For Gerrish, a spectacular lack of oversight

Selectman Karen Gerrish

For Lebanon selectmen to allow Rescue Department leadership to hemorrhage almost $200,000 in town funds since 2010 is nothing short of a spectacular lack of oversight.

Karen Gerrish was part of the oversight. Karen Gerrish was part of the problem. Do you seriously think the old Rescue regime would be gone if Bob Frizzell had been re-elected? If you do I got some swampland off the Heath Road you might be interested in.

All selectmen dating back to 2010 - excluding the two most recent additions - equally bear the blame, including Gerrish.

Gerrish is a follower. As Robie Marsters said, she’s a mouse.

She said she smelled something fishy, but wasn’t smart enough to find the rat.

Rescue was allowed to expend funds from its enterprise account based on receivables, but since there was no money there, funds just came out of town coffers. Those were your hard-earned tax dollars.

While the Rescue Corporation was claiming to be the biggest philanthropist in town it was really you and me, our tax dollars, that were giving and giving and giving.

Gerrish’s minions have been mounting a smear campaign against me, Harrison Thorp, her House 20 primary opponent, and saying I am using The Lebanon Voice to mount a smear campaign against her, when, in fact, it’s just the reporting of the truth.

Today with her propaganda mailer she is the one spreading lies and using the U.S. mail. Mailman should have had to wear full-body haz-mat suits spreading such toxic waste.

In the mailer she says she’s all about accountability.

Well, Ms. Gerrish, if you were all about accountability, you would have resigned in disgrace already after letting $200,000 of our hard-earned tax dollars fall through the Rescue cracks. Shame on you.

If you were all about accountability you would have answered questions about the two $300,000 disbursals taken from the town’s general fund without a vote during the first two years you were a selectperson.

If you were all about accountability you wouldn’t have written your own selectmen’s meeting minutes. You’re not even accountable to your own sense of smell. You smelled a rat, but never looked for the stench. Is that the kind of awareness and accountability you want to take to Augusta.

We’re sure Obama thinks Benghazi is a smear campaign.

And President Nixon said Watergate was all lies till he got caught. At least he did the honorable thing. He resigned.

Speaking of Watergate, I’ll bet everyone – actually, almost everyone – in town would love to have a Watergate-style investigation into how this Rescue mess went down. They would be able to subpoena witnesses and make them testify under oath. How’d you like that, Ms. Gerrish?

But things don’t go like that in this town sometimes. Instead, we get a Voter Guide (called a Referendum Summary to fool us) on Saturday authorized by Gerrish and the Board of Selectmen that gives kudos to Gerrish for her hard work. That amounts to free political advertising, which the town should go out of its way to even avoid the appearance of.

The town of Berwick doesn’t send out a Voter Guide. The town of South Berwick does not send out a Referendum Summary, or a Voter Guide. The town of North Berwick does not put out a Voter Guide. It seems only Lebanon sees the need for a Voter Guide. And Lebanon selectmen who are candidates are the only ones to get free political advertising. Well, it’s not actually a freebie. I mean we pay for it. That means I helped pay for Ms. Gerrish’s little plug. Ugh.

When former selectman Bob Frizzell did this last year and four years ago (with a picture of himself no less) the public was outraged. Yet Ms. Gerrish does it again. Is her memory that bad, or is she just insulting townspeople’s intelligence yet another time?