Sorrento’s two selectmen voted Wednesday night to fire Town Clerk Kathi Moore, two weeks after suspending her over a dispute about her personal legal fees.
Moore, who had been Sorrento’s town clerk since January 2021, had been feuding with selectmen for months — and she said she might continue the fight as a former town employee.
During a public discussion Wednesday with the board — she waived her right to have her termination hearing held in private — Moore told selectmen she would not sign a release waving her right to take the town to court. She had been offered two weeks of back pay, for the time she was suspended, and three weeks of severance pay contingent upon her signing the release.
Moore said after the meeting she wants to explore her legal options.
“I have to discuss it with my attorney,” she said. “I did not want to close that avenue.”
Rob Wilpan, Sorrento’s first selectman, specifically cited the legal fees dispute in voting Wednesday night to fire Moore. It was the same reason the board decided on Aug. 9 to suspend her.
Moore had gone on medical leave this past spring — because of work-related stress, she said — and hired Portland employment attorney Gregg Frame to help her navigate her employment rights with the town. The selectmen told her the town would not pay her resulting $2,000 legal bill, but in July she submitted the payment for her lawyer to the board anyway, along with other routine town expenses that selectmen normally approve at their bi-weekly meetings.
Wilpan and Diana Gazis, Sorrento’s other selectman, did not realize Moore’s legal fees were in the paperwork and approved the payment. They found out later and voted to rescind the payment when they suspended Moore.
After Wednesday’s meeting, Wilpan declined to comment on firing Moore, but Gazis said the feuding between the board and Moore had become routine. The board fired Moore for the legal fees dispute, Gazis said, but the board felt like she was taking more direction from disgruntled citizens than she was from selectmen.
“I think other people were putting her up to it,” Gazis said.
Moore said she knew the selectmen were going to vote to fire her. She said they intentionally made her working conditions difficult, despite her efforts to expose the fire department’s bad fiscal management and, in the case of one former firefighter, using town funds to fuel up his personal vehicle.
When the selectmen had the locks changed at the town office the next day after she was suspended, she knew she wouldn’t be Sorrento’s town clerk for much longer.
“Actions speak louder than words,” Moore said.
