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Departure of Waterville manager remains shrouded in mystery after release of city records The Morning Sentinel requested, through the state Freedom of Access Act, emails between Steve Daly and city officials for two weeks prior to and two weeks following Daly's resignation on Dec. 23, but much of that information was redacted or blacked out.

BY AMY CALDERMORNING SENTINEL

WATERVILLE — The unexplained and abrupt departure of City Manager Steve Daly in December remains shrouded in mystery even after the city has released new documents from a public records request.

Former Waterville City Manager Steve Daly abruptly resigned in December, and city officials are not discussing the reasons surrounding his departure. Courtesy photo

Daly notified the City Council Dec. 22 via email that he planned to resign the next day, but the documents obtained by the Morning Sentinel show that city councilors were discussing Daly’s exit at least several days before he resigned. In his resignation letter, Daly asked that the council waive a requirement in his contract that he give a 90-day notice of departure.

Daly, 75, was nearly two years into the three-year contract when he resigned, citing “urgent and personal circumstances.” He came to Waterville from North Reading, Massachusetts, earning a salary of $125,000 in the first year of his contract in Waterville and $130,000 in the second year.

The city agreed to waive the 90-day requirement and give him $43,333 — which is four months of his salary and health insurance — in a lump sum payment. In the release agreement, all parties promised not to disclose anything about his departure and the document says Daly may discuss it only with his spouse, attorneys and financial advisors. The parties, it says, may disclose information to the extent required by law, including providing information in compliance with state Freedom of Access Act requirements.

RELATED Waterville City Council votes to accept city manager’s resignation, pay him four months’ salary Despite the documents’ release, though, the public won’t be privy to information about the specific reasons why Daly left and what options councilors discussed in private just prior to Daly’s resignation. A West Coast-based municipal expert told the Morning Sentinel that without knowing the facts in the case, it is difficult to determine whether the public has a right to know what is going on and how their money is being spent on the matter.

Mark Moses, author of “The Municipal Financial Crisis, A Framework for Understanding and Fixing Government Budgeting,” said in an interview it is the job of the city attorney (also called the city solicitor) to protect the city from legal claims. So if there were some kind of legal action that Daly or someone else could take if information about his departure were released, the city attorney would admonish councilors and other officials that they shouldn’t talk about it because the city could be sued or otherwise damaged, according to Moses.

“In this age of litigious activity, it would be good to keep it closed so as to not invite legal action,” said Moses, who has consulted California municipal governments in the areas of finance and administration for the past 12 years. “There’s a certain reasonableness to the public’s wanting to know, but we don’t know what other legal considerations have been given weight here.”

Typically when city managers resign or retire, they talk publicly about their reasons for leaving and often discuss their tenure and what they feel they accomplished during that time. But Daly did not respond to repeated calls and emails by the Morning Sentinel in recent months seeking comment on his departure, though he consistently returned calls and emails during his time at City Hall.

RELATED Waterville city manager says he’ll retire in a year, following contract extension When he arrived for the top city job in 2021, Daly succeeded Michael Roy, who was city manager more than 16 years and gave the City Council more than a year’s notice of his intent to leave.

Daly saw the bulk of the city’s revitalization efforts be completed during his tenure, including a change to two-way traffic on Main and Front streets in downtown. He often spoke of enjoying his job as city manager and purchasing a home in Waterville that he loved.

SEEKING ANSWERS

In an effort to learn more about Daly’s sudden departure, the Morning Sentinel cited the state’s Freedom of Access Act in requesting any and all emails between Daly, city councilors, Mayor Jay Coelho, acting City Manager Bill Post and City Solicitor William A. Lee III, between the dates of Dec. 15 and Jan. 5.

The Freedom of Access Act requires certain information be made public and asserts that an executive session would only protect discussion to the extent that “public discussion could be reasonably expected to cause damage to the individual’s reputation or the individual’s right to privacy would be violated.” Only that sort of personal information should be redacted from the emails the newspaper requested from the city, according to the state law.

The city released 16 pages of documents to the newspaper, including Daly’s severance agreement and the requested emails, most of which were redacted or blacked out to protect the information considered confidential under state law. The city denied the release of four relevant emails created for an executive session, even with redactions.

The back-and -forth email discussions about Daly had started by at least Thursday, Dec. 15, a week before Daly emailed the city to say he planned to resign. Lee sent an email to four councilors with “Manager update” in the subject line. The entire content of that email was redacted. Lee then sent another email, “Confidential Memo for Executive Session,” to the entire council the next day, Friday, Dec. 16, the contents of which were also fully redacted for release to the Sentinel.

When Lee emailed out the confidential memo, Councilor Michael Morris, D-Ward 5, responded, “Thanks, Bill, I appreciate you laying out all the options for us to consider.” Lee responded that “it should be quite a discussion” when they gathered to discuss the matter in executive session.

Lee then realized on Monday, Dec. 19, that he had forgotten to copy Mayor Coelho on the confidential memo and sent it to him, too.

Councilors met to discuss the issue in executive session on the night of Tuesday, Dec. 20; however, it is not clear how long they spent discussing the issue because a video broadcast of the meeting cut off after they voted to discuss the matter in private. Coelho said no votes would be taken in public, prompting the television broadcaster to stop the video recording.

Contacted recently about the length of that discussion, City Clerk Patti Dubois said she did not know how long it lasted because she left the meeting when the council went into executive session. She confirmed that no council votes were taken in public afterward.

Next, Assistant City Manager Bill Post, who is now the acting city manager, emailed Lee on Dec. 22 to say that Daly “told me about this resignation this morning,” and that Coelho would call for a special council meeting the following week to accept the resignation.

RELATED Waterville City Council appoints interim city manager who joined City Hall last year Daly’s resignation letter is dated Thursday, Dec. 22, and says it takes effect the following day on Friday, Dec. 23. The brief, two-paragraph letter says only that “personal and urgent circumstances have led to this decision.”

In discussing when the council should hold a special meeting to accept Daly’s resignation, officials ultimately settled on Wednesday, Dec. 28. The emails show councilors all agreeing to that date, with Councilor Thomas Klepach, D-Ward 3, responding: “Yeah, let’s get this over with.”