Waterways Official Found Not Guilty in Report
A hearing officer appointed to make recommendations to the town board has found William Taylor, the Town of East Hampton’s waterways management supervisor and a town trustee, not guilty on each of 14 charges of misconduct and incompetence levied against him last year after he was injured while securing an aquatic weed harvester in Georgica Pond.
The town board is reviewing those findings, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said on Tuesday, and will make a determination as to whether or not to accept them at its meeting next Thursday. “We will take into consideration the findings and recommendations and the board will adopt a resolution,” he said.
The town board had voted in November 2016 to suspend Mr. Taylor for 30 days without pay for actions taken without authorization two months earlier. Mr. Taylor denied all charges and vowed a vigorous defense.
“I could never understand why these charges were brought in the first place,” Mr. Taylor said on Tuesday. “I didn’t do anything except try and help people.”
Disciplinary charges had been detailed in a document signed by Kim Shaw, the town’s director of natural resources, stating that Mr. Taylor “punched in to work for the Town, took a Town vehicle, and drove the Town vehicle to the area of Georgica Pond” on Sept. 4, 2016, a day he was not scheduled to work, all of which constitute engaging in unauthorized work and misconduct. As waterways management supervisor, Mr. Taylor is employed by the Natural Resources Department.
Mr. Taylor had indeed gone to the pond. As Tropical Storm Hermine moved up the East Coast, Sara Davison, the executive director of the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, contacted Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk, to voice her concern that the aquatic weed harvester the foundation had leased to remove macroalgae from the pond was not secured and could break free of its mooring during the storm. Mr. Bock relayed that message to Mr. Taylor, who offered to inspect the harvester. He had already planned to go to the pond to remove fencing that had been erected to protect piping-plover and least-tern nesting sites.
The trustees, who manage many of the town’s waterways and bottomlands on behalf of the public, had just approved an opening of Georgica Pond to the Atlantic Ocean, which they typically do biannually. The weed harvester had to be moved to deeper water, Mr. Taylor said last year, “because the pond was to be opened, the water level was up a couple of feet, and if this thing was tied up where it was normally tied up, it would go aground.” He had moved it for the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation on previous occasions, he said.
While wading in the pond, Mr. Taylor suffered a severe cut on his foot, which required several days’ hospitalization. Two months after the incident, he was notified of the suspension and charges against him.
The harvester was neither owned nor within the town’s control, and the town had not performed a hazard assessment and did not possess safety instructions, according to the document signed by Ms. Shaw. Mr. Taylor, it continued, was not wearing proper protective clothing, and his conduct was reckless. Moreover, the Natural Resources Department had taken the position that the pond should not be opened to the ocean before October, contrary to the trustees’ position.
In a recommendation to the town dated Nov. 9, Eileen Powers, the hearing officer, wrote that she did not find sufficient evidence of the allegations. Moreover, Ms. Powers wrote, “Mr. Taylor’s decision to assist Sara Davison at Georgica Pond after he punched in to work for the town on Sept. 4, 2016, was, in my opinion, at worst an error of judgment and not an act in bad faith.” Mr. Taylor’s overlapping duties as waterways management supervisor and trustee, she added, muddied the waters and made the charges “difficult.”
While Mr. Taylor did assist Ms. Davison without clocking out for the town, as he should have, Ms. Powers wrote, “I simply do not agree that the testimony presented indicated any willful misconduct or incompetence by Mr. Taylor in diverting from his intended plan to remove fencing by responding to, and checking on, the harvester in Georgica Pond. . . . Mr. Taylor checked in to work intending to remove fencing for the town but was then diverted by Ms. Davison’s request for help at the pond.”
Mr. Taylor said that the suspension and charges against him have taken a toll on both his finances and his health. The town, he said, should look upon his roles as waterways management supervisor and trustee as complementary, and not conflicting. “If I’m doing something to clean up a beach or the water,” he said, “it benefits everybody.”