NEWBURYPORT — During a special meeting on September 3, 2025, city councilors challenged Mayor Sean Reardon’s reappointment of the city’s human resources director as a temporary department head, even though the council voted against her reappointment just days earlier.
The move was described by several councilors as a deliberate attempt to circumvent the authority of the legislative body, prompting a nearly two-hour debate over the legality and ethics of the temporary appointment.
At the center of the controversy is the administration’s handling of the HR director Donna Drelick’s expiring contract. The original three-year term ended on June 30, but the reappointment was not submitted until over a month later, on Aug. 5. The council rejected the reappointment on Aug. 25. The next day, the mayor appointed the same person as a temporary department head, which could potentially extend her tenure through Jan. 23, 2026—after the current council leaves office.
Councilors voted unanimously to amend the effective date of the temporary appointment to July 1, 2025, aligning it with the expiration of the previous contract.
“We did have a 90-day window. There was no communication. There was no email. There was no anything…from her supervisor at the time that said they intended to reappoint,” said Ward 5 Councilor James McCauley, referencing a legal opinion from the city’s outside counsel, MHTL. Later adding, “There is no intent, there is no holdover, and therefore the position is over.”
McCauley’s remarks were echoed by Ward 2 Councilor Jennie Donahue, who accused the administration of intentionally stalling the process to retain the HR director despite the council’s objections.
“They also knew they didn’t have full support of many councilors on this reappointment, for many, many months well before the contract was even up,” said Councilor Donahue, who added that when she informed the mayor’s chief of staff that she expected a job posting to go up after the vote, “He snickered at me and said, ‘No. Read the charter. Continuance of governance.’”
That remark, Donahue said, signaled a premeditated effort to bypass the council’s authority and stretch the temporary appointment through the end of the current term.
“To me, that was a very, very clear statement of political positioning and that this is a game that they’ve been playing…and it is despicable,” Donahue said.
Several councilors warned that the maneuver sets a dangerous precedent—effectively allowing a mayor to avoid council oversight indefinitely by using rolling temporary appointments.
“If taken to a logical extreme…mayors could simply refuse to bring forward reappointments indefinitely and utilize the holdover status as sort of the hiding place if they liked the person,” said Ward 1 Councilor Sharif Zeid, who led the charge to amend the appointment date to July 1.
Later in the debate, Councilor McCauley criticized the repeated attempts to keep the same appointee in place despite the council’s opposition. “This appointment is kind of like Lazarus rising from the dead,” McCauley said. “Every time we kill it, it keeps coming back.”
Other councilors echoed the sentiment, shifting the focus from legal maneuvering to the deeper implications for democratic checks and balances.
“This isn’t about personalities,” said Ward 3 Councilor Heath Granas, who emphasized he had never voted against a department head reappointment until this one. “This is about process, transparency, and respect for the role of this council.”
Granis directly rebuked the mayor’s recent public statements, calling it “especially concerning to hear the mayor characterize the council as ‘dysfunctional’ and ‘vindictive’ simply because we do not support a specific reappoint.”
Multiple councilors also criticized the lack of communication and planning by the administration.
“They had three years…to negotiate a new contract…To suggest that this holdover time is, you know, for the administration to do negotiations, really just does not hold any water for me at all,” said Councilor-at-Large Constance Preston, who added that when she inquired in June about the HR director’s status, the chief of staff responded, “I don’t know.”
Likewise, Councilor-at-Large Mark Wright said, “This is a crisis that’s been manufactured by the administration. They created a crisis. They’ve dumped it in our lap. There was no urgency to bring the appointment to us in a timely basis. It wasn’t in the city’s best interests to resolve this in a timely fashion. Now, all of a sudden, it is an emergency?”
Several councilors expressed frustration that no representatives from the administration or the city solicitor’s office attended the meeting. Councilor Granas said the administration “was well aware of this meeting” and their absence was “unacceptable.”
Though some councilors, including Ward 4 Councilor Benjamin Harman, supported the need for continuity in the HR department, others pushed back.
“People come, people go. Sometimes it’s at their will, sometimes it’s at the will of the city,” Councilor Zeid said. “We cannot be beholden to a candidate that hasn’t earned the right to be here through our normal process.”
The meeting ended with no resolution on whether the council would accept the temporary appointment in its amended form, as a separate vote on the emergency preamble was needed and appeared unlikely to garner the required eight votes.
“How long do we have to wait?” Councilor Zeid asked. “Do we have to get a green light from the city solicitor in order for us to read our own charter and decide how we wish to be governed?”
