After four hours at Wahconah Regional High School, only 19 of the warrant's 31 articles had been addressed Monday. In a rare move, community members voted to separate the police department budget from the town’s full operating budget. While the $10.9 million remainder was accepted, the almost $1.7 million police budget failed.
“I think the vote ‘no’ was partially a vote against the budget and the increase, and I think it was also a big vote ‘no’ against kind of incestuous relationships that are happening between the town manager, certain select board members, and the chief, because her husband is on the select board," Diane Lowe told WAMC.
Lowe is the author of a letter to the editor concerning the Dalton police department and town government published by iBerkshires.com days before the meeting. In it, she notes that the police budget has risen by almost 60% since Deanna Strout – married to select board member and Pittsfield police captain Marc Strout – took charge of the department in 2021.
“They've controlled the town politics for four years," Lowe continued. "The board hasn't changed for four years. Four years ago, things got put into place where they outed Chief [Jeffrey] Coe from his position.”
In its 2021 coverage of Strout’s ascension to chief, the Berkshire Eagle notes that the Dalton select board ultimately took just 15 minutes to select Strout from among three finalists for the role of chief. Just months prior, she was a patrol officer. Her husband abstained from the vote.
“There were a lot of things behind the scenes to make that happen," said Lowe. "She was not the best candidate, but she had the connections, and a lot of people have been quiet about it because they're afraid of the retaliation.”
Lowe’s observation appeared to be borne out by how the vote against the police department budget played out at town meeting. After the initial public vote count was too close to call, a private vote told a very different story.
“Between the vote of everyone putting their hands up and the blind vote, there's 50 more votes for 'no' against the budget," said Lowe. "So, 50 people were afraid to vote 'no' where she could see them.”
Strout, who spent over 20 years on the Dalton PD before becoming its head, told attendees that the 2020 Massachusetts police reform bill had greatly added to the department’s expenses before offering some stats to the crowd.
“We average about 15,000 calls of service per year," said the chief. "We have 13 police officers, including me, and we have upwards around 100 to 150 arrests per year.”
Lowe’s husband and co-signer on her letter to iBerkshires.com is Chris Furlong – himself a retired Dalton police sergeant with over 20 years on the force. Furlong said Strout had misled the community.
“Chief, you just told the crowd the department had 15,000 calls for service, but in the annual town report, and I'm quite familiar with this, 5,000 of your calls annually are actually building checks done by your night shift, whether just going around at night, doing a good service, checking on doors- Those aren't necessarily calls for service," he said. "2,500 of your calls are also vehicle maintenance calls where the officers are washing the car, checking the equipment, the beginning of their shift, stuff like that, which is also good use of police time, but that is not a call for service. So really, your calls for service are about 7,500. The 150 arrests you just mentioned- Well, those aren't all hands-on arrest. Those are actually mostly criminal complaints for, someone's written a citation for driving without a license or something along those lines. In reality, the hands-on arrests are usually much lower, 40, 50 a year tops. But the numbers are a little deceiving.”
WAMC caught up with Chief Strout – decked out in her full tactical uniform – after the vote.
“I’m not really surprised with the crowd that was here tonight," she said. "It's kind of been a targeted attack on my family and the police department for the last couple of months. So, we'll work through it, and you know, we're going to get through it, and we do have a lot of overwhelming support in our community. We're well aware of that. This was a small percentage that showed up tonight to do this intentionally, so we'll be OK.”
She offered her own explanation for why she and the town government are under fire from voters.
“Probably because we're trying to push a new building, I would guess," Strout told WAMC. "But I don't- I really don't know. I would think, because we've been in the public eye a lot with the new building, and I think people are upset, rightfully so, our taxes are high, and I understand that, so I pay taxes here too. So, I totally get it.”
As far as the Dalton PD’s budget increases since the start of her tenure, the chief pointed to contract negotiations between the town manager and unions representing the police that she had no input on.
Strout also says that when she took over, the town was underbudgeting the department.
“We weren't even meeting contractual obligations," said the chief. "And then what we would do is, at the end of the year, we would go back and take money from all of the leftover money from the all the departments that had leftover money. So, my second year, what I did is, I said, listen, we need to budget appropriately and meet contractual obligations, so the town understands how much it actually costs to run the police department because they didn't. And we were over budget each year by like $111,000 because we weren't budgeting for vacation back fill and in-service training.”
With no police budget in place and the new fiscal year fast approaching in July, Dalton town leaders will have to scramble to come up with a new plan after Monday’s failure.
Lowe says she’s going to keep her eye on the ball and continue to rally residents around closely monitoring the police department, its spending, and her concerns around power structures in the community of around 6,200.
“People are afraid to speak up," Lowe told WAMC. "I tried getting other people to put their name on the letter, and while several people agreed, people were afraid. So hopefully, by having that letter get published and standing up in that meeting and speaking, I had several people whisper to me, good job on your letter, or thank you for speaking up. Hopefully it will set in motion more people to have the courage to say this is not acceptable.”
Among other decisions, voters also rejected a plan that would have designated the yet undeveloped old Dalton High School property originally intended for residential use as the site of a new police station.
The meeting will continue Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.
