On Monday night, Longmeadow’s Select Board voted unanimously to call for longtime Planning Board member Walter Gunn to resign amid allegations he made racist remarks to a town resident while trespassing on his property in early January.
It’s an incident that Select Board members described in a public letter as “a breach of the public trust at such a scale, that residents will question the Town’s integrity and the actions of the Planning Board if Mr. Gunn retains his position.”
This followed a special May 9 Planning Board meeting in which members acknowledged receiving a complaint, and viewing video evidence, of Gunn apparently trespassing on private residential property and questioning whether the property owner, a person of color, was “the housekeeper.”
“Do you speak English?” Gunn asked the property owner, Fabricio Ochoa, 13 sentences into a conversation in English.
The meeting concluded with a unanimous vote on a public apology statement that characterized Gunn’s behavior as “unprofessional, rude, and discriminatory.”
Gunn voted in favor of the apology, and said he sincerely meant it, but contested that he behaved in an unprofessional manner.
“I agree with those in the complaint… that I am rude and I am discriminatory but I’m not unprofessional in acting as myself,” Gunn said.
According to emails obtained by The Shoestring, the property owners first made their complaint in early January. They then provided video footage of the incident on request in late February, after they reached out again to the Planning Board chair asking what was being done to address the incident.
Town Manager Lyn Simmons told The Shoestring in an email that once the formal complaint was submitted in March, it was then given to the chief administrative official for the town. She said they had not encountered complaints against elected officials before and needed to find the pathways for investigating and following those complaints.
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The incident, which occured on Jan. 7, involved Gunn entering residential property after dark on a bike. According to video of the incident and the Ochoas’ communications with the town, one of the property owners went outside to confront Gunn, who initially gave a false last name for himself. Gunn said he was there to address an “RV incident,” to which Ochoa asked if public officials can just show up on private property unannounced. Gunn said he was just biking through on his way to the country club.
Gunn asked Ochoa if he lived in the town, if he spoke English, why he was being defensive, and if he was the housekeeper. The conversation then shifts back to the topic of the “RV,” which Gunn also referred to later as a “mobile home.” During the conversation, Ochoa raised questions about the town’s bylaws and other rules and practices. He said that, to his understanding, they had met all applicable requirements.
Gunn said that he knew the people who had made complaints about the property. He also made statements during the interaction that suggested a person’s personal connections contribute to the way rules and regulations regarding private property are being made in the town. He also named several of the land abbutters and their careers, businesses, or family members.
“So it comes down to whoever has, I guess, more connections to, like you said, to maybe higher people that can change or add … bylaws as they please?” Ochoa asked.
“Exactly,” Gunn responded.
During the 24 minutes of video footage, Gunn asks the property owner eight times about the RV.
Gunn also said that a neighbor contacted him on his personal phone about the property earlier that same day. Gunn said he came by to view the property to head off a complaint about the RV he said was coming before the Planning Board the following day. While claiming to not personally know the resident who had contacted him, he did seem to know a lot of information about them, including their past and current occupations. Gunn also said he had driven by the property previously looking for the RV.
“She reached out to me today and that’s why I just said I was biking,” Gunn said. “I always do the country club through the ponds, and I said, ‘You know what, I just got to check this out quickly ‘cause I’ve been down here, I never saw an RV.’ So one day I drove around here and I said, ‘I don’t see an RV.’”
Gunn continued with statements about past projects involving the same people who had complained.
“What I found out is there’s certain people backing her up — that I think you’re just the scapegoat for a bigger plan to block objects in Longmeadow and I think it’s got to stop,” Gunn said. “Nobody would ever pass anything that would block what she wants to do.”
In an email to The Shoestring, Ochoa said Gunn’s statements about personal connections wielding influence on the town’s processes and regulations suggest, to him, some level of truth.
“For someone with 24 years in public service to make such remarks suggests the existence of an unhealthy dynamic within the town — one where those with influence and connections may disproportionately shape important decisions,” he said. “This kind of environment fosters a system where power is concentrated among a select few, potentially at the expense of the broader community.”
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The Planning Board did not specifically address Gunn’s statements alleging systemic impropriety during their May 9 meeting or in their apology statement, which included language about the standards held by the board.
“An official acting outside the scope of authority and who makes derogatory comments erodes the trust of citizenship and the ability of the town to uphold the rights and respect of all citizens,” the apology reads. “The Longmeadow Planning Board denounces the actions of Mr. Gunn and vehemently states that his actions and statements do not reflect the sentiment of the members of the board.”
The Planning Board chair, Cheryl Thibodeau, declined a request for comment, directing questions about Gunn’s claims of alleged impropriety to the town manager.
In an email, Simmons told The Shoestring, “there is no basis of fact in Mr. Gunn’s comments.” She also said the Planning Board intended their apology to denounce Gunn’s statements generally.
Gunn declined an interview request. In an email, he said he had contacted his lawyer and would be releasing a statement in the coming days.
“There have been several misstatements and perhaps overstep of authority by town officials, town counsel and Select Board members,” he wrote. “Due to this, there is the potential for civil litigation for myself and others.”
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Gunn said his legal counsel had not been able to attend the special Select Board meeting, which was originally scheduled to be held behind closed doors. Gunn waived the right for the meeting to be held in executive session, as it’s known, opening the meeting to the public. Gunn claimed that required a rescheduling of the meeting to avoid conflict with open meeting law requirements. A legal representative for the board, Kate Feodoroff, said sufficient notice of the meeting and the meeting topic had been announced publicly so the meeting could proceed on topic and in open session.
In the videos reviewed by the board, Gunn claimed to have been “arrested” previously for trespassing on his way to the country club. The Shoestring obtained a Longmeadow police report related to that incident, which took place in December 2014. The report indicates Gunn was served a “trespass notice” at that time.
The Planning Board’s apology statement to the property owners involved in the most recent trespassing incident said all board members reviewed the video documentation of the incident. The public statement referred to the trespassing incident as an “unannounced site visit” that was not known to other board members.
“This interaction with Mr. Gunn was documented and reviewed by members of the Planning Board,” the letter said. “Every citizen deserves to be treated with respect and dignity by our town officials.”
At its regularly scheduled meeting on May 19, the Select Board’s agenda included a draft letter calling for Gunn’s resignation. Community members from the organization Longmeadow Anti-Racist Coalition, Mechilia Salazar and Saul Finestone, read a statement emphasizing the impact of Gunn’s behavior and calling on Select Board members to vote in favor of the letter calling for Gunn’s resignation.
“This behavior is not simply a lapse in judgment,” the group’s statement said. “It is a violation of the public trust, a threat to the safety and dignity of community members and a stark reminder of the everyday racism that residents of color continue to face, even in their own homes, even in Longmeadow. No individual should ever experience intimidation, racial profiling or humiliation especially from those elected to serve them.”
A 2021 report produced by a separate group — the Coalition for Social Justice Task Force — identified some systemic issues within the town around racism. That, in part, led to the formation of the town’s DEI advisory committee, of which Salazar and Finestone are members.
In an interview, Salazar and Finestone said that recently, the Longmeadow Anti-Racist Coalition has been working on educational and information initiatives, working alongside the DEI advisory committee to try to understand what they can do to combat racism in the town. They also said the organization was working on building a larger coalition including other cities and towns, with the aim to make the work of addressing complex systemic issues more manageable and effective.
Finestone and Salazar both commented on issues of racism surfacing among school age children in Longmeadow, with Salazar providing some examples from first hand knowledge. These included children using the “N word” and encouraging each other to do Nazi salutes.
“Our stance really is, if everything continues to be treated as one-off situations, and everything is a silo, whether it’s something that takes place in a school building, then that’s the school’s problem versus, if it’s in someone’s backyard, then, it’s an invisible problem and not a town problem,” Salazar said. “Those are the conversations we’re trying to bring to the surface right now and we’re hoping to do so in a collaborative way.”
Finestone said this was the biggest incident the group had dealt with among the town’s officials. He said had been surprised to find out about Gunn’s behavior, someone Finestone said he generally experienced friendly interactions with in the past, and was grappling with the fact that people held those types of feelings.
“ I wouldn’t believe they existed, but I guess it exists and people,” Finestone said. Speaking in respect to his role in the Longmeadow Anti-Racist Coalition, he said “we’re not going to end racism, but we certainly ought to work towards that goal and mitigate it as rapidly and as much as we can. That’s the purpose of our existing.”
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The letter from the Select Board apologized to the Ochoa family and included a mention of Gunn’s statements of previous trespassing on other occasions.
“We are respectfully asking Mr. Gunn to resign from the Planning Board effective immediately,” it said. “We are also requesting that the Planning Board strip Mr. Gunn of his liaison assignments, including to the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission.”
“We believe in the dignity of every resident, and will stand up for this value,” the letter concluded.
Ochoa told The Shoestring his family was grateful for the town’s responsiveness to the issue, the apology from officials, and the actions taken by Simmons and Select Board Chair Vineeth Hemavathi.
Ochoa did feel, however, that Gunn remaining in his position on the Planning Board and other committees “is deeply troubling.” He said he also has concerns about the town’s procedural inability to take “decisive disciplinary measures against an individual exhibiting such prejudiced and biased behavior.”