Bangor Ethics Board approves minutes, defers pending complaint to April

[0:00] John Eddy King III: We're a crazy board that, yeah, I didn't know if you anything, I mean, the advisory boards, I have to actually also make a statement. I don't have to, I want to make a statement at the end correcting something I misspoke and misunderstood when Sonja Maler spoke on the last meeting. As an advisory board, we're just less formal. It's not, it's not Robert's Rules of Order, it's just easy, easier. There's still some structure, of course, but welcome, thanks for, thanks for applying. [0:34] Shane Leonard: So it looks great, happy to do it. Yeah, let's see, Chair Leonard, sorry for putting a lot, Steven is, Steven is zooming in, you have, oh yeah, sorry, I was just coming, I didn't think [0:57] John Eddy King III: in the correction of everything to tell you one of our members is on Zoom, oh, and that would be [Shane Leonard: Stephen Bro, I'm] sorry, Stephen Bro, b-r-o-u-g-h, yeah, and he's zooming in for tonight's meeting. [1:16] Shane Leonard: What's his name, do we know his email, I do know something you said we're live, yeah, Stephen, one [1:25] John Eddy King III: second, we're just, we're just setting everything up to completion here, I don't say anything. Right, yeah. About to broadcast your email to everyone online, Stephen. No, that's a joke, of course. That's the email that we have for him. [1:56] Unidentified speaker: Okay, if you want to proceed with the meeting, I will see if I'm getting hit. [2:02] John Eddy King III: I'll take on a second. Yeah, no problem. You take your time. If you want, you can... Steven, if you could hear, just one second. [2:56] Unidentified speaker: I need to run a layout that's going to lock them off from there. Okay. The meeting is now live-streamed if you want to proceed, but I don't want to use this terminal to have him as a Zoom panelist because then it would display his email, so I will have [3:12] Shane Leonard: to go upstairs and get back up. Okay. Should we... [3:16] Unidentified speaker: Well, why don't you do this? [3:17] Ellen Teresa Celli: Why don't you call the meeting to order? And then just indicate that we're going to adjourn briefly to work out a technical [3:25] John Eddy King III: issue to allow that. I have no way to stop the feed though, but that's something we're saying. Okay, well, yeah, no, that makes sense, I trust your take on that. Good evening everyone, this is a meeting for the Board of Ethics. It is March 4th, 2026. We are in council chamber. It is 5:38 p.m. We are going to be working from an agenda this evening, but we are, as Mr. Gould stated, and you probably heard, we're just working out a small technical issue. It's going to be a couple of [3:58] Shane Leonard: minutes before we proceed, just hang in there, I [4:03] John Eddy King III: formally have to say we're in recess, no, this [4:13] Unidentified speaker: whole thing basically first [4:16] John Eddy King III: stapled package is just the minutes from the December 17th [Shane Leonard: meeting and] Then next is the findings of fact regarding one of the colleges, and even though [4:31] Ellen Teresa Celli: the two of you were not at the meeting, I did not participate, you can still vote. [4:36] Shane Leonard: Yeah. [4:41] John Eddy King III: it's it's interesting to ask members who weren't present and may not have seen the meeting yeah to sort of back this is what we did you know talk about an ethical this is this is an ethical test this is the kobayashi maroon and you guys have to pass this or we all have to be set [5:01] Shane Leonard: That would be funny tonight. [5:16] John Eddy King III: Is a bit of an abbreviated meeting in the way that, well, lately we've had more to do tonight because it's the first time we've had a quorum all year, right, a small question, well, we're obsessed, but [5:58] Ellen Teresa Celli: we're not at the recess and it's public, so you can ask. [6:05] John Eddy King III: We also have to remit to the city council for our yearly review, and we've spent a bunch of time, I mean, we've been with you since September, October, it doesn't sound like much, but we really only had like our first meetings in September, yeah, so part of that will be with the solicitor's office and part of that will be through you, how do we, how is that joint project going to come together. You mean in terms of the training? No, each year the Board of Ethics has to send a yearly report just about what we've done the last year. And again, we did some things with the Solicitor's Office. Yeah, we did a lot of things with you. And I'm not sure who takes control of writing that yearly report. I think it would be the Solicitor's Office. Okay. Okay. Because I think that [6:56] Ellen Teresa Celli: that because these referrals all addressed city councilors, right, and because the solicitor's office worked so closely with council, they wanted to bring somebody outside in, yeah, so as you know, as far as spreading the report, I don't think it has to, but you know, if Dave still has concerns about that, I'm happy to do whatever it takes to make sure, right, sure, thanks. [7:33] Shane Leonard: See, I think we're getting close, yeah, a lot of time, Steven, can you hear us, are [7:54] John Eddy King III: you, are you on your headset, Steven? [Shane Leonard: Yeah.] Are you on your headset? Yes, I am. Can you, I only know this because we did this, we did this a couple meetings ago, it sounds exponentially better for us in here if you aren't, and I know that might be inconvenient for you, but can you go off your headset, it sounds a bit like you're talking through a Campbell's soup can, do it, and the last time you had to zoom in when you came off the headset, it was like you were in the room with us, that's why I'm asking, okay. [8:57] Stephen Brough: Headset is off, that's, that's way better, okay, yeah, I don't. [9:05] John Eddy King III: I don't know what it is, but it's it's repetitive now, okay. [9:10] Stephen Brough: You can hear us, okay? Yes, I can, okay. [9:17] John Eddy King III: All right, we're back to the fact of business. The first item, as always, our introductions. I never know if people like going around, or if they just want me to say it. We can try it this way, just said president tonight, Cody, excuse me, Cody Silkener, member Cody Silkener, member Mark Eastman, I'm member Shane Leonard, also the chair. On Zoom we have member Stephen Bro, good evening, yes, and as always Mr. Ed Gould, who is the guiding attorney for us currently as we go through all the to all of these matters. Next up, we have the approval of minutes. And Steven, you were able to access your packet, right? Yes, I was. Okay, I'll open up the floor to any questions or comments about the minutes before hopefully we'll proceed. I didn't know if anybody had anything that they wanted to comment on or discuss. I [10:27] Stephen Brough: am good with the minutes as presented. Okay, there's there's no rush in the chamber here if [10:35] John Eddy King III: if there are no questions or comments or changes about the minutes, I would I would look for a motion to approve, okay. [10:47] Stephen Brough: I motion we approve the minutes of the December 17th [10:52] John Eddy King III: meeting. Second. Because one of Steven, because you're on a Zoom call, we have to do a roll call vote, and I'm going to start with you to approve the minutes for December 17th, please. Affirmative. Mark, yes. Cody, yes. Chair says yes, that's four. Next would be the approval of the findings of fat with respect to council order 25-283. That would have been the second item in the packet, and the floor is open again for any questions or comments or changes, if anyone saw fit to make any, not to rough anyone at all. I'm not sure if everyone read them first or needs a moment to read them now. If there are no changes or comments there, I would be open to hearing that motion if we were to approve the masses. I [12:08] Stephen Brough: make a motion to approve the finding of fact. [12:12] John Eddy King III: It's been seconded. As we did before, we have a roll called a roll call [12:20] Stephen Brough: vote again, starting with you, Stephen, please. I approve the minutes approved. Mark, yes. [12:31] Shane Leonard: Cody, yes. The chair says yes, we're cooking. That includes [12:43] John Eddy King III: the approval that we needed for both items. Is there any new business before the board? [12:50] Stephen Brough: Stephen, do you have any, are you aware of any new business that we have? I am not aware of anything. [12:58] John Eddy King III: Thing from you, Mark, is there anything there? No. Moving on to other business, Steven, did you have, I'm only asking just it's easier, you're you know you're alphabetical in my head, right, it's it's [13:12] Stephen Brough: Easy to start with you. Did you have anything from our old other business? I do not. No. [13:20] John Eddy King III: Table nothing here, I guess. I guess this is the, this is a chance I'd like to take to clarify something from our December 17th meeting that we had here. There was a bit of a miscommunication or confusion. I wrote it to make sure that I got it exactly the way I wanted to. According to the city ordinance covering advisory boards, it states that we are intending, intended, excuse me, to operate in a less formal manner. And we, meaning the ethics board, order not required to use Robert's Rules of Order in our procedural rules. It specifically states that we use the democratic rules of order, and if there was any confusion about that matter, I hope this clears that up. The things that you advised that I should bring up, remind me please. [14:14] Ellen Teresa Celli: If you want to talk about your plan to address the last referral which you received from the city council, particularly in light of the fact that we have two new members and may have [14:27] John Eddy King III: two more new members by the next time we potentially have more. Yeah, so yeah, at least, at least from my perspective, and that assumes a little bit, but it, as the chair currently, the very next meeting that we have, we still have some business to take care of because as Mr. Gould said, we're going to have at least one new member that I understand, and we may have two at that time. It seems silly to do any orientation or training and then have to do it again, so we're, we're going to do a lot of things next meeting that we do normally the first meeting of the year, a bit of training from the solicitor's office. It would be time to elect or re-elect the chair, and then because we have so many new members, what I want to do is I want to give the new members of the board a combination of our thoughts as we've gotten to this point and give them, you know, metaphors, what have you, just a fresh, a fresh chance to take a look and see if we might have overlooked anything. Maybe Stephen, they've seen things that we haven't, and they might want to get information that we hadn't thought of, instead of just dropping them in the middle of whatever we were doing midway through. That seems reasonable, but actually open the floor for any conversation and discussion about it, if you know, obviously we should discuss it as a board, just because I'm not, I'm only in charge of the meeting, I'm not in charge of what we do and don't do. Steven. [15:55] Stephen Brough: How does that, how does that sound to you? That sounds reasonable. Yes. Okay. Do you have any, is [16:03] John Eddy King III: There anything that you, I don't know, concerns, I guess is maybe too strong a word, but any thoughts about anything, even in that, I'm not seeing properly? No, sir. Okay, gentlemen, is there [16:19] Unidentified speaker: any, I agree, I think it would be efficient to have the formal training once we have a more full board. I don't really know like the stuff you would be dropping us into. So, I mean, on the one hand, what would dropping us into it would be like, and now vote. [16:47] John Eddy King III: Exactly. In a weird way, it's sort of like the meeting minutes. We're asking you to just sort of go along with what we thought were great ideas, and I know there's a lot of things we don't, we don't know. Let's just, let's leave it up and see if anything else that we had overlooked or that anybody else could really contribute to it. So that's my thing. Yeah, and if I may. Yeah, please [17:10] Ellen Teresa Celli: and so the history of this last pending complaint is that I think it was at the December meeting just the board made two decisions. Number one, that did not have to be considered an executive session, and number two, to table consideration of that complaint because the board as it was constituted at that time wanted to get more information. That process has been ongoing, and we're likely to get even more information before the board considers and, you know, provides its advisory opinion. So it makes sense, I think, this chair suggested to defer anything on that until the board's fully constituted, you've been trained, and essentially the information that has been requested will all be gathered together rather [18:16] John Eddy King III: than coming in piecemeal. Yeah, so I'm not sure how easy it is for the members tonight to sort of look, maybe it's very easy. I have a list of dates from the solicitor's office. Again, the next date is probably pretty easy because it's just going to be a bit of introduction training, electing a chair, or electing a chair, and then in that meeting I expect the material for the council order that previous members are familiar with, but new members will be given everything, and then plenty of time to look it over and discuss, not in our meeting, but then the next meeting we schedule. Two meetings out should be the first time we handle any preliminary questions or deeper dives from new members and old members. I'm not going to ask everybody here to try to pick two meetings, but I've said all that to say that the Solicitor's Office, because of the open meetings law, our meetings have to be recorded and this is a convenient and easy place but so everybody else's meetings have to be recorded trying to get a quorum while also getting the room and that venn diagram of just what everything is matching sort of is tricky for the solicitor's office so they gave me a list of dates i wonder and again nobody has to swear on it here but i wonder if anyone knew if there were any problems with any of these dates i could cross them off for the very next time we could meet which would be again sorry to repeat myself but it is just to get the training in and to get the materials to us again that sounded really circuitous but thank you for sticking with me the first couple dates are march 18th or march 26th. Actually, it's probably easier to say in the middle of March, there's one day. And then at the end of the month, there were three opportunities on the 26th, the 30th and the 31st. Steven, you can hear me still. Okay. Yes. I noticed my voice dropped off. I hope that didn't [20:37] Stephen Brough: make it harder to hear. Nope. Okay. Thank you. [20:42] John Eddy King III: I wasn't sure. I don't actually, I can, i don't know if i can arbitrarily take one of these off i don't believe i'm in the state on the 18th of march i think that almost just removes that then does the 26th the 30th or the 31st does that work for anyone everyone potentially it does be none of those yeah thank you yeah right sorry i should have said that clear absolutely it's going to be the same time of day we don't ever meet outside of a 5 30 window sometimes the meetings like tonight will be briefer the meetings where we're dealing with referred council orders those typically are an hour maybe 90 minutes most often yeah i should have said that i just i blanked on that of thought during that but why would you every time we meet typically 5 30. you're okay you're okay with the openness of it stephen do you have any preference is there any i actually do [22:00] Stephen Brough: not on the 26th the 30th and the 31st afternoons evenings my calendar is free i've got it up right now and we and i have nothing there okay yeah i'm available 5 30. it will it will need to be via zoom that's okay and again [22:29] John Eddy King III: We've learned our lessons a bit in how to handle those who have to zoom in, and we'll make sure you get the packet of information so you have it to look at before the meeting, you know. And that's the only thing that sometimes had held us up. We unexpectedly had someone zooming in when we were all present, and it just stopped the meeting. So and the city has a policy on members zooming in. [22:54] Ellen Teresa Celli: And if I recall it correctly, it's supposed to be no more than three months in a row. However, if the chair, I'm sorry, if the board votes to permit someone to zoom in more often than that, then you're good to go. [23:14] John Eddy King III: It's not the chair. It's the board that does that. It's the board. Yes. So technically, then, this would be one of three. Yes. And if Stephen had to zoom in next to him, still not an issue. And even the third one not an issue, if he had to. Okay. Okay. We'll figure that out as we go, Steven. Okay. And you're those days are fine. [23:38] Ellen Teresa Celli: Do you want me there for those? I'm happy to come and I'm available. [23:43] John Eddy King III: Actually, that's a good question. Because for the training, you don't need to be there for mine. It's possible we do that we do the training and the information. We elect the chair. And then we get into the council order. So you'd be [23:56] Ellen Teresa Celli: I'm available. Okay. Okay. [24:02] John Eddy King III: Thursday, Monday or Tuesday. How about how about we try Tuesday, the 31st of March. That'll be our first attempt. And then we can actually try the 30th as our second choice because for all I know, Mary Flynn and the solicitor's office, maybe these dates are already taken up by other committees already. There are some dates available in April as well. There's a couple in the beginning and then several are in the middle of the month and then a couple at the end of the month. I know it's, again, we're not holding anybody to anything except we kind of are because Mary would potentially get the building, get the room set up for us and then hopefully we would have a quorum. Does anybody present have any issue with anything in the middle of April the 14th the 15th or the 16th let me get back to my calendar the 14th yep I probably might not be 15th and the 16th [25:16] Ellen Teresa Celli: They work for your coding ed 15th I have a deposition starting at one which should be done but I can't promise that right 16th is available Steven would [25:28] Stephen Brough: You be good on the 16th of April I would I have nothing there let's try that for our [25:35] John Eddy King III: First choice, second choice. I'll go ahead. Was that you, Steven? No, okay, sorry. Second choice, if we could pick one at the end of the month, either the 29th or the 30th, okay. [25:57] Shane Leonard: Same here, okay. [26:01] Stephen Brough: Okay, the 30th. I may still, I may be doing my last of my 90 days in Gorham at this point. I'm not sure when we're going to wrap that up. I could be back in town by then. I could still be trying to get some last directive in, okay. Is the 29th better for you? That could also, that could work, 29th. [26:30] John Eddy King III: That seems good for everyone here. I'll try, I'll ask Mary. The first choice we have will be April 16th. The second would be April 29th. All meetings at 5 30. Thank you for reminding me that. Yeah, that's that's that certainly helps the solicitor's office out. I would [26:53] Stephen Brough: offer one thing about trying to schedule meetings on Tuesdays, okay. I, that is normally a city council day, so the room may not be available. That's [27:12] Shane Leonard: right. What is our normal, are they [27:18] John Eddy King III: thank you, thank you. We just got a correction from someone who would know, their Mondays, Stephen, instead, so we'll be okay. Yep, the city manager's office is always helpful, appreciate it. Can you think of anything else? One more, one more swing just in case I or in case all this talk has opened up anything. Is there any other business before we adjourn? [27:51] Shane Leonard: Mark? No, Steven? [27:54] Stephen Brough: No, I have nothing. [27:56] John Eddy King III: All right, gentlemen, we are adjourned. Thanks very much. [28:01] Stephen Brough: Good seeing you all again. [28:03] Ellen Teresa Celli: Joe, good hearing you. [28:06] Stephen Brough: Yes. Thanks. Very good. Good evening. Good evening.