LETTERS

Barrington will regret losing road agent

Staff Writer
Fosters Daily Democrat

To the Editor:

On Monday, April 8 at the Select Board’s meeting, long-time Barrington road agent Peter Cook resigned.To get a sense of the process that led to his resignation go to YouTube and type in Barrington, NH selectmen’s meeting April 8, 2019 and advance to about 54 minutes and watch the totally unnecessary way Mr. Cook was treated. Watch their phony “Thank you for your service.”

The Select Board will rue the day they allowed this to happen, and it didn’t need to.

Short of extensive training, Mr. Cook is totally irreplaceable. He knows where every culvert, frost heave, spring drainage issue is, and much more that exists in the 60 plus miles of town roads. When a tree comes down on a town road on the weekend he shows up with his chainsaw to fix the problem and he isn’t compensated for it. When the crew is told to show up at 3:00 AM to plow, Mr. Cook shows up at 2:30 to start the trucks so they are warm when the guys show up. A UPS driver told me they argue over who will get the Barrington route because they know that Barrington has the best winter road maintenance in the area. In the 2006 Mothers Day flood, Mr. Cook’s longstanding relationships with local materials providers had Barrington roads passable long before other towns.

In my view, Barrington Selectman Andrew Knapp has decided that he knows everything about everything whether it’s road maintenance, building construction, office management, you name it and he knows how it should be done. Micro managing is his specialty. Mr. Cook is not the first town employee to resign in frustration.

I had lunch with Mr. Knapp some months or so ago and he went on about how bad our town’s road maintenance was, despite the fact that it was developed by the town’s engineering firm several years ago. They took core drillings on every road and produced an evaluation of every road and designed a schedule for continuous maintenance with repaving every 12 years. Mr. Knapp, being an expert in all things, said that was ridiculous. In New York state they only repave every 25 years.

Mr. Knapp claims to be pretty good at numbers, along with everything else. Perhaps he is, but he sure doesn’t understand anything about a small New England town and the complex interrelations of the people who live here and their history and their value to our community.

I said this didn’t need to happen and it shouldn’t have. If you watch the video you will see that the subjects under discussion center on issues such as rental vs. purchase or subcontracting, or doing it in house. I’m not sure Mr. Cook was even prepped for this. Mr. Knapp’s continuous hounding served no purpose and the discussion should not have been held at a Select Board meeting. This discussion should have been held at a table with the Town’s Administrator who is our town’s personnel manager and our finance manager and with Mr. Cook responding thoughtfully to questions submitted by the Board for consideration and having ample opportunity to present his evaluation.

I will miss Peter Cook and believe me, so will the rest of you. You just don’t know it yet.

Charter Weeks, Barrington