This past winter, Sorrento Town Clerk Kathi Moore wanted to know more about the local fire department’s use of town credit cards to buy fuel for its trucks and rescue boat.
Moore said she suspected some firefighters were using a department credit card to fuel up their personal vehicles. She pressed the select board — which now consists of two people since Jon Mickel, an ally of Moore’s, resigned as a selectman in April — to require better accounting from the fire department by turning in receipts.
The board agreed with Moore and in February it expressly prohibited using town funds for fueling up private vehicles.
But then trouble began for her.
Since then, she said, her relationship with other town officials has deteriorated to the point that she has hired a lawyer to help monitor her interactions with the town’s select board and to represent her rights as an employee.
“It has become a hostile workplace, as far as I’m concerned,” said Moore, who had a decades-long background in banking and insurance before starting as Sorrento’s town clerk in January 2021. “I wanted receipts from the fire department. I wanted slips. That’s how all this started.”
The chairman of the town’s selectboard, Rob Wilpan, said the issue goes beyond the use of the fire department credit card. He said he has been receptive to some of Moore’s ideas, such as boosting citizen oversight of the town budget, but that she has struggled with some of her job duties and has been dismissive and rude with select board members.
“She’s pulling out all the tricks to not get fired,” Wilpan said.
But Moore and the board were on the same page about not allowing firefighters to use town funds to fuel up their vehicles. After Moore flagged the potential issue, the board contacted the sheriff’s department to look into how a fire department credit card associated with the town’s rescue boat had been used. Criminal charges were eventually brought against one firefighter.
In May, Paul Bean, who is no longer a Sorrento firefighter, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of theft for using that card to buy $83.10 worth of gasoline for his personal vehicle. He was sentenced to pay $340 in fines and to reimburse the fire department for $83.10, according to court records.
Moore has also raised concerns about the town’s bookkeeping and while she hasn’t found any other indications of financial mismanagement, she has pushed for more citizen involvement in the town budget process.
She, however, feels like she continues to get resistance from the two remaining members of the selectboard, Wilpan and Diana Gazis.
“There’s no communication whatsoever,” she said of her relationship with Wilpan. “I uncovered something I shouldn’t have apparently.”
Moore said the stress of her job got so bad this past spring that, at the advice of her doctor, she went on medical leave for three weeks. That is also when she hired Gregg Frame, an employment lawyer based in Portland, to help her navigate her employment rights with the town.
She said part of what stressed her out was a letter that the town’s attorney, Daniel Pileggi of Ellsworth, received. The letter, signed by someone claiming to be Wilma Dyer, said that Mickel — who at the time was still a selectman — had embezzled money from a previous employer and that he and Moore should not be trusted to have oversight of town funds. Officials later determined that the letter was a hoax and wasn’t sent by the person it said it was from.
Mickel said he thinks Wilpan and Gazis did not do enough to try to find out who wrote it. The way it was handled, and the way the board has treated Moore, led him to resign, he said.
He is now running for the position of fire chief, which in Sorrento is an elected position. The town’s elections — including one for Mickel’s old selectman’s seat — will be held on September 30.
“Kathi has done a fantastic job as town clerk,” Mickel said. “She is well liked within the community, well credentialed, very professional, thorough, trustworthy, and received positive performance reviews during my tenure as selectman.”
Wilpan, who has been a Sorrento selectman for more than 25 years, said that in April he agreed to form a finance committee that would work to reconcile inconsistencies in the town’s accounts. The committee, which consists of Wilpan and Darla Crocker, a local resident and certified public accountant and financial planner, agreed to work with Moore, who is also the town’s treasurer, to improve the town’s bookkeeping.
The board publicly discussed Moore’s job performance in April — after Moore requested that her evaluation not be held in executive session, Wilpan said. He has some concerns about her bookkeeping skills. He declined to go into specifics, but referred to the board’s April 19 meeting minutes, which include the board’s review of Moore’s job performance.
“You very rarely communicate to ask me questions,” Wilpan told Moore during the meeting. “You proudly display your training certificates but you refuse to admit that you need help to learn what is necessary to fully do your job.”
Wilpan said that after longtime town clerk Esther Clement retired at the end of 2019, the town office fell into some disarray. This was in part because Clement’s successor fell ill and then resigned after only 13 months on the job, and in part because the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted everything.
He gave Moore credit for bringing some organization back to the town office after she was hired two years ago, but said that he is concerned about how her relationship with the board has changed since then.
“Early on, she started talking negatively about me to anyone who would listen,” Wilpan said. “It’s been hard.”