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Board of Health member Tom McMahon sat at the Board of Health’s table in Abbot Hall’s Select Board meeting room Monday night. By 11:27 a.m. Tuesday, he was emailing to ask why his board could no longer meet there.
The reason, according to McMahon and Board of Health Chair Dr. Tom Massaro, is a baseball cap.
MHTV video shows McMahon wearing one in that room at the board’s Sept. 14 meeting. About a month ago, Massaro said, Select Board Chair Dan Fox called him about complaints, mainly about a baseball cap, and Massaro passed the warning to McMahon.
McMahon wore one again Nov. 9. Massaro said Fox has since told the five-member health board to find another place to meet.
That leaves one elected board shut out of a public meeting room by the chair of another. The town’s posted records show no Select Board vote, written policy or public meeting on the decision, though the board routinely votes in public when people book the space. When asked who has authority over such decisions, Fox said, “It’s [the Select Board’s] room.”
Fox — Marblehead‘s highest elected official — said he believes the room deserves to be respected, and that an elected official wearing a hat in a room where so much history has happened over hundreds of years “doesn’t feel that way to me.”
“I feel like it is a true honor to be able to sit at that table in that room,” Fox said. “And I take that very seriously.”
The room doubles as a museum. Archibald M. Willard’s “The Spirit of ’76” dominates one wall, and a bust of Marblehead-born Declaration of Independence signer Elbridge Gerry sits above the town’s original 1684 deed.
Fox said there are “plenty of other places” for boards to meet, naming the library, the schools and an upstairs room at the Mary Alley Municipal Building.
Who controls the room
The state law governing town property, Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 40, Section 3, says town property not placed in the charge of a particular board, officer or department by law or town vote is “under the control of the selectmen.” Marblehead’s bylaws let the Select Board rent out Abbot Hall, “subject to the use by the Town for Town purposes,” and give authority assigned to a board to “a majority” of it.
McMahon’s email to Kyle Wiley, the Select Board’s administrative aide, asked for the legal authority and dress-code provision behind the decision. He wrote that other members have worn hats in the room and that he has criticized Fox, including on Nov. 9, alleging the decision appears to be a “pretext for retaliation” under the First Amendment and 42 U.S. Code Section 1983.
“I’m not retaliating against anybody,” Fox said. He said he has also told another board that its members should not wear hats in the room either.
McMahon said the decision belonged to the full Select Board. A chair gets no more of a vote than any other member, he said, and cannot set policy alone. “You don’t just move forward,” he said.
As for the cap, McMahon said he gave it little thought. “I don’t know what I put on after I get home from work,” he said.
He said he does not object to a rule, only to one made without a vote. “Make a policy,” he said. “That’s fine, and if it’s a policy, I’ll follow it.”
Health board chair shares responsibility
Massaro, a pediatrician, takes part of the blame. “I have to take some responsibility,” he said. He didn’t notice the cap Monday, and had he been “more sensitive to style and costume,” he said, “I perhaps could have corrected this.”
Fox raised the issue politely, Massaro said. But nothing about McMahon’s appearance was disrespectful, he said, and the board spent the night debating how to curb teenage drinking.
“I would have thought we’ve gone past the idea that dress codes were indicative of people valuing work, and apparently it’s not,” he said.
He granted that the room holds the town’s most famous painting. “On the other hand, those people were revolutionaries,” he said.
What frustrates him most is the lost time. “We have three physicians, a wellness advocate and a real public health experienced person on the board, and we’re doing crazy things,” he said. “We’re moving around.”
The Board of Health’s next regular meeting falls Nov. 23, with no location posted.
“I’m hoping that we can, you know, negotiate this,” Massaro said. Then he asked: “And what is disrespectful about a baseball cap?”
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