On April 15, 2026, the Swampscott Select Board voted to censure board member MaryEllen Fletcher. Press coverage called it unanimous and most residents heard “5-0.” The fuller story is more interesting — and more useful for understanding how this board will operate over the next two years.
Three meetings tell the story: the censure itself, the board’s final meeting on April 27 with two members on their way out, and the post-election reorganization on May 6.
What the vote actually was
The formal tally is 4-0-0, with Fletcher not voting. KP Law, the town’s outside counsel, advised on the record that the subject of a unanimous-vote censure motion cannot vote on it — if she had voted no, the motion would have failed by definition. Fletcher initially said “Opposed” at the roll call; the chair struck it after the legal advisory. So the vote that landed: four members in favor, none opposed, Fletcher abstaining as required.
The bigger move was made by Chair Katie Phelan before the vote was even called. KP Law had drafted a censure motion covering two sections of the town’s Code of Conduct: Chapter 5 §A (conduct in relation to other town officials) and §C (conduct in relation to town staff). Phelan dropped §A. Her stated reason: “Given the back and forth communications that have occurred from all the public comments and that have been sent to us, regarding the conduct in relation to other town officials, you know, everybody shares some burden of blame here.”
The motion that passed was for §C only — conduct toward town staff. Phelan’s load-bearing rationale: “Ultimately, the public has a way to get rid of us if they don’t like us. That is, they don’t get to vote for us, but town staff doesn’t. They’re here to work for this town and to put in their time and energy.”
That narrowing matters. The investigation by Clifford & Kenny, LLP — the law firm the board hired in late 2025 — found Fletcher had directed town staff and involved herself in the police investigation of board member David Grishman’s November 26, 2025 alleged hit-and-run in the Vinnin Square parking lot. (Grishman denied the incident when interviewed; no charges have been reported.) That conduct was the staff-protection issue §C names. By dropping §A, Phelan kept inter-member disputes off the formal record — and denied Fletcher’s defenders the argument that “this is just the majority punishing a dissenter.”
It is, in effect, the cleanest censure the board could produce: enforcement on the specific staff-direction act, no embedded judgment about board friction.
The two speeches
Fletcher’s apology was brief. “I take full responsibility for what I did. I made a mistake. I violated the code of conduct. I made a mistake. And I’m sorry for it. I said I would do better. And I would really like it if you could just take your vote so we could start doing some real serious business.”
The “could just take your vote so we could start doing some real serious business” framing is what board member Doug Thompson singled out as not commensurate with the offense. He said the apology “didn’t sit well with me afterward.”
Danielle Leonard’s was the speech of the night. She opened with self-implicating frame — “We’re damned if we do, we’re damned if we don’t” — apologized “on behalf of this board for anything that anyone has gone through,” and explicitly grounded her vote in prior consistency. She invoked her own 2024 criticism of Grishman during his dispute with Tasia Vasiliou (then chair of the Board of Assessors) and committed prospectively to applying the same standard if Grishman were staying on the board: “If you were to remain on this board and exhibit the same type of behavior, sorry, David, but I certainly would hold him to task the same way.” Grishman pushed back briefly — “How do you know I didn’t?” — and Phelan cut off the cross-exchange.
Without Leonard’s speech, the 4-0 vote would have felt like a back-room outcome with public ratification. With it, the censure has moral weight independent of Phelan’s procedural narrowing.
What public comment named, and what the vote didn’t address
Public comment ran about 45 minutes and pointed at conduct the censure motion deliberately didn’t reach.
Former School Committee member Suzanne Wright catalogued years of observations of Fletcher “bullying the Finance Committee and other committees and boards” and called for resignation. School Committee Chair Glenn Paster cited a February 4, 2026 email from a then-school-side staffer asking that the proposed school budget be sent to Fletcher in advance of a presentation, and a post-April-8 outreach from Fletcher to Superintendent Jason Calichman about “an endowment.” Former Recreation program coordinator Jackie Camerlingo described being approached by Fletcher outside the chain of command — including at a farmer’s market and inside Town Hall.
Two longer letters were read into the record. One, from a Farragut Road resident named Nate McNamee, defended Fletcher. The harder one came from Amy O’Connor, the former School Committee Chair who resigned in December 2025: she placed Fletcher’s behavior in “a pattern of behavior that I observed during my tenure on school committee, beginning during her time on finance committee and continuing through her role as select board” — and connected the environment to her own decision to step away after 13 years of service.
The censure motion, narrowed to §C, doesn’t formally adjudicate any of that. Two specific procedural complaints — that Leonard divulged executive-session-protected information to Swampscott Tides, and Liz Smith’s argument that under Open Meeting Law the board’s deliberations on what action to take should have moved to open session once it stopped being a complaint review — were raised in public comment and received no board response on the record.
The most pointed counter-pattern came from Vasiliou, who has not been on the Board of Assessors since approximately early 2026 — at the April 15 meeting she identified herself as a former member, and at the April 27 meeting as “the former chair.” She named Grishman’s 2024 corruption accusation against her, the formally-documented town investigation that “no follow-up was ever taken,” and an alleged unpermitted basement renovation on Grishman’s property. “Mr. Grishman’s behavior was the primary reason I have chosen not to run for re-election.” Leonard’s prospective-symmetry promise is the procedural response — but it can’t be tested, because Grishman didn’t seek re-election on April 28.
On April 27, Vasiliou returned to the public comment podium and formally requested an investigation.
What Fletcher actually does next
The censure constrains Fletcher’s chair eligibility under normal practice; it does not affect her seat. Her term runs to April 2028. The question for residents was whether she’d retreat, leave, or keep operating on substance — and the next two meetings answered it.
On April 27 (12 days after the censure): Fletcher cast the lone NO on the FY27 operating budget. (The vote was 3-1-1: Thompson, Leonard, and Grishman in favor; Fletcher opposed; Phelan abstaining because her wife teaches at the Middle School.) Her reason was a roughly $500,000 school-side “cushion account” — money the schools are projected to carry forward while the town is using $1.5 million of excess levy capacity to balance the budget. “I can’t support the budget with having close to half a million dollars sitting in a cushion account.” She also pulled a Hawker/Peddler license from consent agenda, raised the lack of Humphrey Street parking-ticket data, and seconded Leonard’s lone objection on a clause of the Hawthorne Performing Arts Center lease that lets the tenant terminate if a repair estimate tops $30,000.
In other words: she kept being Fletcher — the procedural-fiscal dissenter the 2024-2025 board described, voting on the merits and bracketing her vote with substantive reasons.
On May 6 (the new board’s first meeting): New member Ted Dooley nominated Leonard for Vice Chair (seconded by Phelan). Then new member Wayne Spritz — in his first meeting — nominated Fletcher (seconded by Fletcher herself). The vote was 3-2: Leonard prevailed (Dooley, Phelan, Leonard); Fletcher’s 2 came from Spritz and herself.
Spritz, asked about the dynamic, named it openly: “I know there’s tenses, this … I don’t want that to be there. I could see it in everyone’s faces.”
That 2-of-5 procedural foothold is the first concrete post-censure data point on Fletcher’s standing. The censure was narrow; the substantive contributions are still being heard; one new colleague is willing to vote with her on procedural questions. The “Fletcher coalition” — if one materializes on issues beyond chair-rotation — is the FY27 board’s earliest factional signal.
What’s still open
The narrowed §C-only censure left several threads unresolved:
- The Grishman pattern. Vasiliou and Liz Smith both asked publicly for a broader investigation. Whether the new board — now seating Dooley, Spritz, Phelan, Leonard, and Fletcher — takes up either request is the live institutional question.
- The Demento allegation against Leonard. Bill Demento alleged in public comment that Leonard divulged executive-session-protected information to the Swampscott Tides. Untested.
- Liz Smith’s Open Meeting Law argument. That once the board moved from reviewing the report to considering action, the discussion should have moved to open session. Untested.
The outgoing board also extracted two policy commitments before leaving: a December 2026 warrant article on a sewer-lateral betterment policy (Grishman’s last push, on the principle that some $3M of public money has already gone into private laterals without recovery), and an accounting framework that ensures the Pine Street ground-lease proceeds get earmarked for refurbishing the 89 Burroughs Street veterans space (Fletcher and Phelan converged on this). Both bind the new board to follow through.
Censures don’t end careers in Swampscott. They reshape what someone can do from the same seat. April 15 was the formal mark; April 27 and May 6 were the first readings of what Fletcher does next.