On Feb. 25, Westbrook Emergency Management Director Carrie Campi informed the town she was resigning due to what she termed “harassment” from members of the Board of Finance (BOF).

Campi was hired four months ago to the emergency management director position, but resigned effective March 11. In a Feb. 25 resignation letter sent to First Selectman John Hall, Campi wrote in part that “the harassment I have received from some of the members of the BOF has made this an untenable position. I have been the subject of personal verbal attacks in two public BOF meetings in my approximately four months in the position. The worst of which was Feb. 23, 2022 involving Paul Winch and Chris Ehlert.”

Campi thanked Hall for the support she had received from him and said she would work with the assistant director to get him up to speed before her departure. Campi could not be reached to comment for this story.

The Meeting

The Feb. 23 meeting that Campi cited in her resignation letter was a special BOF meeting a which proposed department budgets were being reviewed. During Campi’s turn to present her budget however, Winch and Ehlert spent more time discussing what in their view had been a lackluster response by Campi during major storms during her tenure and less time on the budget.

In particular, the two men cited a lack of communication from the department to the public. Winch said that Campi “had to be out there” during the bad storms to communicate with people directly. The men mentioned monitoring reports from other towns to stay abreast of storm warnings instead of finding Westbrook specific information.

Campi pushed back during the meeting and said that she had been sending out alerts on the Notify Me app, as well as working on getting a department Facebook page up and running before rolling out an advertising program. Campi also argued that for complaints such as the power going out, she can’t do anything herself to remedy the problem and can only monitor the situation and pass along updates.

Two days after that meeting, Campi submitted her resignation.

Contacted by the Harbor News after Campi’s resignation had been made public, both Winch and Ehlert stated that their comments were not meant to be personal attacks.

“She had excellent credentials,” Winch said.

Winch also walked back part of his criticism on Campi.

“I didn’t mean to criticize the work on the ground during the storm. I’m sure she was where she was supposed to be,” said Winch.

Both men said that the impetus for airing their frustrations were with what they felt like is a lack of public communications from the emergency management office.

“I had been getting numerous verbal communications asking about it. I was just pointing it out,” said Ehlert. “I wasn’t attacking her ability to do her job; it was about the lack of information from the emergency management department. “

Ehlert said he would like see a department-specific Facebook page and a stand-alone website for the department that people would hopefully know to check for updates. Winch credited Assistant Emergency Management Director John Palermo for getting the Facebook page revived.

“He’s done a great job keeping people informed. It needed to be more public facing,” Winch said of the department.

Winch also expressed his regret for bringing up his complaints about the department during what was supposed to be a budget meeting.

“It was extremely unfortunate; in retrospect I wish it was handed differently,” said Winch.

Winch, who stressed he was only speaking for himself, said, “In retrospect it should not have been handled in that public forum. That was wrong on my part.”

“I thought I was being professional,” Ehlert said. “When that meeting ended, I had no idea she was going to resign. I was surprised she did and I’m sorry she did [as] she is very qualified.”

Upon receipt of Campi’s resignation letter, Hall attended a Feb. 28 BOF meeting where he let the board know how he felt about what had happened. Hall declined to make further comments to the Harbor News.

Hall said that Palermo had been acting as interim emergency management director and that the town would discuss filling the vacancy created by Campi leaving at the next selectmen meeting.