Chuck Famolare – Harbormaster was a victim of rumor-mongering

Acting Town Manager Larry Holmes has looked into allegations aimed at Town Harbormaster Chuck Famolare that initially caused former Town Manager Rick White to suspend Famolare, and Holmes has determined there is no merit to any of those charges.

The rumors that swept the town about Chuck Famolare were bad enough. But what was even worse were the items that appeared on Web sites about Chuck that proved to be totally fictitious.

The Town of Winthrop is facing tough fiscal times. Everyone wants to blame everybody else for the reasons we are in this predicament. But what we, as decent people, cannot allow to have happen is for the reputation of any town official to be dragged through the mud without the slightest bit of truth behind it.

We urge our elected officials and the residents of Winthrop to stand up and refuse to be part of a process where people can print completely fictitious allegations that serve no purpose other than to harm a person’s reputation.

Together, working constructively, we can get through the fiscal problems that Winthrop faces. However, if we succumb to name calling, we only will make our problems worse. We quote William Shakespeare, “He that filches from me my good name, robs me of that which not enriches him, but makes me poor indeed.”

If we as a community condone scurrilous attacks of the sort that happened to our harbormaster, then everybody will be a target of that type of slander.

We ask all residents to think of this before they give any support to these types of Web sites that seek to divide our town, rather than unite us to find solutions to our problems.