're going to be investigating. That's what we're going to be talking about in executive session.”
“No, I get that. But what I'm trying to do is honor the intent of what the executive session is. I'm trying to better understand why we should go. I mean, we should not go into executive session unless we really have to. That's correct. As others have mentioned, rightfully so, we should be conducting our business in the open. We should be talking about these things in the open. There are certain times that we shouldn't. We were talking about somebody's personal reputation, for example. We're talking about somebody's medical, for example. Perhaps even for potential job searches, for example.…”
“No, no, I just, my understanding is that this,”
“I have no problem with that. I think this is very encompassing, and I think it's important that we hear what the capitol has to say because these are public monies. Public monies, we've all read the allegations. I don't need to say them. So we understand what the allegations are. So I am curious to hear what the capitol has to say regarding the public monies.”
“If there's no objections to that, can we listen to the capital? If somebody objects, I'm happy to withdraw my request. But if there's no objection, can we go ahead with this?”
“Just as a great segue so with that we almost had the capo speak but now it's the time just just to kind of reiterate what the with the city attorney said so we can hear firsthand what kind of public impact is having a public dollars and the impact that's having on the city financially capo.”