Dorchester — “She’s bashing me about what I’m supposed to be doing? I don’t think so. It’s not happening in this format.”

It was during an Aug. 11 meeting of the two-member Dorchester Selectboard, and Fire Warden Jay Legg was angry, talking to acting Selectboard Chairman Steve Bjerklie about Emergency Management Director Claudette “Cookie” Hebert. Legg said she had questioned his authority to investigate a brush fire.

“If you can’t do something about it,” Legg continued, “I’ll do something about it. Plain and simple.”

Bjerklie’s eyes widened slightly.

“Is that a threat?” he asked.

“That’s correct,” said Legg. After a moment’s pause, he clarified that the threat he was referring to was a potential lawsuit.

It was just one moment in a long and contentious Selectboard meeting that was, in itself, just one meeting in a decades-long cycle of dysfunction and anger in Dorchester, a tiny bedroom community where the town’s only full-time employee — Road Agent Dean Stockwell, who is the husband of Hebert — was fired on July 25, leaving behind hard feelings, unfinished road work and town property that elected officials say is a danger and a liability.

Bjerklie said Stockwell was in a difficult situation from the moment was appointed to the post in 2013.

“He stepped into a pretty political and volatile situation,” Bjerklie said. “That was no fault of his own, but that’s what happened. It wasn’t long before complaints about Mr. Stockwell’s performance started coming in.”

Bjerklie maintained that Stockwell was fired for good reason, but few people, including Bjerklie, deny that deep-seated conflict provides the context for discontent with his role.

John Franz, who served as selectman for 18 years, came to Dorchester in the early ’70s because he had fallen in love with New England’s wild places during a stint as a canoe guide in Maine. He and his wife bought a wreck of a historic farmhouse, and have been renovating it for the past 37 years.

He’s still attached to the town, of course, but lately, Franz said, “everybody’s tearing each other apart.”

A Nice Place to Live

When it’s not embroiled in small-town politics, Dorchester, which is flanked by beautiful natural resources including three mountains, Cummins Pond, and the Province Road State Forest, is a nice place to live, residents say.

According to the latest federal estimates, it has 318 people spread out over 29,000 acres, making it one of the least-populated towns in New Hampshire.

People traveling through on Route 118 mostly see an expanse of forest, bracketed by a gun and engine repair shop on one end of town and the United Pentecostal Church’s steepled Cheever Chapel on the other.

“I can see why people just roar through,” said Bjerklie, “and think, ‘I’m in Dorchester, and now I’m out of Dorchester. And what I saw are trees.’ ”

But Bjerklie said the town is actually a collection of “really remarkable people” — there’s Becki Tucker, an accomplished musher who has run dog sled races all over New England; the musical Pratt family; Beth Weicke, who lives off the grid with her boyfriend on the riverbank and writes gardening columns; and Town Moderator Josh Trought, who owns D Acres, a nonprofit permaculture farm and educational homestead on Streeter Woods Road, part of the 27 miles of town-maintained dirt and blacktop.

Trought has been here for 20 years.

“A lot of us are here for privacy,” he said. “The connection with nature, and to enjoy the beauty of the northern forest.”

Trought said that, as town moderator, it wouldn’t be proper for him to comment on the controversies swirling around the road agent. It’s become too hot a topic.

Trought said he’d like to keep the focus on the town’s successes.

“I’ve seen a tremendous amount of cooperation here when things need to be tended to,” he said, pointing to a successful effort to push back against a military training facility that could have been sited in nearby Groton.

“There are a lot of very positive things going on around here,” he said, “and I’m glad I’ve chosen it as a place to live.”

Feuding History

Stockwell isn’t Dorchester’s first divisive public figure.

In 1990, Ralph Gove, the town’s police chief and only police officer, was fired for failing to bring himself up to firearms and training qualifications. The firing was a public affair; in 1988, 54 residents signed a petition asking the Selectboard to remove Gove, and in 1991, in the aftermath of the firing, Gove’s wife, Dorchester Animal Control Officer JoEllen Gove, circulated a petition in an unsuccessful effort to have him reinstated.

“Dating back to the 1990s, the town has been driven by a battle between two factions,” Bjerklie said.

In Dorchester, where about half of the $445,000 municipal budget is spent on roads, the road agent effectively controls a major portion of the town’s finances. In the 1990 town report, the “road expenditures” budget item included payments to then-Road Agent George Conkey, George Conkey II, Jonathan Conkey, David Conkey, Craig Conkey and Daniel Conkey, who made up the majority of the crews mustered to do the town’s public works.

In a place as small as Dorchester, Bjerklie said, it’s only natural that there will be those sorts of connections and relationships.

“Longtime families have been in town for generations, which is not unusual for a small New England town,” Bjerklie said.

In the years following Gove’s dismissal, several incidents continued to draw attention to the behavior of town officials. In July 1995, Selectman David Morrill tried to shut a town office door on Selectwoman Maureen Blanch while she was smoking in a doorway, resulting in a smoking citation against Blanch, and an assault charge against Morrill.

In 1996, elected Town Clerk Lynn Carter resigned amid accusations of theft; in 1997, she was sentenced to the women’s prison in Goffstown for stealing $58,000 in town money while in office.

Gradually, Bjerklie said, detractors of the Conkey family and their allies, “kind of took over.”

“As a result of that, the road agent position kind of became politicized,” he said.

Still, except for a brief 1998 stint by Larry Walker Sr. (father to current Selectman Larry Walker Jr.), the road agent position remained in the Conkey family. In November of 1998, Conkey’s son, George “Tiny” Conkey II, was elected to the post, and he remained in that position until about four years ago.

In 2012, after years of complaints against Conkey II, the Selectboard fired him for delivering six yards of town-owned gravel to a private residence to help build a pull-off on a private road.

“There was a bunch of trumped up reasons,” said Franz, who believed the Conkeys did a good job in the post. “A lot of skullduggery behind it.”

Conkey II sued the town for financial damages and reinstatement, and appealed his case all the way up to the State Supreme Court, which rejected his final appeal in March 2015.

Attempts to contact Conkey II were not successful.

Stockwell’s Reign

Following the firing of Conkey II, Dean Stockwell was appointed road agent by Selectmen Sherman Hallock, Michael Mock and Arthur Burdette in January 2013. That March, Town Meeting voters approved an article that made road agent an appointed, rather than elected, position. The board promptly reappointed Stockwell, with a salary of about $33,000 a year, plus benefits.

Stockwell made big changes in the department. During his first month of service, he hired his wife, Hebert, who also serves as the town’s animal control officer, in a newly created position with the title of laborer, and job duties of doing the department’s paperwork. Soon after, Stockwell took great pride in announcing that he had overseen the construction of the Dorchester Highway Facility, a large shed that houses the town’s equipment and public highway offices. Stockwell did some of the work himself, according to Bjerklie.

By the beginning of 2016, however, complaints about Stockwell were mounting.

There were complaints about Hebert being on the payroll to do paperwork, a category of work that the Conkeys had done themselves. Some said the situation violated a town policy against nepotism.

“You have to kind of selectively enforce that in a small town,” Bjerklie said, noting that Walker Jr. helped his father when his father was road agent.

Hebert declined to comment, directing all questions to Bjerklie. Messages left for Stockwell were not returned.

Stockwell’s new shed also came under fire. Bjerklie said some people in town felt slighted that Stockwell had chosen to direct a significant sum — Bjerklie estimated between $50,000 and $80,000 — from the highway department budget into the shed, rather than submitting the idea for public review.

The Franzes were among those who had a beef with Stockwell. In 2014, Jon Franz said, he and Larry Walker Sr. helped circulate a petition that garnered 56 signatures, questioning Stockwell’s work performance. Among his criticisms were allegations that Stockwell had worked on private land, the same thing that led to his predecessor’s dismissal.

One complaint came from an unlikely source.

According to court documents, Stockwell grabbed his son Richard Stockwell and punched him in the stomach in January; in February, the younger Stockwell filed a complaint against his father, accusing him of using town-owned equipment and fuel to work his own land.

The tide really turned against Stockwell in March of this year, when voters turned out Hallock from the Selectboard.

“Things began heating up after that election,” Bjerklie said. “Complaints started coming out of the woodwork about the performance of the road agent. They came from all over town. It wasn’t isolated, or one faction, or one group of people.”

Fire Warden Jay Legg and his son, Deputy Fire Warden Graydon Legg, who own and operate Legg’s Logs, recently joined the ranks of Stockwell’s critics, having filed nine separate complaints against him on a variety of grounds, including that Stockwell refused to allow them access to a game camera that the Leggs say they needed to conduct criminal investigation of a brush fire.

The Leggs were among many who complained that, in June, Stockwell failed to call Dig Safe, the not-for-profit clearinghouse that flags buried utility lines so they can be avoided during road work, on a job in which Stockwell ultimately damaged a telephone line.

In mid-July, Bjerklie and Walker also questioned Stockwell’s purchase of a $15 pair of suspenders, prompting Stockwell to reimburse the town.

On Monday, July 25, the Selectboard fired Stockwell, effective immediately. Bjerklie wouldn’t say which of the many complaints found purchase, only that “there were real problems” and that the termination letter had been reviewed by the town attorney and the New Hampshire Municipal Association.

Three days later, during a Selectboard meeting, Bjerklie and Walker told a small but lively crowd about the firing. It didn’t do much to soothe residents.

“You can’t keep a lid on a boiling pot of water forever,” Bjerklie said. “It just kind of erupted.”

Tempers flared. A landowner protested Stockwell’s firing. Jay Legg, insulted by comments Hebert had made in an earlier Selectboard meeting, demanded the town remove her from her post as emergency management director. Hebert asserted that her position entitled her to a set of keys to the town offices, where the locks had recently been changed. Bjerklie threatened to adjourn the meeting if Legg wouldn’t agree to end the conversation about Hebert.

“Why?” asked Legg. “You can’t take it?”

“I — of course I can take it!” Bjerklie said. “Jay! I’m tired of debating this with you. And wasting everybody else’s time.”

Weeks later, Bjerklie said he understood that the meeting needed to be contentious.

“It just had to come out, as ugly and unfortunate as it was,” Bjerklie said. “It was not much fun sitting up there in front of the room at the time. No matter what you decide, somebody’s going to say you did it to kowtow to those people, or this other group.”

Continued Fallout

Problems continue on Dorchester’s roads and highways facilities, as Bjerklie and Walker acknowledged during their most recent Selectboard meeting on Aug. 11.

For one, the building that Stockwell built may not be legal, Bjerklie said.

“I am suspicious that there are several violations of code and we need to find out what those are so that we can get that building up to scratch and legal,” he said.

The condition of the yard itself — piles of bent road signs, pieces of culvert, rocks and wood scraps studded with rusting nails — is also a cause for concern, Bjerklie said.

Walker Jr. is driving the roads weekly, looking for downed trees, but it’s an imperfect system.

On Wednesday, on a remote stretch of Dorchester Road, a few miles from Walker’s garage, a maple tree lay across half of the narrow road.

There are ditches that need to be cleared, and culverts that need to be repaired or replaced. Some roads are not graded, and brushwork needs to be done. Unsafe road shoulders that need attention, and paved roads still have sand on them, unswept since last winter.

“I know it’s hard to drive over the bumpy roads and know there’s not anyone out there working on them,” Bjerklie said. “But we are really working hard to do this right.”

The Selectboard has formed a search committee, which will draft, for the first time, a job description for the post, advertise for and interview applicants. In the meantime, he said, the town is developing a network of contractors that it can call for individual jobs that need work.

Future Hopes

It’s unclear what will happen in the immediate future, as different individuals vie for power within the town government.

Graydon Legg is thinking about running for the Selectboard. The search committee is considering doing away with the title of road agent altogether and simply contracting out the town’s road work. Hebert is continuing in her role as emergency management director, despite calls from the Leggs to have her fired.

She also still holds the title of animal control officer; Stockwell continues in his role as deputy animal control officer.

“The reasons for the termination of his appointment as Road Agent have no bearing on his performance as deputy ACO,” Bjerklie wrote in an email on Friday.

On the walls of Town Hall, there are pictures of Old Home Days from the 1920s. As recently as a decade ago, Dorchester’s Old Home Days used to draw people from out of town, with as many as 500 participants.

“Sometimes I look at those photos and say, ‘What do those people know that we don’t know?’ ” Bjerklie said. “They did know, at least, how to get along on one day a year. And I bet it was more than one day.”

The event was canceled several years ago, a casualty of infighting among some of the same people who have warred over the road agent.

Bjerklie said that, despite Dorchester’s small size, the majority of residents are not caught up in the daily dramas involving town officials.

“A good share of the residents of the town are quiet and just enjoy living in Dorchester,” Bjerklie said. “All of these issues that we’ve talked about, they involve a few dozen people.”

And even those people are not, Bjerklie said, bad actors. They’re just embroiled in bitter feuds.

“They’re good people,” he said. “To see these divisions really breaks my heart.”

Bjerklie said he has heard talk about bringing back Old Home Days, but he’s not sure whether the public has the appetite for it.

“If we could make that happen,” he said, road agent or not, “it would be a fine legacy.”

Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.]]>