Councilor refutes claims of undue influence.

Amesbury News
Thursday, March 29, 2007

To the editor,

Responding to Joan Miller’s March 23 letter (“Recall of Councilor Thone Must
Move Forward”), all I can say is:

Enough, already.

There was no conspiracy behind the Council President’s selection of Bill
McDermott to advise the Council regarding the District One recall.

I don’t have any nefarious Master Plan. There is no Secret Iacobucci Agenda.
I am not a puppetmaster, pulling strings from behind the curtain.

Really and truly, I have not ever controlled a Municipal Council meeting by
sending text messages from my Blackberry. I do not run a shadow Town
Government out of my basement.

And I am not the real-life incarnation of Lord Voldemort.

There have been a lot of wild rumors spread about me, over the past couple
of years. A lot of newspaper ink has been spent, promoting the idea that I
somehow control the Council, or the entire government, or one Council member
or another. A lot of people have spent a whole lot of time looking for – or
creating – “proof” of the various theories.

A whole lot of energy has been wasted, with this all-too-consuming Focus on
Tom Iacobucci.

Every newspaper article written about “failed Mayoral candidate Tom
Iacobucci” has taken up space that could have been used to inform readers
about projects being reviewed by the Planning Board.

Every letter-to-the-editor that has tortured logic or strained credulity
while casting suspicion on the motives of people who might somehow be
associated with me – all those letters could have discussed ways to improve
the Town’s school system, instead.

The door-to-door campaigns could have been used to raise money for the Jimmy
Fund.

Enough, already.

There is more to this Town than Tom Iacobucci.

There is no reason why I should get more ink (more newspaper coverage) than
Mayor Thatcher Kezer does.

There is no reason for a feeding frenzy, every time people invoke my name.

I am not larger-than-life. I am not magical. I don’t control everything.
I don’t know everything.

I do try to help people, when I am asked to, and that is exactly what I was
doing, in the situation Mrs. Miller wrote about. As part of the motion to
schedule the District One recall election, the Council voted to have Council
President Chris Lawrence consult with an attorney. He asked me how to find
an attorney who specialized in election law, and I sent him an e-mail with
links to two Web searches and the names of six lawyers that I knew
personally or by reputation.

Mrs. Miller spun that thread into an entire web of intrigue. Reading her
letter, one would think that I personally chose the attorney for the
Council. According to her letter, I am the mastermind behind a plot to
prevent a recall election from being held.

Perhaps Mrs. Miller has forgotten my role in the Library Project brouhaha.
Perhaps she has forgotten that I was one of 14 people who went to court so
that a referendum election would be held, when that Council refused to hold
one.

And perhaps Mrs. Miller hasn’t read the Minutes of the February 22, 2007
Council Meeting (which are available on the Town’s website for anyone who
wishes to read them). The Minutes clearly show that the procedural
mis-steps were not the result of some dark conspiracy between the Council
President and me.

The Minutes clearly show the procedural mistakes happened for one reason,
and one reason only: because Councilor Ann Connolly King convinced the rest
of the Council to schedule the recall election immediately. Councilor King
convinced the Council not to wait the five days specified by the Charter,
and not to wait for an attorney’s advice, as Councilor Donna McClure
suggested. Councilor King convinced the Council to plow ahead and schedule
the election on-the-spot.

How does that fact fit with Mrs. Miller’s theory? Did I somehow mastermind
Councilor King’s successful persuasion of her colleagues? Were Councilor
King’s arguments all a façade, some sort of camouflage for a
behind-the-scenes plot with Council President Lawrence and me to “impair the
District 1 recall process”? Was Councilor King a co-conspirator who
intentionally persuaded the Council to violate the Charter in order to
“derail the will of the people”?

Enough, already.

The procedural mistakes were just that – mistakes made in the heat of the
moment. They can be easily fixed, and the Council has already scheduled
meetings to do just that. There is no need to blow the mistakes out of
proportion, and no need to see conspiracies that don’t exist. There is no
need to blame me for what happened at that meeting: I wasn’t a member of the
Council at the time; I wasn’t even at the meeting; and I don’t control
Councilor King by Blackberry.

It’s time to focus our community’s energy on other things.

Tom Iacobucci
Amesbury

Ed. Note — Tom Iacobucci was appointed to the vacant District 5 Municipal
Council seat on March 13.