Seavey unseats Santuccio, 250-84

By David Carkhuff

North Conway Water Precinct voters denied John Santuccio another three-year term as commissioner Wednesday, electing challenger Michelle Seavey, a reform candidate who has pushed for shifting power away from the precinct board to citizens, by a decisive vote of 250-84.Seavey, 31, a teacher at Fryeburg Academy, presented an upbeat message that the troubled North Conway Water Precinct needs to move forward. As the challenger in a closely-watched election, she said little about her ties to People's Alliance for Good Government, a citizens group that formed more than a year ago to protest the firing of longtime Superintendent Gary Chandler.The controversy that culminated with Chandler's firing started in April 2003, when McLane, Graf, Raulerson and Middleton law firm began a legal review of precinct operations. Later, Municipal Resources Inc. was brought in to conduct a management review. The culmination of their work, which cost roughly $250,000, was an 11-page report about the precincts operations that alleged unethical and in some cases illegal activities and portrayed the precinct operating more like a fraternal organization than a public entity.A state attorney general's report into these allegations of wrongdoing in the precinct, released Feb. 24, 2005, failed to find proof of criminal conduct but backed up the earlier report's allegations that the precinct was mismanaged under Chandler.Seavey gained a higher profile in recent months, becoming chairman of the precinct's ad hoc bylaws committee, a group that formed draft operating guidelines aimed at expanding on the precinct's charter. In this role, Seavey advocated rules that aimed to shift power from commissioners to precinct voters. Some of these proposed rules met with opposition from Santuccio and Duane.At recent meetings, Seavey insisted that the board not submit her committee's bylaws to general counsel Thomas Dewhurst or McLane, Graf, Raulerson and Middleton law firm, both generally held in contempt by People's Alliance for Good Government and charged with participating in a vendetta against Chandler.Santuccio came under fire for casting the deciding vote to fire Chandler. Santuccio voted with Duane to terminate Chandler while Brian Preece, then chair of the board, was opposed. At a May 2004 commissioners' meeting, an attempt by newly elected Commissioner Jim Umberger to rehire Chandler failed 2-1. Santuccio, again considered the swing vote, said his position on Chandler had changed and that he would not entertain rehiring him.Santuccio said in a recent interview that he felt vindicated by both the MRI Report and the attorney general's report.In a stroke of irony, in March 2002, Santuccio defeated Duane, then an incumbent running for re-election, by just four votes, 110-106, in a successful last-minute write-in campaign. There were 222 ballots cast, a record for candidate elections in the precinct. But in the past two years, as the precinct reeled from infighting and accusations that the Chandler firing was a political vendetta, Santuccio backed away from the former superintendent and pressed for the hiring of David Bernier, the new superintendent brought on board last fall.