By Adam Swift
The town council voted to censure Precinct 5 Councilor Joseph Aiello at last week’s meeting.
The motion to censure came from Council President Jim Letterie following comments made by Aiello, including a vulgarity, while resident Diana Viens was speaking during the public comment section of the Feb. 11 meeting.
At the end of the Feb. 11 meeting, Aiello apologized for his comments, and during last week’s meeting, he accepted the censure and once again apologized for his actions.
Letterie used the censure motion to call for greater decorum both from the entire council, as well as from the public when addressing the council.
“I’m not going to read the council (rules) on decorum again, I did it two months ago, and I would hope there wouldn’t be a need to do this again,” said Letterie. “I’m going to take responsibility as the council president for the actions of the council as well as the public. Sometimes I think you try to do the right thing and you try to give the people the opportunity to speak their minds, and I think I’m going to try to reel that in a little bit on the public comment period.”
Letterie said he will not be allowing the public to use a particular councilor’s name to direct criticism.
“If you wish to make a comment about the council in particular, you can direct it to me, I’ll take it all, and we will get back to you if we have any further comments on your comments,” said Letterie. “Within the council itself, we need to be above the fray.”
Letterie said the censure motion itself against Aiello does not have any ramifications beyond that as an elected official, there will be a documented record of Aiello being censured by the council.
The censure read that Aiello engaged in “conduct that is inconsistent with the standards, interactions, and demeanor that (have) a negative effect on the office.”
Aiello said he accepted the censure.
“I hope that everybody would vote on behalf of the censure,” he said. “I was wrong, I feel awful about it, I need to be better than this, therefore, I will vote to censure myself.”
Letterie said he appreciated Aiello’s comments, and noted that while Aiello has been singled out on several occasions during public comment periods, it is the responsibility of all councilors ro remain above the fray.
Precinct 4 Councilor Suzanne Swope said she wants to make sure that everyone who wants to speak in front of the council, no matter their position, has that opportunity.
“I don’t want anyone on the council to discourage you from speaking your mind, it is so important for democracy,” she said.
Karin Chavis, who serves on the town’s firehouse building committee and the citizens’ finance advisory committee, said she did not believe the censure of Aiello went far enough, noting that there has been at least one other incident where he had to apologize for remarks he made during a public speaking session.
Chavis said the council as a whole needs to take a closer look at how it behaves both with the public and with each other during meetings.
“I think all of you need to start looking at yourselves and how you behave in front of the WCAT cameras and Zoom,” she said.