West Bridgewater assessor avoids forced resignation through retirement after incident
WEST BRIDGEWATER – West Bridgewater Principal Assessor John Donahue was asked to resign by selectmen after a September incident where he and a resident got into an aggressive verbal altercation.
Despite a unanimous vote by selectmen to ask Donahue to resign immediately, the Board of Assessors chose not to have him resign, but instead take a short unpaid suspension before retiring next spring.
It all started at a Sept. 22 Board of Assessors meeting when a resident came in to talk about his property's assessed value.
Over the course of about a half hour, tensions between the resident and Donahue rose as the resident claimed that Donahue had improperly calculated his property value, causing his taxes to be much higher than he claimed they should be.
The two argued over the process of the assessment, escalating until the resident accused Donahue of lying, at which point Donahue began asking if the resident wanted to physically fight him outside.
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Other town employees stopped the meeting at that point and calmed the tensions before ending the discussion.
The resident could not be reached for comment.
At the next West Bridgewater selectmen's meeting, on Oct. 6, the board addressed the incident.
"I know this board feels that that was totally inappropriate behavior for a town official or a town employee," Chairman Anthony Kinahan said at the meeting.
Kinahan said that though his interactions with Donahue during his six years as a selectman have been positive, he'd received a number of complaints about him from residents.
He also said that a number of residents who had concerns about how Donahue might behave on their property have had no-trespass orders issued against Donahue.
"That causes an issue with him being able to do his primary function of assessing property, if he's not allowed on a number of properties in town," Kinahan said.
A public records request from The Enterprise revealed that Donahue has 11 no-trespass orders ordered against him, and all but one specifically referenced that it was in response to his behavior during the Sept. 22 Board of Assessors meeting.
Kinahan moved to formally request Donahue's resignation, saying that the incident is under investigation and could cost the town money.
"I think it's what's best for the Board of Assessors, what's best for the town, and what's best for him," he said.
Vice-chairman Meredith Anderson spoke next, saying she also had had no issues with Donahue over the years, but that she found his behavior unprofessional and agreed that he should be asked to resign.
"That behavior is so unprofessional, so unbecoming. And also the fact that the calculation was so wrong brings up a whole different set of concerns," she said.
Clerk Denise Reyes also agreed and said the incident was particularly troubling given that Donahue has so much impact on residents' finances. She said she couldn't imagine coming into a Board of Assessors meeting hoping to be heard and treated fairly, to then be threatened.
"Simply, we cannot risk it being repeated in the future," she said.
Donahue's tenure in West Bridgewater is not the only time he's been the subject of controversy during his career. In the 1990s, when he was the principal assessor for Wareham, the state found that the assessor's office overtaxed residents by $1.3 million.
Then, in 2004, when he was the principal assessor for Swansea, he had to resign after being accused of spending work time outside the office doing other things and using town resources to aid in his campaign to become a state representative.
A similar issue where Donahue was accused of spending weeks out of the office while being paid and having no way of accounting for that time was resolved earlier this year in West Bridgewater.
At the next Board of Assessors meeting, Donahue publicly apologized for the Sept. 22 incident.
"I just want to apologize to the Board of Assessors and the townspeople of West Bridgewater for any embarrassment that I might have caused or any inconvenience that I might have caused due to the unfortunate incident that happened on Sept. 22 in the Board of Assessors meeting," he said.
"It was totally uncalled for. It was unprofessional of me to act the way that I did, and I deeply regret my actions."
But despite the request from the Board of Selectmen, the Board of Assessors chose to have Donahue take a five-day unpaid suspension in December after setting the tax rate, and then for him to retire May 1, 2022. Donahue said he was thinking of retiring in 2022 anyway.
When asked for comment on this decision, Kinahan said that after the vote, selectmen talked with the town administrator, Donahue and the Board of Assessors about how best to handle the situation.
"Those conversations yielded the fact that very important work that is the responsibility of the principal assessor must be accomplished between now and town meeting in the spring. As a result, it was agreed that a May 1 retirement, along with a 5-day unpaid suspension, would be in the best interest of the town," Kinahan said in a statement.
Enterprise staff writer Susannah Sudborough can be reached by email at ssudborough@enterprisenews.com. You can follow her on Twitter at @k_sudborough. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Enterprise today.
This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: West Bridgewater assessor: John Donahue avoids forced resignation
