Whitefield Fire Chief Tim Pellerin said complaints aired at the selectmen’s meeting Monday were “vindictive” and should not have been made in public. “It’s a personal matter,” he said.
Nicole Mathews, 24, said she is challenging Pellerin’s suitability to lead based on two recent incidents, including an imposed leave of absence from his position as Lincoln County Emergency Management director while county commissioners investigated a charge against him last September. The nature of the charge or charges was never divulged and Pellerin resumed within the month.
Mathews said she feels the investigation was “incorrectly closed.”
She also emphasized she brought her complaints to the Board of Selectmen, along with a request for an audit of the North Whitefield fire association books, as a private citizen of the town of Whitefield. She said she is not acting as a member of the municipal fire department, of the North Whitefield association or in her capacity as the town’s EMA director.
At the same time, the area is gray because the impetus for Mathews’ action involves three firefighters in the North Whitefield association, including herself, and Pellerin, who was hired last June.
In his daughter’s absence during the early part of Monday’s meeting, former selectman Bruce Mathews attended as a self-described “concerned parent and taxpayer.” He furnished copies of an incident report by Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Alan Shea. He also said his daughter would be contacting the Lincoln County Commissioners with concerns about the North Whitefield association’s finances “and other matters.”
Pellerin, former NWVFD chief until becoming town chief, is the association’s treasurer. He has lived in Whitefield approximately six years.
Nicole Mathews later confirmed she sent a letter to the commissioners.
The LCSO report recounts interviews conducted Jan. 16 with Mathews, Kelly Crosen and Josh Mooers at the apartment Mathews is renting on Townhouse Road. The night before, Mathews reported, the others were housesitting while she worked a 24-hour shift at her job. According to Matthews, in her absence Pellerin, driving the county EMA vehicle, arrived and started banging on the bedroom window. He then left and fired off a series of angry text messages from his personal cell phone to Crosen’s phone.
Crosen and Mooers are both members of the North Whitefield department.
Crosen told Sgt. Shea she had been in a two-year relationship with Pellerin “that had ended on good terms” last summer.
Mathews told Shea Crosen and Mooers were watching a movie and “she did not want Mr. Pellerin on her property or looking in her windows.”
The report states that Crosen wanted the incident documented “but did not want to pursue criminal charges.” Mathews requested that Pellerin be served with a trespass order.
Sheriff Todd Brackett said Tuesday the matter “was turned over to the State Police to investigate because of Tim Pellerin’s position here. It’s not uncommon” to do that when another county department head is involved, he explained.
Pellerin said Sgt. Michael Field of the State Police emailed him to say no charges were pending and the case was closed. He was asked not to return to the Townhouse Road property, except in his professional capacity as fire chief responding to an incident.
Sgt. Field told The Lincoln County News, “We don’t normally release names and information when nobody is charged.”
Mathews said Tuesday she aired her concerns publicly because “people are not following through, they are turning their heads. My fear is if things keep getting pushed aside, and the power gets too lopsided, there could be a huge explosion down the road.”
Citing her involvement in the Penobscot County EMA and her training in Knox County, she said Pellerin “takes a stronger role, authority-wise, than what I’ve learned an emergency manager needs to do. There are other people in this county and town who have the same opinion. Whether they’re willing to take action I don’t know.”
Mathews praised Pellerin’s “tremendous technical skills in his career field. We got a new truck, we got a new fire station,” thanks to his expertise and efforts, she said. “I think it takes more than technical skills, however, to be the right kind of leader.”
Rather than seeking a private conversation with town officials, she said she “wanted to shed public light on someone in a leadership position” acting unprofessionally.
With that position, she added, “comes public pressure,” and the trespassing and harassing incident “put me over the edge. I get home and find this person responsible for protecting this town and county in a time of disaster, tapping on my bedroom window, peeking in.”
Even though she wasn’t home at the time and was “not the object of the intrusion,” the incident was unsettling, Mathews said: “If my fire chief is making me feel uncomfortable in my own home, I’m not comfortable at a fire scene.”
Mathews said “enough is enough.” Simply advising and moving past the difficulty isn’t sufficient. “I want to see him penalized,” she said.
Pellerin said law enforcement dealt with what is a personal matter and now “it’s being dragged into the fire department with all these allegations made against me. It’s all retaliatory,” an attempt to remove him as fire chief, he said. “You start making allegations,” he added, “and there are serious ramifications.”
Selectman McCormick said when Sheriff Brackett notified him about the incident last week, “he advised me it was not a personnel matter, it didn’t happen within the department.” It was ‘personal’,” McCormick said he was told, and he defended the select board’s decision to hear the complaint in open session.
Brackett told The Lincoln County News he had “nothing to say” about the personal vs. personnel issue.
As Monday’s session ended, McCormick and fellow Selectman Frank Ober were debating how to proceed. The chairman said he will try to arrange a closed door meeting later this week with Pellerin. Another remedy is for the complainant or complainants to lodge a grievance. McCormick believes the fire department ordinance allows such a process but he couldn’t locate the provision Monday night.
The town has no fraternization policy, Ober noted. He said the chief’s documented behavior “isn’t appropriate but there’s no policy” that addresses or prohibits it.
A fraternization policy applies to managers or supervisors becoming romantically involved with subordinates.
Addressing Mathews’ audit request, McCormick advised her that association members can vote to have it done. He later said it is not a town issue. While the town could probably facilitate, “we don’t have the finances.”
During Monday’s meeting McCormick said, “I want this handled right, I don’t want to push anybody under the bus,” but by press time he was describing the situation as “convoluted. It’s unacceptable, it’s unprofessional.”
