So instead of my usual deconstruction of his posts, I decided today to rewrite it without his distortions.  The content below quotes liberally from today's freely-available post as part of a work of criticism and parody.  As I understand Mr. Slager has been accusing members of this community of violating his copyright, I want to be clear that use of original content for purposes of criticism or parody (among other uses) is clearly allowed under US copyright law.  That being said, on to the show.....

Casual Observations: Savageau and Slager Continue Attempts to Tear Down Library Trustees

     Bruce Sauvageau, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, has told the Wareham Observer, and only the Wareham Observer, that the former board of library trustees informed a Federal Court judge that they had lost approximately $250,000 in donations and/or previous investment gains by investing in the stock market.  This loss has not been substantiated by any named sources outside of the Board of Selectmen, and has been categorically denied by Nora Bicki on behalf of the Trustees and the Wareham Library Foundation.  In a statement posted on www.warehamobserver.com, Ms. Bicki stated that the Foundation was "compelled to comment on totally incorrect allegations arising from a settlement earlier this week with the Wareham Board of Selectmen."  In the statement, Ms. Bicki acknowledged a "moderate reduction" in funds, but stated that this reduction "in no way resembles figures used in some local media – specifically the Wareham Observer." 
    “Five selectmen in the room and two member of town counsel were in the room during the discussion,” Sauvageau said.  Savageau did not comment on the costs incurred by having town counsel in attendance for this, and numerous other pieces of litigation that many have blamed on the current board and their actions.  Mr. Savageau also did not comment on the number of attendees and/or legal representation for the Trustees at the time of this discussion, casting some doubt as to the viability of his statements.  Mr. Savageau then continued to cast doubt on his statements by admitting that he heard the information about the alleged loss secondhand, stating "According to the judge, they told him they had lost $250,000 in the stock market."  Again, Mr. Savageau did not comment on how much the Trustees had gained in investments in the years leading up to this alleged loss.
    According to Sauvageau, the former board of trustees told the court they only had $200,000 left from a trust that rose as high as $450,000 a few years ago.
     “We were going back and forth on the money,” Sauvageau said. “According to the judge, they told him they had lost $250,000 in the stock market. That struck me as odd because they used such an exact number. They are stuck with this now because they said it to a federal judge.”  When it was pointed out in this article that $250,000 is more of a "round number," commonly used for estimating, as opposed to an "exact number" (for example: $247,842.77), Mr Savageau is alleged to have said "hmph".
    The former board of library trustees sued the town in 2007 after selectmen blindsided them in a meeting by requiring them to reapply for their positions, alleging that their previous appointment violated the Town Charter as well as state law.  The Trustees were given no notice that such a requirement was forthcoming before being notified in the meeting.  The former trustees claimed the selectmen were acting in retaliation against them following a library budget debate during Town Meeting. The selectmen were sued as individuals for allegedly violating the civil rights of the former trustees. The town responded with a counter-suit, alleging that the former trustees converted public funds when they sent $75,000 to the Spinney Memorial Building Project to benefit a possible future branch of the Wareham Free Library.  The Board of Selectmen recently settled with the Trustees, and paid $40,000 of the trustees' legal bills out of a Town insurance account.  It is unclear what effect this payment of opposing counsel's fees will have on future insurance costs for the town, but one source close to the situation said "it's common sense that the side of the case that winds up paying the legal fees is the loser, and I don't see any way that losing more litigation helps us lower the town's insurance costs."
    Nora Bicki, the president of the Friends of the Wareham Free Library and a spokesperson for the former board of library trustees, has made it her position not to respond to emails or other requests from Observer Media, instead choosing to make statements correcting both the Observer and Standard-Times directly available for all to read on www.warehamobserver.com. This form of direct communication allows Ms. Bicki to speak directly to the readers without the potential of her statements being inappropriately editorialized by a potentially biased reporter, blogger, or opinion writer.
    According to the last income statement filed with the state in 2007, the trustees placed $381,000 into a private account when they formed the Wareham Free Library Corporation. That number is now down to $200,000, according to Sauvageau and fellow selectman Jane Donahue. However, no documentation has been produced to support this claim, and as stated above, it is secondhand information.  It's also unclear at this time how much of this $381,000 was directly from donations to the organization and how much of it was investment gain.  In addition to the $381,000, Ms. Bicki stated that the approximately $60,000 was donated to the library since the foundation was formed in 2007.  On Robert Slager's blog at www.thewarehamobserver.com, he misrepresents this statement as a collection of an additional $60,000 of donations from the public, and uses that misrepresentation to justify a "loss" of $241,000.  It is unclear at this time if this misrepresentation was done maliciously to further a political agenda.  Previous emails from this writer to Mr. Slager went unanswered, so I invite him to comment publicly on this matter. 
    Subtracting the $60,000 in donations that Ms. Bicki states the former trustees made over the past two years from the $381,000 they reported in 2007, they should have $321,000 in assets. Assuming Mr. Savageau's secondhand comment is indeed correct, and we have been unable to verify this with any documentation or non-Board of Selectmen sources, this would represent a loss of $121,000, or less than half of what Mr. Slager and Mr. Savageau have publicly claimed. This loss, out of a principal of $321,000, equals a 37% drop.  While that is a significant amount of money, it actually is better than the stock market as a whole has performed recently, and the Trustees should be commended for being able to beat the market.
    In light of this alleged loss, Sauvageau said the real question should be “why were the former trustees in the stock market at all?"  This reporter posed that exact question to a financial planner who stated "Over the long-term, buy-and-hold equity investing, such as in the stock market, has shown to have the highest rate of return of the various types of investments.  Of course, there are bound to be peaks and valleys in such a strategy, but it is the best way to maximize available funds over a long period of time."  The financial planner went on to state "I wonder what questions people would ask if these trustees had been earning 3% in a savings account or CD when the market was rising 80% a year during the tech boom of the 90's.  It's easy to be a revisionist historian, but as we've all seen over the past year or so, it's hard to manage money."
    "There are laws and principles that govern the investment of public money and donations to public entities,” Sauvageau added, without stating what those laws are.  He went on to say “There is something all investment managers know and it’s called the ‘Prudent Man Principle.’ You don’t invest all of granny’s money in the speculative marketplace and you don’t mismanage money that comes from private donations. It’s inappropriate and absolutely forbidden.”  The financial planner interviewed for this article, who does not have any outstanding tax liens like Mr. Savageau or corporate filing debt like Mr. Slager, reiterated his early point about revisionist history, stating "it's easy to say that now, but I would ask two questions.  The first, is where are all of the town-managed trusts invested?  That is, what types of investments, with what firms, and at what expense ratios?  The second, is what has the performance of these funds been over the past 1, 3, 5, and 10 years?  It's easy to criticize someone who invests in equities in a down market, but a year ago those funds were probably up more than they're down today."
    Sauvageau, who reiterated that the settlement agreement still has not be signed by the town, said he plans to ask the board to forward this information to the Secretary of State’s office for a full investigation.  Mr Savageau did not comment on Ms Bicki's statement that the case was officially concluded with the judge reading the mediation agreement into record.  It is unclear if he did not comment on this because he had already left the courtroom prior to the actual conclusion of the case. 
    Mr Savageau's last demand for an investigation, which was also publicized by Mr. Slager in early June, appears to have fallen on deaf ears.  In this demand, Mr. Savageau and Slager both claimed that a recording of an illegal executive session, in which targeting of employees in an ongoing "computer audit" was discussed, violated the law.  Neither man acknowledged that meeting attendees noticed a problem with the broadcasting equipment, and instead of calling in the proper technicians to diagnose it, which likely would have prevented the broadcast from occuring, attempted to fix it on their own.  It's unclear if these demands have died off because Mr. Savageau was simply wrong about the legality of the broadcast, or because he declined to push it harder for fear that it would draw attention to the illegal executive session meeting and/or the audit.
    This audit, which has continued for months at a cost of over $50,000, during a time when the town was facing a significant budget shortfall, has been promised by Slager to be "life changing" for many involved, but has yet to produce any evidence of wrongdoing, and is increasingly being viewed as a "witchunt" by the Board of Selectmen.
    Sauvageau said the reason the board fought so hard to bring the former trustees in compliance with state law and the Town Charter as town-appointed representatives was to avoid the kind of financial decisions made by the former trustees.  It is unclear how he was able to make this claim with a straight face, as the Selectmen started this fight in 2007, in the middle of a bull market.  If Mr. Savageau is correct, and the funds were invested in mutual funds or other equities, they would have shown significant gains at that time, leading one to wonder why they would fight at all.
    Finally, it is unclear at this time why Mr. Slager and Observer Media appear to have exclusive access to quotes from Mr. Savageau.  When asked, a town resident simply stated "Slager's been his mouthpiece for years.  I've never seen such biased reporting and editorializing...and please make sure to note that I'm not a member of the CBW, and I don't want to see a recall"a