Evaluations may be Open Meeting Law issue
By Catie Foertsch Community Reporter

Westborough - At the June 26 Board of Selectmen meeting, Town Counsel Greg Franks discussed several aspects of the Open Meeting Law (OML) with the selectmen, including their practice of conducting employee evaluations at open meetings.

"I think it's really dangerous to the board to be doing evaluations at all," Franks said.

The Board of Selectmen's tradition is to conduct department head evaluations at open meetings. While those evaluations have generally been positive, it would be very uncomfortable if the employee were not performing well and needed to be told, Board of Selectmen Vice Chair Leigh Emery said.

Being in an open meeting, and having proceedings broadcast on the town's TV channel is "inhibiting," Emery said.

According to Franks, the issue is more than just whether the selectmen are uncomfortable. An employee has a right to privacy regarding personnel matters, he said, but the public has a right to know what the selectmen are doing outside of a very narrow set of exceptions laid out in the OML.

"It's not clear under the law how you can do it [conduct employee reviews] without violating someone's rights, either the employee's or the public's," Franks said.

Franks suggested that someone such as the town coordinator, who is not subject to the OML, might be the best person to conduct employee evaluations. If the selectmen needed to pursue disciplinary action, he said, they might send 48 hours' notice to the employee that the discussion would be held in executive session unless the employee requested that the discussion take place in open session.

But the selectmen then asked who would conduct the town coordinator's evaluation. Franks acknowledged that the issue is com- plicated, and told the selectmen that "there's a reason the state exempts itself from the Open Meeting Law: it's too hard to follow."

The selectmen asked Franks to come up with proposals for employee evaluations that would be more in line with the OML.

The selectmen also asked Franks whether they were permitted to discuss issues with other selectmen outside public meetings. Franks said that one selectmen discussing issues with another selectmen was permitted, but a serial discussion that involved a majority of selectmen, even if it was through one-on-one communication, was not permitted because it would constitute a deliberation of the board.

Naked Fish

license

The Naked Fish Restaurant, at 95 Turnpike Road, will be replaced by the Chateau Restaurant, an Italian restaurant chain with five other locations in the Boston area. The Board of Selectmen approved the transfer of the Naked Fish liquor license to the Chateau. According to the license application, the Chateau paid Naked Real Estate LLC, the owners of the Naked Fish, $250,000 for the license.

The Westborough Chateau will be open by the end of September, according to Manager Gerard Fruggiero, and will offer moderatelypriced Italian family fare.

Open space

The selectmen also voted to accept the deed for the 24-acre open space parcel at 169 West Main St. from developer Francis Zarette. The 2007 Annual Town Meeting voted to accept the parcel, and the selectmen's acceptance of the deed is the last step in the process of the town acquiring the land.

In the near future, the selectmen will form a committee to decide how the land should be used. The deed restricts the use of the parcel to "all purposes for which open space is used in the town" according to the town's zoning bylaws, which allow conservation and recreational uses on open space.