BETHEL — On Monday, the Bethel Selectboard discussed Town Manager Natalie Andrews’ resignation in executive session at Bethel Town Office.

When they emerged three hours later, Selectboard Vice Chair Michele Cole made a motion to accept Andrews’ resignation effective Sept. 22; Selectman Frank Del Duca seconded the motion.

Selectwoman Sarah Southam asked Andrews to be open to reconsidering her decision. Selectwoman Pat McCartney added that she is resolved to working together and to resolve the board’s issues of the past. McCartney and Southam voted against accepting Andrews resignation while the other three including Chair Meryl Kelly voted in favor.

The board’s comments as a group were read by Kelly, “we appreciate the comments in Natalie’s letter as well as the comments received from community members since her resignation has come to light … we remain committed to our roles as representatives to the people of Bethel and are steadfast in our willingness to be open to all paths forward.”

Less than a year after taking the job, Andrews submitted a letter of resignation on Tuesday, Aug. 8 citing a lack of cohesive support from the Select Board.

The letter was presented to Chairwoman Meryl Kelly following a “chaotic” Aug. 7 board workshop.

“In a hostile work environment if you are the town manager you can’t lead,” Andrews said. “If there is someone going completely off the rails … the board needs to bring that conversation back and not have it be about a personal vendetta. They seem to struggle with this. They (should) control the behavior of people at the meeting. I don’t know what more I can do.”

Kelly agreed the board needed to work better together to support Andrews.

“We did not do our job properly,” said McCartney. “we as a board failed Natalie,” she added.

Southam said much the same, “As a new board member, I think I didn’t know what was going on but that was not really an excuse. I should have stepped up and said this is inappropriate behavior towards our town manager and towards another selectboard member.

I accept responsibility for that and feel awful about it … we can only move forward if we all work together and keep her. If we lose her, we are just stepping back a few more years and have to start over again.”

The board initially planned to meet Monday night, Aug. 7 to set codes of conduct, policy and procedure. But at a prior board meeting that Kelly missed due to illness, Cole,  Southam, Del Duca and McCartney voted to change the topic to wastewater treatment rates.

Scott Cole, former town manager and husband of Michele, was in the audience at Monday’s workshop, at the request of Kelly and Andrews, to explain the history of the wastewater rates.

In an Aug. 4 email accepting the invitation to the workshop, Scott Cole told Andrews that he was not “interested in being marginalized by any of the sitting selectmen. Or by idiotic former selectmen and municipal employees who may be sitting in the audience. If I attend, I’ll have full say on par (with) board members.”

He also said the lack of discussion about wastewater rates has “been going on for years and, as a result, the sewer system is costing me, my neighbors, and a few hundred other villagers more than it should each quarter.”

But, according to Andrews, during the two-hour meeting only about 10 minutes were taken to discuss rates.

Instead, it became “so chaotic,” Kelly said. “We were just letting him talk, when we should have just shut him down.”

Scott Cole denied that, saying most of the meeting was about the rates, but that he and the board did talk about how the town views the current board and that discussion got loud and was heated.

Kelly said she was still not feeling well during the meeting and checked out for part of it, but “I definitely heard when he told Pat to ‘just quit and retire.'”

Asked about this specific comment, Scott Cole confirmed he said that. He said he’s tired of listening to McCartney complain about the mood of the townspeople in recent times, and how critical residents are of selectmen.

“She didn’t think the criticism was fair,” Scott Cole said, and he suggested “if you don’t like the criticism you can resign. In fact, I think that might be a good idea, and I gestured toward the door.”

Scott Cole said McCartney asked him to repeat himself, “and I did,” he said.

“She’s a public official,” Scott Cole said of McCartney. “But people aren’t allowed to criticize her? That’s ridiculous. That’s what these codes of conduct are for,” to govern boards and board behavior.

McCartney clarified that he told her to resign (not retire as Kelly said) and that she was not afraid of criticism.

“He was being nasty, degrading, disrespectful and was bullying … I am not afraid of this man. I am disgusted by this man,” she said.

Kelly said McCartney did a good job at the meeting of responding to Scott Cole’s criticisms and defending the board, saying both sides needed to be respectful. “Her and Scott got into it and it was pretty wild. He was interjecting through the whole meeting.

“The meeting was not a meeting. Nothing got resolved at all,” Kelly said. People were getting riled up and upset, feelings were getting hurt, everyone was talking over each other and accusations were made, she said.

“A thousand percent I should have taken control of the meeting. This is entirely why, when I pitched the workshops, I wanted code of conduct and policy and procedures first,” Kelly said.

Andrews said Scott Cole told her at the meeting that she was passing the buck on a list of suspended wastewater accounts from 2015. “I told him, ‘you can’t pass the buck if you’ve never had the buck.’ He was just going after everyone in the office. Even people who don’t work there anymore.”

Andrews said her dissatisfaction is not about one individual, “it should be the board not allowing any individual to behave like that.”

Asked if she might reconsider her decision, Andrews said she would not. “I have been asking myself, ‘can this board be fixed?’ I don’t think the board wants to be fixed.”

Andrews said she does not blame Kelly. The board is struggling to see itself as a group versus individuals, she said.

“They need to establish rules of what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable and they need to enforce those rules. At the very least they should have stuck up for Pat (McCartney),” she said.

Asked if this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Andrews, Kelly said, “one hundred percent this was the straw. It’s hard, she’s trying to do her job and she’s getting (Freedom Of Access Act) requests. I had people in our community come to me and say that Scott Cole told them that Natalie was a liar and a criminal. When someone is inciting this distrust for someone, it kind of sabotages the whole thing.”

Scott Cole also confirmed that he had called Andrews a ‘liar and criminal.’ However in an email referencing a letter he sent to the Sun Journal on Aug. 14, he said that he had meant only “liar” and not criminal. In the letter he asks Kelly to identify who said he made the criminal comment.

Scott Cole said, “As for the article itself, the lying part is accurate but the criminal description is not. Last week when a reporter [called] asking if I had called Natalie a “liar,” I confirmed that I had and provided supportive reasoning. Apparently the word “criminal” was in the reporter’s same question over the phone and I concurred. For this slip-up in attention I am dreadfully sorry.”

Bethel resident Rebecca Zicarelli said she is the one who had asked for Scott Cole for his opinion of Andrews. Zicarelli remembers that it was July 15, the day of Summerfest when Cole ran to her to say, “I have a lot of concerns about her, some that might rise to the level of being criminal.”

In March, he said, when Andrews proposed a revised pay scale for town employees she had the town clerk making more than herself. When the board asked her about that, she said she was committed to the salary contained in the three-year contract she’d signed.

Then, Scott Cole said, in June the board held an executive session with Andrews and when they emerged they voted to increase her salary. “That makes her a liar,” he said. She said one thing at the March meeting and “then they go behind closed doors and jimmy up the deal later. Unless she’s giving all her increase to charity, then she’s a liar.”

Andrews said later, “I have always maintained that I was accepting of staff members earning a higher salary than myself due to longevity and experience. I signed my contract and have not asked to open it back up.

“At no time did I request an executive session to renegotiate my contract. Any decision to increase my salary was neither initiated nor compelled by me. As the conversation with the select board took place in executive session, I cannot go into any more detail. But the board came out of ES and voted at will.”

McCartney confirmed that Andrew’s pay raise was not initiated by her.

During her year as town manager, Andrews equalized pay for town employees and worked to increase staff morale. She directed the demolition of the Ethel Bisbee School. Andrews hired a new Wastewater Treatment Plant superintendent, created a succession plan and successfully worked with the state to push back a construction project related to the wastewater treatment plant.

She had Bethel Regional Airport land deeded to the town and to the airport so they could qualify for Federal Aviation Administration grants. She has worked with Maine Adaptive to get the Cole Building to be ADA (American Disabilities Association) compliant (in stages).

“I am sorry for the town of Bethel, because we had a really capable town manager who was so willing to learn and so willing to do whatever it took,” Kelly said. “She was so committed to her employees. It’s a big loss for the community. As select board chair, that this happened under my watch, I give myself a little grace for being sick, (but) I still let it happen and I let it happen too many times.”

Scott Cole said he’s had it with town officials who can’t follow open meetings laws, and said the board’s hostility toward him is personal, as was the board’s decision twice not to appoint him to serve on the Bethel Regional Airport Board, even though there were no other qualified candidates vying for the position.

In a later response, McCartney said, “he is the one who has made it personal, not us.”

He dismissed any suggestion that Andrews’ decision to leave town administration had anything to do with him, and said he won’t stop holding municipal officials accountable when he knows he’s right.

Following the meeting on Monday Michele Cole said she did not want to comment on the resignation or the meeting. Del Duca said, “we have a lot of balls in the air, as a board we have to figure it out.”

As the room emptied both Andrews and Kelly had tears in their eyes.

Executive Editor Judith Meyer contributed to this report.