COVENTRY — Sunlight streamed through Coventry Community Center’s windows, and it might have been symbolic of the mood inside as residents went about their Town Meeting business.
After years of struggling with missing money and scandal, recovery was the theme of Tuesday’s meeting.
With no controversy, residents approved a budget and resoundingly endorsed several officials who have been instrumental in pushing the town forward over the past year. They also gave a standing ovation to a departing Selectboard member who led the charge to straighten out the town’s finances and business operations.
That work is not finished, as there are ongoing legal proceedings involving the work of former Town Clerk Cynthia Diaz. But many who spoke on Tuesday said that, nine months after Diaz’s departure, Coventry has turned a corner.
“I’m looking forward to the direction Coventry is going,” resident Richard Lussier said. “We struggled for years, but I think the struggle is over, as long as we all stay together.”
This Northeast Kingdom municipality of just over 1,000 people has been in a state of crisis since officials discovered missing town funds later tallied at more than $1.4 million.
To put that number in perspective, the general fund and highway budgets approved by voters on Tuesday total $656,225.
Diaz, who initially was elected to serve as Coventry’s town clerk in 2004, also worked as the town’s treasurer and delinquent tax collector. She has been the focus of the town’s missing-money inquiry and lost her job last June after failing to secure an insurance policy that is a prerequisite for her positions.
Though she has been the subject of several criminal investigations, Diaz has not been convicted of taking town money and has denied wrongdoing. Her sole conviction came in 2011, when she pleaded guilty to evading state income taxes.
Diaz did not return a phone call requesting comment for this story.
Coventry has received a $500,000 insurance payment to make up for some of the missing funds. But officials also have taken numerous other steps to recoup money and restructure town operations, and some of those actions were highlighted or reaffirmed at Tuesday’s Town Meeting.
For example, Town Clerk Deb Tanguay and Treasurer Adam Messier — both of whom were appointed to their positions last summer after Diaz’s departure — received the sole nominations for those jobs and were unanimously elected.
“They brought those offices up to the par that Coventry deserves to have,” Selectboard Chair Mike Marcotte said. “They’ve done an excellent job.”
Voters also chose to maintain the town’s delinquent tax collector as an appointed position, rather than an elected one. That change was authorized last year as officials sought to get the town’s back taxes in order.
Delinquent Tax Collector Kate Fletcher “has done a fantastic job in starting to get us back on the right track,” Marcotte said.
But Fletcher is “not finished with delinquent taxes from prior years,” Marcotte told voters. “And I feel it would be best for the Selectboard to retain the authority to keep that position appointed for another year until we get that process finished.”
In an interview, Fletcher said she already has collected $117,355 in back taxes. She said there’s at least another $101,000 still delinquent, though that number could increase based on her research and an ongoing federal investigation of Diaz’s tax-collection work.
“I have had to recalculate so many of the previous delinquent tax collector’s financials because they were either erroneous or inaccurate,” Fletcher said.
“I don’t think we had any idea how much was owed,” she added. “I think it was fabricated and fiction, quite frankly.”
Fletcher also was elected to a three-year term as a town lister. She will serve along with incumbent listers Anita Gariepy and Lyell Reed, who was re-elected to a two-year term.
Fletcher said some of her discoveries in the course of delinquent tax collection will carry over to the lister’s office.
“I found a lot of inaccuracies between the property tax ID number and the tax map,” Fletcher said. “Those should not happen. They should be identical … that’s one of my goals, is to straighten that out.”
Coventry also gained a new Selectboard member on Tuesday. Local businessman Scott Briere said the town’s recent troubles spurred him to seek the office, and he’s interested in seeking additional help from professional financial advisers to guide Coventry’s future policies.
“I’m interested in going forward, and not dwelling on the past,” Briere said.
Briere takes the place of Scott Morley, who decided not to pursue another Selectboard term. Morley received a round of applause at Tuesday’s meeting for his prominent role in sorting through the Diaz scandal.
Marcotte said Morley served just one term, but “he probably has worked about about 20 years’ worth.”
“All the effort — the time spent — has put our town into a very good place right now,” Marcotte told Morley during Town Meeting. “Your knowledge and dedication have been second to none, and we thank you very much.”
In a subsequent interview, Morley recounted the many steps Selectboard members have taken to unravel the town’s financial and administrative mess. That includes hiring a Selectboard assistant, a forensic auditor and a new attorney.
Asked why he decided to step away from town government, Morley replied, “It’s fixed.”
He praised the town’s new leadership as “independent thinkers” who are leading Coventry in a new direction. “Budgets are less than they used to be,” Morley said. “Infrastructure is in better repair than it used to be. The town is able to plan.”
That’s not to say that there are no hard feelings in Coventry. But Morley is hoping those feelings won’t get in the way of the town’s continued recovery.
“If there is any of that negativity out there — which there is — let it go out the door with me,” he said. “Let these newly elected officials come in here in a place of peace and harmony so they can get their work done.”
For the near term, at least, some of that work will continue to involve Diaz. The town has an ongoing civil lawsuit against the former clerk, and Marcotte pledged the town’s cooperation with the federal probe.
“We will assist the FBI or the Department of Justice as they go forward in anything they need from the town to complete their investigation,” he said.
There’s also the day-to-day business of recovery: For instance, Selectboard members recently found out that they’ll need to spend $30,000 to address long-neglected land records in the town clerk’s office.
Still, Marcotte sees light at the end of the tunnel.
“We still have some ways to go, but I don’t think it’s a long way to go,” he said.
