CALAIS — Dueling letters.
That is how Calais residents are viewing two messages faxed to Union 106 Superintendent Peter Harvey on Tuesday.
And it was clear Tuesday night that the controversy that has almost paralyzed this city continues to swirl around the Calais Middle School.
Early Tuesday morning, the Maine School Management Association Insurance Programs notified the superintendent that the insurance on the middle school would be canceled at 5 p.m. that day. The cancellation also would affect the replacement portable classrooms that are soon to be on site.
The Calais Middle School was closed last year because of health and safety problems, and the pupils have been schooled at the elementary school and Immaculate Conception Church. The school committee hopes to have leased portable classrooms in place by mid-November.
In a letter faxed to the superintendent Tuesday morning, Theodore Jellison, director of finance for MSMA, also said that without sufficient protective measures in place, the portable classrooms would be at risk.
“Should the portables be sited at the middle school, we will be unable to provide insurance coverage for them,” he wrote.
After a meeting of the Calais planning board Tuesday night, former Mayor John Michael Sherrard, who is a member of the Calais school committee’s facilities and maintenance panel, charged that the superintendent was not doing his job by allowing the insurance on the building to lapse.
Sherrard said that when his sister, Maria Tickle, who is chairman of the school committee, learned of the cancellation, she took Jellison’s letter to her brother. Sherrard for years has been in the insurance business. Sherrard said he called Jellison and was successful at getting the insurance policy reinstated.
When fellow facilities committee member Gail Wahl suggested to Sherrard that it was the superintendent, not Sherrard, who got the insurance reinstated, Sherrard replied that the superintendent had no role in it. “This was initiated by me,” he said, waving the reinstatement letter. He also accused Wahl of being one of Harvey’s “minions.”
Sherrard also accused the superintendent of engaging in “dirty tricks.”
The letter “was deliberately [sent Tuesday morning] so we would lose our insurance at this moment at 5 p.m.” Tuesday, the former mayor said. He claimed the insurance was canceled the same day the facilities committee was scheduled to meet with the Calais planning board. Without insurance, Sherrard said, the Calais planning board might not have given its approval to put the portable classrooms on the middle school grounds.
When Wahl asked whether Sherrard believed that Maine School Management was part of the effort to scuttle the placement of the portable classrooms at the middle school, Sherrard yelled, “No. This had nothing to do with Maine School Management. They were not informed correctly. … I told them the story and they reinstated the insurance. I called them around 1 p.m.” Sherrard received a faxed copy of the reinstatement letter Tuesday.
Sherrard said that even though the superintendent had resigned, he was amazed that he had not taken action on the insurance. “If I could get it corrected, why couldn’t he?” he asked.
The superintendent, who did not attend the Calais planning board meeting Tuesday night, said that when he learned Tuesday morning that the insurance on the middle school would be canceled, he contacted Jellison. The superintendent denied Sherrard’s claim that he was instrumental in getting the insurance company to fax the letter to Calais on the morning of the Calais planning board meeting.
“I can tell you what happened. I received that [first] fax from Jellison today, just before 11 a.m., indicating that the insurance company would not insure the vacant middle school building or the [portable classrooms]. I immediately got on the telephone to Mr. Jellison and told him I needed to have that building insured and to please tell me what I needed to do to satisfy the insurance company so [the middle school] would be insurable,” Harvey said.
The superintendent, who said he had left his office around 3:30 p.m., said he had not seen the second letter, although it was addressed to him. The letter confirms that Harvey spoke with Jellison on Tuesday morning.
Jellison wrote: “Since our conversation this morning, we have been working feverishly with FM Global and our broker to seek an alternative solution to the fax that we sent this morning. Clearly, we are seeking to find a satisfactory solution to providing insurance for your building and safeguarding the assets of the Trust Fund that belong to all of the members.”
The letter goes on to say that if certain requirements were met, including boarding up the middle school windows and producing a site plan for the portable classrooms, the insurance would not be canceled.
Jellison did not return a telephone call Wednesday.
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