From the county courthouse, the fire station, the Fairbanks Museum, and the Athenaeum library, it’s a short walk along St. Johnsbury’s Main Street (which it’s not really, it’s main street; that’s Railroad Street down the hill to the east), past gracious old houses set far back from the street, to Arnold Park.
Less a park than a small island of green where Main Street forks to the east, Arnold Park is part of the town’s history. It’s named for Jonathan Arnold, one of St J’s founders, and generations of the town’s upper crust have played in it, rested in it, and looked at it from their living room windows.
In the middle of the park is a piece of sculpture. Above a basin is a pillar, atop which stands a graceful, slender, statue of a woman, unidentified but looking as though she might feel at home in Athens back when Pericles ran the joint. She’s known in town simply as the Lady, and according to Linda Garey, who used to live right near the park, the Lady has been there since 1891.
It was made, Garey said, by the J.L. Mott ironworks in New York, which specialized in cast iron sculpture. If there was an individual artist responsible, his or her name has been lost.
Like anyone that old, the Lady has had some deterioration issues. At various times in recent years, some parts of her have fallen off, she’s been found tilted over, and shown other signs of decay. Luckily for her, she is surrounded by people who care for her and have the resources to help her. She’s been lovingly restored, and although town government had to be involved (the Lady is public property), the restoration was privately funded.
But the park in which the Lady stands also needs work, at least $100,000 worth, and everyone agreed that the town and its taxpayers would be the ones who paid for this.
Until – wonder of wonders – somebody offered to do most of the work for free. For nothing. For no charge.
This somebody, a construction contractor named Tony Nutbrown, doesn’t even live in St. J. He lives next door in Danville. But his third cousin, Joe Fortin, did live in St. Johnsbury, near the park. Second Lt. Fortin was killed in Iraq on Aug. 23, 2009. Nubrown’s offer was a kind of memorial to Joey.
Tony Nutbrown offered to fix up Arnold Park for free in honor of a relative who died in Iraq. His offer was rejected. Instead, St. Johnsbury spent $100,000 on the project.
But Nutbrown Construction is not doing the work on Arnold Park. Another local company, Raymond Heath Construction, is doing it, not for free, for nothing, or for no charge. For exactly how much is not yet clear, but for at least $100,000, not an inconsequential sum for a not-very-rich town of fewer than 7,000 people.
“He wouldn’t come in for a meeting,” select board Chair Jim Rust said of Nutbrown, explaining why his offer was declined.
“I did go to one meeting,” Nutbrown said, with Rust, another select board member Ralph Nelson, then the town manager. But after that, he said, he didn’t think he needed more meetings with officials. He just wanted to talk to the engineer designing the project, and Rust’s office would not put him in touch with the engineer.
“Jim Rust didn’t want me to do it,” Nutbrown said. “He’s a very controlling guy.”
According to St. Johnsbury resident Janet Quatrini, at a board meeting last summer, she asked Rust if the park work had been let out for competitive bidding. He answered in the affirmative, she said, but added that only one company bid on it.
Quatrini said she then filed a public information request for the documents on the bidding, only to be told that the job had never been put out for bid. Reading from what she said was Rust’s reply of July 17, she said she was informed “that the site work for the Arnold Park project was not subject to the bid process. Therefore there aren’t any records.”
Rust was right. St. Johnsbury law does not require competitive bidding on town-financed projects. Only if state or federal money is involved does the law require competitive bidding.
Because $1 million in federal grants financed the business loans made by the Jay-Lyn Fund, a revolving fund for lending money to start-up businesses in St. Johnsbury and neighboring Lyndonville, town officials could and did set in motion two years of criminal investigation into some of the fund’s operatives.
Their major target here was Joel Schwartz, now 61, who, as the town’s economic development director was the fund’s administrator. Schwartz was the first person fired (technically his position was eliminated) when Rust and two allies became the majority on the select board in March of 2010.
In what may have been a mistake, Schwartz took some of the Jay-Lyn records home with him when he left office. These records, he said, did not contain information open to the public about who got the loans and how much the government spent. They contained information that was supposed to remain confidential – the tax returns, income statements and other disclosures from the people applying for the loans.
By taking the documents home for three months before returning them in a sealed box, Schwartz made himself vulnerable, and Rust took advantage of that vulnerability.
Still, by taking the documents home for three months before returning them in a sealed box, Schwartz made himself vulnerable, and Rust took advantage of that vulnerability. He and Ralph Nelson, who by then had become town manager, urged state and then federal officials to conduct an investigation.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, the source of the federal grants, turned over the investigation to the U.S. Attorney’s office. Schwartz said federal officials contacted many of his associates and the businesspeople who received Jay-Lyn loans looking into whether he had kept or altered some of the files, or whether perhaps he had lucrative “side agreements” with some of the borrowers.
Though the Jay-Lynn Fund had its problems, there was never any actual evidence of such conduct, and last September, after two years (and several thousand dollars in legal bills for Schwartz), federal officials informed the town that no charges would be filed.
Or at least they informed Rust, who, according to select board member Alan Ruggles, did not inform the other board members until November. And in informing the public during a select board meeting earlier this month, Rust said, “We are disappointed that factors beyond our control limited potential outcomes of the investigations,” effectively expressing regret that no one was going to be indicted.
That sentence enraged Ruggles, who said it had not been in the first draft of the statement that had been sent to the other board members.
“I find that your statement is intended to inflict more injury to a situation that should be seen as a positive where no one needs to suffer the possible persecution of this case,” Ruggles said.
The next scheduled confrontation is the trial in former town manager Nelson’s suit against the select board. He is seeking restitution to the job or damages of $750,000.
He may have meant “prosecution.” Or maybe not.
Rust noted that the revised version, with the sentence that offended Russell, had been inserted in every board member’s packet. It was not certain, though, whether all the members had been alerted to the change in wording.
So the St. Johnsbury follies continue, with select board members squabbling in public, no town manager for almost nine months (and none likely to be chosen for at least another two or three, Rust said), two lawsuits against the town, and a shrunken and inexperienced staff of town workers trying to operate a $9 million a year enterprise, the audits of which are not up to date.
The next scheduled confrontation (spontaneous quarrels can erupt at any time) is the trial in former town manager Nelson’s suit against the select board, in which he is seeking restitution to the job from which he was fired last April or damages of $750,000. The trial date has been set for Feb. 19.
