GREENFIELD — With growing questions in the wake of finance director Elizabeth Braccia’s sudden firing, Mayor William Martin has announced Lane Kelly will temporarily come back to run the city’s books.
Kelly returns to the city after announcing her retirement just over a year ago, after 14 years as the director of finances and 23 years with the city. She will be with the city for one to two months, Martin said, working for free, three to four days a week. She is expected to start today as the city continues to review applications for the director position.
While Kelly was unavailable for comment Thursday evening, the mayor said her return will be a “breath of fresh air.”
In a notice sent to the Clerk’s Office at the end of the work day, Martin briefly announced her return in a two-sentence letter. He said Kelly is “qualified to perform the duties which will be required and that I make this designation solely in the interests of the City of Greenfield.”
The decision also comes the day following a City Council meeting in which the mayor was lambasted by councilors Isaac Mass and Bricket Allis for a lack of up-to-the minute knowledge with Greenfield’s finances, particular over bonding plans.
Martin denied the announcement had anything to do with the questioning he faced Thursday night, but had been in the works for the past week. He said Kelly was in attendance at the council meeting at Greenfield High School. Stephen Nembirkow, who has in the interim been assisting with the city’s books was by the mayor’s side.
Nembirkow, the recently hired business manager for the Greenfield Public Schools and son of former Greenfield Superintendent Bassan “Buzz” Nembirkow, has been handling both the school and the city’s finances.
He said to the council he was at week “two-and-a-half” out of the three to six weeks he was hired for. “Frankly, it is somewhat exhausting,” Nembirkow said, adding, he’s been “missing my family a bit.”
Allis apologized to him, saying he was “sorry he was put into that position.”
Martin struggled to answer the peppering of questions by Allis and Mass Wednesday night.
“Mr. Mayor, how often are you speaking to the people who are running the finances of the town?” Mass asked, following a heated exchange over issues of bonding and debt payments.
“Who might that be?” Martin asked back.
“I don’t know. Can you tell me who that is?” Mass said.
“You’ve become confrontational,” Martin replied.
On Thursday, when reached before the announcement of the Kelly hiring, Mass continued to question the mayor and his knowledge of the city’s finances. Asked about the state of the public safety complex following a mixed-message decision by the council on whether the mayor should continue to negotiate for a lease with a Tennessee developer, Mass said:
“I don’t know how the mayor can have meaningful negotiations with any projects when he has literally no idea about the public finances of the town.”
Martin and the city were left without a finance director after he dismissed Braccia on July 24.
Braccia said at the time, “There are no grounds for my dismissal and the due process will reveal the truth, and I believe in that.”
The firing led to the City Council voting “no confidence” in the mayor amid allegations that Martin acts like a bully at times.
Now, the mayor looks to fill multiple vacancies in the city, including shortcomings to the health and building departments, after cuts from the council.
Martin hopes Kelly can help right a ship she’s plenty familiar with, but may just need to get re-familiarized regarding this past and current years’ budgets, starting today.
“She’ll be here in the morning,” he said.
You can reach Joshua Solomon at:
jsolomon@recorder.com
413-772-0261, ext. 264