right, Dennis, you got your phone up?
No, I didn't. I don't.
Let's do it.
Thanks for reminding me.
Yeah, it's probably just my wife.
Eric, do you want recording. It's recording.
Hello everyone. I'm a labor attorney and I've been asked to work with regard to this hearing. this is an appropriate time for us to start the appeal hearing and to present evidence as you attorney Gale or Miss Browser going to present evidence regarding the matter. Miss Grouse is right to decide whether to have this hearing in public session or executive session. I believe based on our prior conversations, attorneys, you'd like to have public session.
That's correct.
Terrific. Well, we'll continue in public session. The recording is happening and it will continue. and feel free to approach the table and address the select as you wish.
Okay. Good afternoon everybody. My name is John Gail. I'm an attorney in Hartford. I'm representing Tess Grouse and This afternoon with me is Rebecca Abrams who's a an intern in our office. Foolishly, Rebecca is considering going to law school. And I see my table here, everyone. in any event, she asked if she and she's been assisting on this matter. So, she asked if she comes. so I see you all have the packet that I handed out and with your permission I would just like to go through it. I'm not sure I assume somebody here is sort of the official clerk of the meeting. and I would take my original exhibits and give them to the clerk.
Okay.
Whoever that might be.
Administrator will serve as the clerk.
Yep.
Okay. That would be
that would be you. Okay. So we'll u Did I give you the original package already? You gave me five in green envelopes and you gave me one set.
One set. Okay.
You need it back. You just say the word.
No, we killed a lot of trees. So, we're good.
Okay. That's what you want entered into record.
That's what I would like entered into the record. There are exhibits A through K. Everybody's received a copy of of all of them. By the way, before I get started, I parked my car on the other side of this building. And as I did, I saw I think one of you pulled in and had an electric car and I said, "Wow." Because I now own an electric car. So, I have heightened I have heightened attention to where there are chargers. So, go, you know, good for the town of Andover. Good for you having the charger. I assume more of these things are going to be coming. anyway, test graphs. So, I presented you with a a short memorandum. I'm just going to go go through those facts again and then wrap up with my argument as to those facts. so the exhibit A that you have are the minutes of your August 12th regular meeting where there was a proposal to hire Tess Grouse as the community and senior center director. and that that proposal was passed by by the board that evening. same time the employment agreement was approved in the 50 vote and it looks like the next day on August 13th Miss Grouse and Mr. Anderson correct correct Mr. Anderson then signed the
employment agreement and and you have the employment agreement as exhibit B. and this is what you know we'll call contract between the town and contest. and this employment agreement is specific in that it has a term. It the term commenced the day it was signed August 13th, 2024. And and indicated that it would continue until June 30th of 2026. And that's very significant to our our position here today. On December 19th, at her request, I believe Tess had a performance review done by Mr. Anderson and that performance review is attached as exhibit C. You can see there the various comments that were made. the check off she got a couple of excellents. She got four two excellents, four goods and and one satisfactory and then there were five pages of comments which seemed reasonably auditory to me, but I leave it to you to make your own your own judgments on that. On January 13th, the board approved an extension of the agreement for a period of three months. Now, I did indicate in my statement of facts that this does not seem to be authorized anywhere. now clearly I I'm happy to stand corrected on any statement of fact that I make or statement of law that I make, but as far as I could tell from reviewing any of the town's handbook or charter, policy handbook or charter, I could not find where this is authorized anywhere. Nonetheless, the town took that action and and we have those minutes. This is given D. and the town noted that this was a probationary probationary period. and again upon my review of the town personnel
policy handbook and the town charter there there is a a six-month probationary period that is referenced and it's referenced on page seven of your your personnel policy which I've attached as exhibit J. But that probationary period seems to be specific to employees at will. And you also have in your personnel policy a definition of employees at will. And the the definition of employees at will very specifically says and this is page four of your personal policy also in exhibit J. It says those employees who do not have an individualized written employment contract are considered employees of well exhibit B sure looks to the world like it is an individualized written employment contract. It's very specific to test Krauss. It's in writing and it's an employment contract employment agreement. So it's certainly our position that as an employee Tess was not an employee at will and therefore the provisions of the probationary period that are in the town policy manual do not seem to apply they they seem to apply only to employees at will. And you know that's page seven that's in that's in exhibit J. And you know that's where it tells you the first 180 days not 90. It says 180. I didn't find 90 anywhere but it says first 180 days shall be an introductory period. but it then says after successful completion of the introductory period employment with the town is at will. Well this is not employment at will. This is employment under a written employment agreement, an individualized
written employment. so that said though, the board did extend all their probationary period. On February 10th, Tess attended the next regularly regularly scheduled board meeting and she asked the question that we have all just been discussing. Okay, where's this probationary period to be found? and so I gave you the the minutes of that meeting. They're attached exhibit E. suffice it to say, at least from Tessa's perspective, she no one ever related to her where that language was to be found. and we've not otherwise found it. so then on April 14th at regular board monthly meeting, the board set a date to further review the agreement that it had with Miss Gross. and that those minutes are set forth as a F. three days later on April 17th, there was a special meeting. It was called a contract and operational review. so this was a contract and operational review that was conducted in executive session, employer employee discussion if you will. Miss Grouse was present. She was questioned and there was apparently quite a bit of back and forth discussion but she was not advised that there was anything that was a problem that that she was facing any discipline. She wasn't told that she could bring witnesses or that she needed that she could defend herself. and I sum I summarize that by saying in short she was not afforded what we call due process rights. And I I'll talk about that a little bit later on.
and so you have those minutes as well. And of course you were all there for whatever you would remember all of these things. But we do have the we do have the minutes. We have the written. On April 24th, there was another special meeting that was held. and at this meeting, there was then a motion made apparently to terminate the employment of test grant town and and that motion was approved 3 to2. and we have those minutes. and so subsequent to that action Miss Krauss was effectively terminated from employment at the town. On July 8th having hired our law firm to represent her, we sent a letter to the town seeking to appeal that decision.
And that appeal is based on the on the policy of the town. I I provided it to you again in exhibit J. Exhibit J has all the sections of the town personnel policy that I thought were were relevant here. and so exhibit J pages I have pages 18, 19, and 20 which are pages of the employee discipline. And and on page 20 is where it indicates that any employee who wants to appeal their discharge can appeal it to the board of selectman. And so that's that's my view anyway of what we're doing here today that we've appealed her discharge to the board of selectman and this is that appeal hearing. it's interesting to note that u this employee discipline section that starts on page 18 very specifically discusses at will employees at will employees and says this is this is what's applicable to at employees and specifically exempts anybody under a contract. so that's what we're doing. So having seen that that was the the policy of the town that an appeal was you were able to make an appeal. as an attorney out of an abundance of caution certainly Miss Grouse should take advantage of any administrative remedies that she has before seeking to go further. We have a lot of case law during male I'm sure is
very familiar with these kinds of things. we have a lot of case law that indicates you have an administrative remedy you should take advantage of that administrative. So we're here to take advantage of that administrative remedy and we're here to ask you the board to select them to reinstate test jobs to the job for which she was hired. Now, what's our basis for this? And this is, you know, I really did a lot of thinking about this because this case implicates some really fundamental principles. And the fundamental principles are contracts. You you really It's fascinating, but this goes right back to the United States Constitution. Written right into the United States Constitution in section 10 article one. It says that government shall not pass any laws inhering contracts. This is how important contracts and contract law has been to this country from its very beginning. And the lawyers here will will know that as first year law students we have five courses that you take. One in criminal law, one in civil procedure, one in property, one in courts which are personal harms and the fifth two semester course is
contracts. A real aside, anybody that remembers the paper chase movie, some some of you may The movie starts with the case of Hawkins van McGee which was the very first contracts case in my contracts horn book and I think my professor must have spent two we call it the case of the hairy hand professor must have spent two months on that case but contracts very you know it's very basic it's basic to American law hen we talk about employment we really have three types of employment for anybody. I mean, this is not just the town, but this is true for anybody, any any employer. In Connecticut, the three types of employment are, as we've discussed in Connecticut, employment under a labor contract. So, this is the whole advent of labor unions and collective bargaining and coming as a group negotiating with the contract. And the third contract you have is the individual written employment contract. And it's that individual written employment contract that we are dealing with. That's exhibit C. That's the contract that Mr. Anderson signed with Miss Grouse with the approval of the law. And that contract comes with a lot of rights. As I mentioned, contracts are sacrosan under the United States Constitution and excuse me just a second whistle here. so because contracts are so important u and because you're a government we have a whole body of case law that's developed around how you terminate a written employment contract And it's very clear that a written employment contract can only be terminated by a government. And and by the way, that contracts
clause, it's in the United States Constitution. There's plenty of case law that says that applies to states and municipalities. You no question this this applies to the town of Amber. So how do you terminate that? Well, you terminate on the basis of something known as either good cause or just cause. Causation got to be something. It's not the case that a private employer who can simply terminate somebody at will or even the town can terminate somebody at will for no reason as long as it's not an illegal reason. You have to always mention these things. You tell employers terminate somebody if you don't like the color of their fingernails, but not if you don't like the color of their skin. that wouldn't be easy. but when we're talking about a written contract, the only way you can terminate a written contract is good cause or just cause. And when you're going to terminate a written contract for good cause or just cause, you must provide what I referred to earlier, due process. These are fundamental concepts and due process as was banged into every law's head again and again and again means notice. Notice of what is being charged and an opportunity to be heard. And you can imagine that those words notice and an opportunity to be heard have been expounded on, you know, thousands, if not millions of times over the years. What does that mean? A notice and what does that mean? An opportunity to be heard. But I think that there's general agreement that notice means you're told what the problem is. And the opportunity
to be heard means that you're given an opportunity to rebut. You're given an opportunity to present witnesses. You're given an opportunity to to present your side of the story. That's fundamental when people say you're entitled to due process. So with respect to the contract, in front of you and and the lady who's in front of you, Chos. I think there's a problem. I think there's a problem because I don't think that fundamental due process was recognized, was given to Miss Grouse. and nowhere do we find any cause, nowhere do we find any specific charges in orordination, failure to to to do the job metrics that were set up that she didn't meet. I mean, the only thing we have is Mr. Anderson's employment review. It's the only thing I have and you may have more, but the only thing I have is Mr. Anderson's review, which seems reasonably low. so we're here and we're saying, look,
you probably made a mistake. Mistakes can be remedied. That's why we have appeals. This could be a pretty simple remedy. You grant the appeal, you reinstate Miss Grouse. Obviously, there'd have to be some payments made to her for the payments that she missed up to this point in time. We can certainly have a discussion about those and discuss these things with your attorney. It certainly seems that this would be a very efficient way of resolving this matter. And at least from what I've presented, it seems to me that here's there's not a lot of ability to contradict what I've said in terms of the failure to give her due process and the failure to point out any just cause. Now, there's a secondary appeal issue here. You know, lawyers, we like to have multiple. What do they say? You want to have multiple multiple the town policy also seems to say, and this may not be what anybody meant, but it's what's in writing. The employment agreement says that termination of Miss Gross shall be pursuant to section 701 and 703. It doesn't mention 702. Mention 701, 703. 701 really talks about Mr. Anderson. It talks about the town manager. It talks about to terminate the town manager, you need an 80% vote. You need four out of five select persons to vote for that. Well, you know, I didn't write the contract. Wrote the contract. That's what it says. You may not have meant it, but I think you kind of stuck with it. reasonable interpretation of the contract is that if you were going to terminate this contract, again, I would maintain you would have had to do so providing Miss Krauss with notice of the charges an opportunity to present evidence
and then you would have to demonstrate, you would have to demonstrate, she doesn't have, you would have to demonstrate some good or just cause and then you would have to have an 80% vote. four out of five. Well, the record not 80% vote. It was a 3-2 vote. So, our second appealable issue, if you will, is that even if you don't buy the whole due process and the whole material certainly maintains hard, but regardless, you also don't have the 80% vote. So again, we're here to say it appears that the town made a mistake and mistakes can be remedied and this may be a really opportune time to remedy that mistake and and everybody move on. I'm happy to take any questions, but that's the thrust of the argument. I think it's all kind of laid out for you in our memo. we have all the exhibits that are referenced in is there anything else you'd like to present before the board convenes to discuss what you presented? No, you have our case and thank you for your what's likely to happen to executive session so that it can deliberate the issues before the select considering legal advice that the selection has received through a legal letter to sent to the court previously. Freedom information it's a proper discussion for executive session. I'm not sure how long that discussion will be. You're welcome to wait. but you need I will let you know as soon
as I have a decision if a decision is made today select as to how to respond to the appeal that you filed and arguments you presented today. so I'll leave that up to you. Happy to happy to follow up when the board has made a decision, assuming a decision made today. If they haven't made a decision today, if they need that, I'll let you know that as well. But by the same token, if you'd like to wait for a while and see how long the discussion is going to be before a decision is going to be made or before we'll know whether a decision made today, you're welcome to. So, you're happy. I'm sure we're going to hang around for a certain period of time anyway. when you call out for sandwiches and pizza, we may decide to do it. let me give you my telephone number if I may. Telephone 860
416 5959 text me or whatever that u no decision today meeting at another time or a decision today app or hanging around we'll come back.
Absolutely.
Because I take it if you come out of executive session you will go back on the record.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Thank you. So I would like to make a motion that we enter executive session for the purpose of discussion documents that were presented to us by attorney Gale. And I would like to invite Tomerson
Hi Carol.
Hi Jeff.
Hi Scott.
Hi Move into executive session here. Turn off the camera.