Johnson trustees cancel election, appoint Putvain

Putvain lost to Lynda Hill at the village’s annual election in April by just five votes and argued at a meeting held May 13 that this margin meant nearly half of the village’s voting population already wanted to see him on the board of trustees.

He also told trustees that his main priorities would be to replace Troy and Meredith Dolan as foreman and manager of the village and putting guidelines in place to prevent the kind of personnel conflicts that led to their departure.

Former Johnson selectboard member Kyle Nuse and Jena Gould-Hopkins also put their names forward as candidates at the May 13 meeting to replace William Jennison, the former trustees chair who resigned in April amid revelations of his handling of inter-employee conflict between the Dolans and lineman Paul Stankiewicz.

Gould-Hopkins briefly sat on the Village Board of Trustees.

When the trustees couldn’t agree which of the three candidates to appoint, a special election was scheduled for late June. When only Putvain submitted a consent form, trustees called a special meeting to cancel the election and simply appoint him to the board.

“Participating in a costly election — that could have easily been prevented — felt completely irresponsible,” Nuse said after the Monday meeting.

Though trustee Diane Lehouiller floated the idea of holding the election to allow villagers to reconsider a vote to OK spending $30,000 toward the hiring of an economic development coordinator, a vote that failed earlier, the vote to cancel the election, as well as the vote to appoint Putvain, was unanimous.

Though Nuse did not file the paperwork to be put on the ballot, she attempted to put forward her name for appointment consideration at the meeting Monday, even after the motion to appoint Putvain was made. She did so as an exercise of her “democratic right,” she said after the meeting, and hoped to put the request forward before the motion to appoint Putvain was made but said trustees chair Steven Hatfield did not allow time for that to happen.

The board of trustees, including Putvain, also unanimously voted at this meeting to hire Municipal Resources, a New Hampshire-based recruitment agency, to assist the village in its nearly year-long search for Meredith Dolan’s replacement as village manager at the rate of $95 an hour.