Rockport Select Board Chair Denise Munger is a great devotee of the Strongly Worded Letter. I should know, I’ve now been the target of two Strongly Worded Letters in just the past few months.

The first Strongly Worded Letter was read aloud by Ms. Munger at a Budget Committee meeting last fall. It was written in response to this essay, to which the Select Board, evidently, took great umbrage. My criticisms, Ms. Munger said, were unfair and made it “harder for us to work together.”

I was the subject of a second Strongly Worded Letter last week at the first of several joint meetings of the Budget Committee and the Select Board, during which Town Manager Jon Duke’s proposed FY2027 town budget is to be reviewed. This time, I was accused of having an opinion on the proposed budget that was deemed to be insufficiently “considered.”

Worse still, I had shared that opinion with all of you in this essay, identifying myself as a member of the Budget Committee in the process. According to the Strongly Worded Letter, this was a sinister attempt on my part to fool you all into thinking I was speaking for the full Committee.

The source of all these Strongly Worded Letters, I have to say, is something of a mystery. Their author is never officially identified, but Ms. Munger has presented both of them in public forums while serving in her official capacity as Board Chair, and thus, I assume, they have the backing and support of the full Select Board.

Strangely, they do not appear in any of the meeting packets that are assembled for the Board, and you will look in vain for any consideration or discussion of them at Select Board meetings, nor any opportunity for public comment about them. 

But if the origin and authorship of these Strongly Worded Letters is unclear, their purpose is not. Though loaded up with consternation about the various injustices I have perpetrated, the Select Board’s obvious intent is to discredit me and my opinions as part of a larger effort to solidify its control over the Town’s budget development process.

Last week’s Strongly Worded Letter is a good example of this. Without addressing a single claim in my essay (which would require confronting the actual content of my concerns), it was asserted that I purposefully misled readers into believing that my own views represented those of the full Budget Committee. Not a single email, text, voice message, or letter from any resident or reader was produced as evidence of this, yet it allowed the Select Board to cast doubt not only on my views but on my honesty and integrity. This was character assassination dressed up as criticism.

The Strongly Worded Letters also question whether I, of all people, fully understand the budgets I’ve been criticizing. The November letter noted that there were two whole meetings on the budget that I wasn’t able to attend, so how could I possibly understand it? My more recent criticisms lacked credibility, it was asserted, because we had yet to have any budget hearings. In the world of the Strongly Worded Letter, knowledge and understanding can only be gained from committee meetings chaired by the Select Board.

For Rockport residents, what is important here is not that they are coming after me, it is that they continue to do so in service of an effort to manage the narrative about the budget development process. Attacking me is just part of that, but there are other telltale signs.

The author of the Strongly Worded Letters loves to suggest, for example, that we all—Select Board and Budget Committee—have some shared role and responsibility when it comes to the town budget. Last fall, it was noted that one of my many crimes was that my essay “undermined” and “distracted” from the budget work “we” were there to do. Last week, it was asserted that “our” job is to “work together” to develop the town’s budget. 

The Select Board, though, doesn’t get to tell the Budget Committee what its job is. Despite their recent effort to bring the Budget Committee to heel through various amendments to the Town Charter, they are not the boss of us. The charter clearly defines the Budget Committee’s role as that of a “citizen watchdog group” that “does not serve at the pleasure or direction of the Select Board.” We are two separate, independently elected entities with two distinct and important roles. 

The Budget Committee is a check on the Select Board. That is our job, whether the author of the Strongly Worded Letters likes it or not.

Another favored strategy of the Strongly Worded Letter is to conflate criticism of the budget or the budget process with criticism of the town’s staff. Last week, it was suggested that my expressing concerns about the budget at this early stage in the process was “not right” and “not fair to the hard work” the staff did in preparing the budget. 

This is disingenuous. Not only have I never had a critical word for the staff who prepare the budget, my last essay complimented Mr. Duke and his team for their efforts to—finally—arrest rising spending in this proposed budget.

I recognize this tactic, though. In my long experience, policymakers who want to shut down meaningful debate often reach for this “you’re being mean to the staff” ploy as a way of deflecting attention from more meaningful issues. “How can you say such things, don’t you know how hard everyone is working?”

We’ll almost certainly hear the same things about the hard work and dedication when it comes to discussing proposed cuts to the budget. The question that matters, though, is not the quality and effectiveness of the staff (which we should all take for granted), but whether we can afford them—whether we can afford 43 full-time staff members in a town that operated five years ago with fewer than 30.

If being attacked by the Select Board has an upside, it is that I am increasingly hearing from residents who see through all this, who tell me they have had enough, and who are diving into the budget to better understand it and its implications for taxpayers. They are asking good questions and are sending the Committee thoughtful analyses. They are organizing in new ways and, one hopes, as slots on the Budget Committee and Select Board become open, will take positions of leadership themselves.

Fair warning, though, ask this Select Board the wrong kind of questions and you risk summoning the wrath of the Strongly Worded Letter. 

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Steve Bowen lives in Rockport and serves on the Budget Committee