ORANGE — Angela Eastman is out of a job and Ginny Raboin has a new one courtesy of a select board that quietly switched town clerks during a special meeting last week.
Eastman was town clerk — a position she had held for the past five years — on Christmas morning, but by New Year’s Eve, Raboin had been installed as her replacement by a three-member board that had decided it was time for a change.
The board has that right, as result of a voter-approved change that made the long-elected clerk’s position appointed back in 2019.
Eastman, who was appointed to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of her predecessor, Kathie Felch, in 2018, was first elected to the office on the same day voters authorized the select board to appoint future clerks.
It promptly did, by appointing Eastman.
Last Wednesday, the board agreed to appoint Raboin to serve as town clerk, severing ties with Eastman.
Attempts to reach Eastman for comment were unsuccessful on Tuesday.
However, Board Chair Eric Holmgren downplayed the year-ending decision.
“The select board just appointed somebody else,” he said Tuesday. “We felt like Ginny (Raboin) was the best candidate for the position.”
According to Holmgren, Raboin “approached the board.” He said she expressed her interest in the position and supplied her qualifications in emails that she sent “separately” to each of the board’s three members.
Absent that outreach, Holmgren said the board “probably” would have reappointed Eastman.
“There was another option,” he said, explaining Raboin was administered the oath of office by a local justice of the peace on Friday.
Holmgren said he couldn’t recall which one of the justices — there are only five — performed the ceremonial swearing in.
Youngman, a former board member and ex-town treasurer, is one of the justices of the peace and she didn’t hide her disdain for the board’s decision.
“I’m beyond pissed,” she said, suggesting Eastman’s ouster was the product of a less-than-transparent process.
“It was very cloak and dagger,” she said.
Youngman said the board’s decision has since prompted John McNeil to resign as delinquent tax collector and one of the town’s elected listers; and Michele Boyer resigned her roles as health officer and animal control officer. It has also, she said, sparked a petition that she is circulating in hopes of stripping the board of the authority to appoint the town clerk.
Youngman, who was on the board when the change was proposed in 2019, and supported it at the time, said she had serious questions about how it was just used.
“What I never anticipated was a runaway select board that has zero accountability,” she said.
Youngman said she needs to collect 48 signatures to force a public vote on the question of how the clerk’s position is filled, and she’s hoping for 400.
“It’s going to be the ugliest town meeting ever,” she predicted.
In a community that still nominates and elects candidates for local office from the floor of town meeting, two of the three select board seats are expiring.
One is held by Holmgren, who was appointed to fill a vacancy last year; the other is held by Sheila Stone, who resigned from the board last October and was reappointed during an emergency meeting Nov. 1. Both appointments expire on Town Meeting Day. The board’s third member, Kevin Wilson, was elected to a three-year term last March.
