Waiting in the lobby before last night's Portsmouth Town Council meeting, I kept looking at the agenda and wondering WTF was pulling so many PCC regulars. Was it the agenda item on video cameras on East/West Main road to address the pedestrian deaths in the past 18 months? The request to schedule a workshop on waste water issues that the DEM has been been breathing down our necks about?

No, of course not.

They were there to pick at Caruolo, and Karen Gleason and Peter McIntyre launched into grandstanding mode, attacking the process and Town Solicitor Kevin Gavin.

"I wanted to discuss these issues in open session," complained Gleason, "but the School Committee attorney recommended executive session. There has been no meaningful discussion on a compromise settlement. We asked for a reasonable.."

Vice-President Jim Seveney, sitting in for the vacationing Dennis Canario, cut her off. "Let's stick to the status. We're on the edge of our agreement." [In executive session, both the TC and SC had decided to keep discussions of negotiations private.]

McIntyre read from a newspaper account of last week's hearing and said to town solicitor Kevin Gavin, "The judge asked, 'is the Council in favor of education' and you replied, 'Most are in favor of education.' Well I support education, but there has to be a limit to what we pay. Which one of us on the council is not in favor of education?"

Gavin replied that he was misquoted, but McIntyre wouldn't back down.

"Will we have the opportunity to be witnesses in this case?" he said to Gavin.

Gavin cautiously replied that they were not, in fact, at a litigation stage, that they hadn't developed a strategy, and that in American courtrooms, you don't just call people at random, but rather to get specific evidence in. "You're a party," said Gavin, "I don't know if you're a witness."

Next, McIntryre drilled Gavin on his experience in Caruolo cases. "Do you consider yourself an expert? Are you an expert?"

Gavin responded calmly. "The attorneys are not the experts." He described the Caruolo process, from a legal perspective, as being straightforward — presenting evidence from expert accountants. "It's expert-driven," he said, but did not require particular expertise from counsel.

Repeating the lie from her letter to the editor in last week's Sakonnet Times, ("As yet the Town Council has not appointed an attorney to defend the town,") Kathy Melvin got up to complain that the "lack of appointment of legal counsel" was sending a "muddled message" to the town.

"We have engaged a litigator," said Len Katzman, referring to Kevin Gavin.

I finally got up and reminded the Council that Caruolo hearings are public, and urged them to go listen first-hand to what was said, rather than relying on second-hand newspaper accounts.

After the Caruolo discussion, the crowd thinned out noticeably, and I thought the fun was over for the evening, but there was a land mine under agenda item 9. "Request permission to hold a tax sale." Turns out that a resident, who is in litigation appealing their assessment, was there to complain to the Council. "My assessment skyrocketed," they said, "my house is less than 1,000 square feet, on a 5,000 sq. ft. lot, and I have a $600,000 assessment. This is the start of taking my house."

Both Town Admin Bob Driscoll and Kevin Gavin reminded the Council that collecting property taxes is a state law, and that they only present this item to the TC as a courtesy.

But Larry Fitzmorris, smelling an issue, got up to skewer the Council. "Do you know what properties will be in the sale?"

Driscoll pointed out that between now and June 19, most people settle up, enter into arrangements, or find legal means to forestall, so, no, there was no list.

Fitzmorris got indignant. "So am I correct that members of the Council are voting on the tax sale without knowing what properties you are voting to sell?"

Yeah, imagine that. It's almost like the PCC voting to cut the school budget without any idea of what line items they were voting to slash.