History gives us countless examples of perseverance and true grit. Shackleton surviving Antarctica. Churchill surviving the Blitz. Cole Trickle coming back to win Daytona.
And now a new entry: Matthew Chabot surviving Berkley Town Hall.
The most impressive part of Chabot’s voyage? Like a bad penny, he keeps coming back. Every morning, Berkley’s trusted Town Administrator pulls into Town Hall, takes a deep breath in anticipation of the fresh new hell that awaits inside, and voluntarily enters a building that looks like Thunderdome on steroids: A crushing workload, emails up the wazoo, transfer station hangovers, and at least one resident convinced he’s violating the Constitution and trying to kill Old Berkley.
He strides in, straightens his tie, affixes his cape, and gets to work: grant writer, website helper, meeting manager, occasional referee, protector of employees and depending on the meeting – the unelected fourth Selectman.
The Sheepdog on the Hill
Whether it comforts or horrifies you Dear Readers, Matt Chabot is almost perfectly designed for municipal government. He is organized, strategic, professional and painfully linear. And he does it without betraying emotion which, in municipal government, could qualify as a survival skill. Or it could be a sign of a serial killer walking among us.
If Town Hall were struck by a meteor, Chabot would emerge from the rubble carrying a meticulously indexed binder titled UFO Response Procedures. There would also be a spreadsheet and a grant application to support the rebuild.
But beyond the steely exterior of a put-upon bureaucrat is something else: Chabot is fiercely protective of his people. Once you’re onboard he becomes something of a watchdog. And that protective instinct has put him directly in the line of fire. He has also learned that carving up elected and appointed officials in Berkley is part sport and part tradition, like Thanksgiving dinner playing out in a maximum security prison yard.
The Greek God of Municipal Finance
The easiest way to understand Chabot’s job is to picture Atlas holding the world on his shoulders, but with his tie neatly straightened. Just as Atlas was condemned to hold up the sky, our modern day Titan has been sentenced to a lifetime of budget shortfalls, public input at meetings and public records requests, including the Horsfall collection, a body of work so extensive it may eventually require its own curator. Somewhere in Town Hall, another request arrives. Chabot sighs and dies a little inside. A printer warms up. Elsewhere in the shadows, a municipal attorney is quietly billing 6 minutes at a time.
Atlas adjusts his tie and keeps holding up Berkley.
No, he’s not getting in a loin cloth like your garden variety Greek God and showing off. Nobody throws a parade because municipal finance is functioning properly, or even pays attention, unless the Town credit cards get shut off – that’s still a bit of a sore subject around the office. But these are the boring, foundational matters that separate a functioning organization from a mud wrestling contest held together with duct tape, horse trading and institutional memory….ahem…Old Berkley.
Matt being Matt
Of course, Chabot’s greatest strength is also probably his greatest weakness. The man likes control. A lot of control. He likes plans, process, organization and arguments that fit neatly into their assigned boxes. Spontaneity is presumably something that requires a calendar invite and possibly a form.
Unfortunately, Democracy has never shown much interest in fitting neatly into anything. Sometimes Chabot gets so focused on rhetoric, presentation and controlling the process that we think he’s going to resign to become his own AI platform. There have also been times when a beautifully constructed Chabot argument has collided headfirst with an actual human being and things suddenly become considerably less pleasing to the eye. Berkley IT consultants expect the upcoming installation of his new emotional intelligence RAM will bring big changes to Matt’s algorithm in Q4.
He can also, on occasion, insert himself a little too much. Dear Lord, the man can talk. There are Board of Selectmen meetings where Chabot contributes so extensively that residents could be forgiven for wondering whether Berkley quietly expanded the board from one Chairman to two. Maybe when Berkley eventually moves to a five-member Board, he’ll discover the municipal version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and occasionally take a meeting off from being the fourth Selectman. Until then, nobody puts Chabot in the corner.
Finally, changing Chabot’s mind can occasionally require the municipal equivalent of getting Ross’s couch up the stairs. PIVOT! Because Matthew Chabot is stubborn. Spectacularly stubborn.
Usually it’s because something makes perfect sense in the very orderly Chabot universe: it’s logical, it’s fair to him, it follows the rules, and most importantly: it assumes everyone else understands that he’s right. But then actual human beings get involved and push the TNT plunger on the ensuing public meeting like Wil E. Coyote. Chabot seems genuinely surprised by this on occasion, which may be both endearing and slightly concerning for his future working in municipal government.
But that stubbornness cuts both ways. The same quality that can make you want to bang your head against the conference room table is probably the exact reason he’s still sitting at it. Chabot digs in like a tick. Sometimes he’s maddening. Sometimes it’s exactly what you need.
He doesn’t want the bad guys to win, so he hangs on while trying to stand outside the fire, Garth Brooks style. Despite 360 degrees of criticism 24/7, Chabot continues showing up. Perhaps his greatest achievement? He outlasted Satan. IYKYK.
The Weight of the Hill
Chabot isn’t perfect. Thank God. Perfect people make terrible blog material – just look at how our offering on Jennifer Vincent gave most of you narcolepsy. The editorial board will have no comment on the pending class action lawsuit at this time.
He can be controlling. He can overthink things. He can focus too much on managing how something looks instead of what it actually accomplishes. And every once in a while somebody should probably remind him that Town Administrator and Selectman remain two different jobs, lest he fall into thinking that the Matt & Tabitha Show is more than a meme on the internet.
But he does all of the hard things too. He writes grants. He fills gaps. He protects his employees, even the ones who may not have earned it. He builds systems. He pushes projects forward. He is trying to create a cohesive professional team in a community where some would prefer to see Town Hall turned back into the early days of the UFC Octagon.
And somewhere outside Town Hall, he’s also a husband and a Girl Dad trying to have an actual life.
So Berkley residents, here’s Atlas in a sweater vest, carrying Berkley Town Hall on his shoulders while everyone underneath argues about taxes, trash, Facebook, public records, free speech and whose microphone should be turned off. Every so often he shifts the weight. Occasionally he complains. Sometimes he tries to tell everyone exactly where they’re allowed to stand. And sometimes the people underneath pull out the Bill of Rights and remind him that they’re the reason the whole structure exists in the first place.
But tomorrow morning Chabot will walk back through the door and do it all over again. He has made mistakes here, but he learns from them and doesn’t often repeat them. And somewhere along the way, while the rest of us were busy arguing about trash stickers and Facebook posts, he became a pretty damn good Town Administrator. And when he does eventually ride off into the sunset and out of Town, those who don’t think he could cut it should be careful what they wish for.
Atlas will just keep shrugging.
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