14 September—Litchfield’s Tax Collector is Helen Ruwet Bunnell. I’ve known Helen for decades—through the Republican connection, as it were. (She’s always been more popular with Republicans than I.) She was appointed Tax Collector—an elected position—by the Board of Selectmen when the 29-year incumbent retired in June 2019, before her last four-year term expired. Helen ran for the post unopposed in 2021.

In October 2019, not long after her appointment, this rather cryptic, semiliterate notice was posted (without authorization) on a bulletin board in the Litchfield post orifice. Since Helen wasn’t running in the 2019 local election, I can only surmise that the intent of the poster was to sling mud at Denise Raap, the Democrat candidate for First Selectman and owner of the Village Restaurant. It didn’t work; and Denise is running for her third term.

In all events, I pulled the poster down and showed it to Helen. She assured me that it was nonsense. So that was that.

A couple of years later, a rumor—no hard copy this time—was making the rounds that Helen, a former probate judge, wasn’t spending a full work-week in her Town Hall office because she was moonlighting as a legal assistant at a firm in Waterbury. It must be said here that the Tax Collector’s job description doesn’t specify much, including minimum hours. That’s the way it is for elected officials. Nevertheless, Helen denied it. So, again, that was that.

Then, at the 5 September Board of Selectmen meeting, whose minutes I reported a few days ago, a selectman again raised the question about Helen’s actual hours. The selectman received no answer. Why not? I wondered. So I asked Helen.

Helen told me at first that she didn’t have to answer the selectman’s question because the job description didn’t specify hours as long as she got the job done. But, I asked, what had she to hide? Nothing. So how many hours, Helen? Approximately, on average? She thought. Thirty to forty. Great. Thanks. See you later. So, yet again, that was that.

Evidently another denizen of Town Hall heard at least part of our conversation. Because later that day I received what looked like time sheets for a statistically significant period showing that the subject’s actual weekly hours at the office were between 15 and 30, never over 30. (Full disclosure: I’ve never seen an actual time sheet.)

In the interest of honesty and accuracy, I must emphasize that I received from an anonymous source what was purported to be two sheets alleging Helen Bunnell’s hours in the office. I’ve destroyed the alleged time sheets lest they be traced to an aggrieved whistleblower by a vengeful whistleblowee or anyone else. (We of the fringe albeit credentialed press protect our sources even when we don’t know who they are.)

Moreover, since Helen doesn’t punch a clock and Town Hall doesn’t to my knowledge have CCTV (may it ever be thus) and because no name was on the actual sheets, I have absolutely no idea how the hours were in fact ascertained or recorded or whose they actually may be—if anyone’s.

That said, why do town employees—among others?—have it in for Helen Bunnell? And why are they carping about something that would appear to be totally irrelevant to get at her? From my own observation, there certainly is a Town Hall employee—not Helen, mind you, nor an elected official—who lords it over what must be called a toxic workplace, an employee whom other employees and even elected officials are afraid to rub the wrong way. Several former town employees have left town employment just to get away from her.

Can it be frustration at town employees’ inability to do anything about a unionized vector of insidious toxin who is perceived to be her friend that leads them to take it out on Helen? If so, that’s ridiculous.

And now I’m off to visit Helen Bunnell at Town Hall . . .