CARVER — At 5:05 p.m. Thursday, a subcommittee of Carver’s Select Board will close its doors to discuss “contract negotiations with non-union personnel (Town Administrator).” Its agenda says it will not return to open session. Counting the town’s posted agendas and minutes, it is at least the sixth closed session on Glenn Cannon’s contract scheduled since June 2.

Negotiating in private is allowed. The state’s Open Meeting Law lets a board bargain with a nonunion employee in executive session under Section 21(a)(2). The same section draws a line, though. A board may close a meeting to discuss a person’s reputation or character, “rather than professional competence.” How well the town administrator does the job is public business. So is what the town expects him to get done, and the contract is where the board gets to write that down.

The board doesn’t have to look far for the list. The G.O.A.T. News reported Monday that the board’s year has run on assurances followed by bigger bills. Read alongside federal records, its own minutes add up to an inventory of unfinished work. That inventory should go into the contract, with dates.

The work Carver is waiting on

The audits. On June 2, Finance Director Karen Preval told the Select Board and Finance Committee that the town was “still waiting for the 2024 audit” from its outside auditor, CBIZ, according to the minutes. No minutes posted since then report that it arrived. Under federal rules, a town that spends $750,000 or more a year in federal money must file its audit with the Federal Audit Clearinghouse within nine months of the fiscal year’s end. Carver reported $2.86 million in federal spending in fiscal 2023. The clearinghouse shows its latest filing covers that year and was accepted Sept. 20, 2024, the same day as its fiscal 2022 audit. Nothing has been filed for fiscal 2024, which ended June 30, 2024, or for fiscal 2025. The town’s own website posts audited financial statements only through fiscal 2022.

Health insurance. Town Meeting voted $4 million in April to cover Carver’s share of the losses in the Gateway Health Group, the self-funded pool it shared with Lakeville and the Old Rochester Regional School District. The employees’ 25 percent share, which Select Board member John Cotter put at about $1 million, was still unsettled in August, as The G.O.A.T. reported. On Sept. 22 the board met in executive session on bargaining strategy over “health insurance, all municipal unions,” the minutes show. The Oct. 6 agenda then added a “FY 2027 health insurance deficit.” Minutes of that meeting have not been posted, and no posted record gives the size of the shortfall.

Cannon also chairs Gateway’s wind-down board. Its Oct. 8 agenda listed an “Audit Report Review” and a closed session on litigation with NFP, the pool’s former consultant. Carver’s website lists two of that board’s agendas this year and none of its minutes.

The books. The town’s request for proposals for new financial software drew no responses, Cannon reported in March. In June, Preval priced the first phase of a move to MUNIS at $216,000, after the software had been taken out of the fiscal 2027 capital budget. On Aug. 4, asked how the transition of the finance director would affect the switch, Cannon said it was on hold, the minutes show. The board named a temporary town accountant that night, effective Sept. 9.

Bills and paperwork. When the board raised town counsel’s rates in January, the minutes record Cannon saying “the plan is trying to absorb the fee increase.” By June 22, legal spending stood at $178,000 against a $140,000 budget, and the Finance Committee moved $80,000 from its reserve fund to cover it, according to its minutes. Four days after Gov. Maura Healey signed the law dissolving the North Carver Water District and handing its powers to the Select Board, Cannon told members he had found only a draft of a 2018 district improvement financing agreement and could not obtain a signed copy.

Credit where it’s due

Not all of that started with Cannon, and none of it is his alone. He came to Carver in May 2024 after two years as Rochester’s town administrator, The Wanderer reported. Gateway’s consultant, in Chair Mark Townsend’s words, “completely failed.” In July, Townsend said everything that could be completed on Cannon’s water district goal had been completed. And when a board member proposed a goal to grow the commercial tax base by 10 percent, it was Cannon who asked for “an actual policy or plan” to reach it, according to the Sept. 8 minutes. That is the instinct a contract should reward.

The board has also built the tools. On March 3 it read the results of its annual evaluation of Cannon into the public record: 3.2 overall, with “Goals & Objectives” the lowest of five categories at 2.7, the minutes show. Over the summer it ranked his fiscal 2027 goals in public, putting communication first, budget and finance second and a funding plan for capital needs third. His contract calls for an evaluation 60 days before the town election, Townsend said in January.

The weak spot is that those goals are too loose to grade. “Budget and finance” can mean almost anything at evaluation time. An overdue audit is specific, and it has a price. In Middleborough, where I serve on the Finance Committee, the unfinished fiscal 2025 audit led the town’s financial adviser, Hilltop Securities, to recommend rolling short-term borrowing into one-year notes instead of locking in long-term financing. The Select Board approved $11.5 million in notes at 4.125 percent on Sept. 21, as The G.O.A.T. reported. Carver’s minutes mention the same firm, Hilltop, in a March discussion of the town’s bond rating, and Carver’s audit is with the same auditor, CBIZ.

What the contract should say

Before anyone signs, the board should put these in the contract, or in a goals schedule attached to it, each with a date:

• The audits. Delivery of the fiscal 2024 and 2025 audits, filed with the clearinghouse and posted on the town website with the auditor’s management letter. The newest management letter on the site covers fiscal 2021.
• The health insurance number. A written report to the board and the Finance Committee before the Dec. 1 Special Town Meeting on the fiscal 2027 deficit, how much of the employees’ Gateway share has been recovered and what the Gateway wind-down has cost in legal fees. The Gateway audit report reviewed Oct. 8 should be posted with it.
• A monthly money report. Budget against actual spending, with the legal and health insurance lines broken out, in every Select Board packet and sent to the Finance Committee.
• The terms, in public, before the vote. The final vote on the contract has to happen in open session. The proposed term, salary and evaluation clause should be in the posted meeting packet before it does.

The Finance Committee has a part to play, too. Carver’s online Agenda Center lists no Finance Committee meeting since Aug. 24, minutes of that meeting have not been posted, and its agenda gave the next meeting date as “TBD.” The articles on the Select Board’s Oct. 6 agenda for the Special Town Meeting warrant include unpaid bills, a supplemental appropriation and an end to transfers into the Middle High School stabilization fund. Voters will expect the committee to have looked hard at all three.

The board can keep Cannon and still do every one of these things. The contract is simply where it writes down what the town expects for the money. In August the board ranked its own top goal for the year as “Stay on Top of Important Town items,” according to the minutes. Thursday’s session will be private. The deal that comes out of it can put the town’s unfinished work in public view, with dates attached.

Barrella serves on the elected Middleborough Finance Committee and the Town Manager Search Committee. Neither body has any role in Carver’s finances or its town administrator’s contract. Middleborough sells water to North Carver. Select Board Chair Mark Townsend has appeared on The G.O.A.T. Podcast, and member Sarah Hewins has been invited.