By: Ryan Michaels | The Maine Mirror | September 17, 2026

Arthur Capello is leaving Berwick.

In an article published by the Town of Berwick today, September 17, Capello reflects on his tenure as Town Manager as he prepares to leave Maine for Missouri by the end of next month.

And among everything he could have chosen to emphasize about his time here, he chose words that stopped me in my tracks:

Transparency. Access. A willingness to talk with anybody.

Capello says he hopes residents remember his transparency and his willingness to talk with anybody.

As a Berwick resident, there is an almost painful irony in reading those words after spending months documenting experiences involving precisely the opposite concerns: a lack of access and a lack of transparency.

I don’t say that simply because my perception of his tenure differs from his.

I say it because there is a record.

Emails.

Public meetings.

Recordings.

Public-records correspondence.

Repeated requests for answers.

Correspondence from the Town’s attorney.

And now, federal litigation involving the Town itself.

So when Berwick’s departing Town Manager points to transparency and accessibility as part of the legacy he hopes residents remember, I believe another perspective belongs in the record.

Mine.

Because I was one of the residents he served.

And perhaps nothing demonstrates the irony better than an example Capello himself references in reflecting on his tenure:

Berwick’s public budget discussion.

He Pointed to the Budget Meeting. So Let’s Talk About the Budget Meeting.

This distinction matters.

I am not reaching backward through Capello’s tenure looking for some unrelated incident that can now be repurposed to criticize his farewell remarks.

He brought up the budget discussion himself.

Fortunately, we don’t have to reconstruct what happened from memory.

I documented it months ago.

On May 28, The Maine Mirror published:

When “Public Participation” Isn’t Truly Public in Berwick

I strongly encourage readers to stop here and read that article.

Seriously.

Read it.

It wasn’t written today in response to Capello announcing his departure.

It wasn’t written after I learned how he would characterize his tenure.

It was published months ago, while these events were actually unfolding.

And most importantly, read it because Capello himself is now referencing this very budget discussion as part of his reflection on public engagement.

That makes the contemporaneous record critical context.

I Was Trying to Access the Meeting He Now Points To

Before that May budget discussion at the Berwick Public Library, I wanted to participate.

So I asked whether there would be a livestream, Zoom connection or another way for residents who couldn’t physically attend to participate remotely.

I didn’t receive an answer until after the meeting had already taken place.

I was then informed that the discussion had been recorded and would eventually be available online.

But I hadn’t asked whether I could watch it later.

I asked whether I could participate.

Those are not the same thing.

A recording lets a resident observe government.

It doesn’t let that resident ask a question.

It doesn’t let that resident respond to an answer.

It doesn’t let that resident participate in the discussion happening inside the room.

That distinction was the entire reason I raised the issue.

And this is where today’s characterization becomes so striking to me:

The same budget discussion now being referenced in the context of public engagement was the meeting that prompted me to publicly document concerns about the lack of meaningful public access.

That isn’t hindsight.

The article documenting it has been online since May.

So I Went Directly to Arthur Capello

On May 27, I emailed Capello himself.

I explained exactly what had happened.

I told him my original question wasn’t whether the meeting would eventually be recorded. My concern was whether residents unable to attend physically could participate in real time.

I specifically explained that transportation, disability, financial circumstances, work schedules and other barriers can prevent residents from attending in person.

I wasn’t demanding anything extraordinary.

I was asking Berwick to consider whether people who couldn’t physically sit in that library could still have a meaningful opportunity to participate in conversations affecting their community.

I thanked Capello for his time.

I thanked him for his service.

And I waited.

I Had to Ask Again

By June 8, I had received no response from Capello.

So I followed up.

This time I made my questions unmistakably clear.

Did Berwick have a policy concerning virtual access to public informational meetings?

Had livestreaming or remote participation been considered for the May budget discussion?

If not, why?

Would the Town explore virtual participation for future public forums?

These weren’t accusations.

They weren’t demands for confidential information.

They were straightforward questions from a resident about access to his own local government.

I wrote that residents unable to attend physically should not be excluded from meaningful participation in discussions affecting their community.

Eventually, I received answers.

But not from Arthur Capello.

The Town Sent My Questions to Its Attorney

On June 12, attorney Matt Tarasevich contacted me.

He explained that his office represented Berwick and that the Town had requested his office respond to my inquiry regarding virtual participation.

Consider that alongside today’s reflection.

Capello says he hopes Berwick remembers his transparency and his willingness to talk with anybody.

Yet when I, a Berwick resident, wrote directly to my Town Manager about access to my local government, received no response, followed up and asked four straightforward questions, the answers ultimately came through the Town’s attorney.

And what did the Town’s attorney tell me?

The Town had no policy regarding virtual access to these public discussions.

Was livestreaming or remote participation considered for the budget discussion?

No.

It wasn’t.

Why?

The Town responded that it wasn’t a topic of consideration because Berwick didn’t have the ability to livestream outside the municipal building.

Would the Town consider it in the future?

Berwick said it was open to exploring it, subject to budget and technological considerations.

Those aren’t allegations.

Those are the Town’s own answers.

That Is the Irony

This is what makes today’s farewell reflection so difficult for me to read without responding.

Transparency and access are the very things I was asking Arthur Capello for.

I asked for access to the budget discussion.

Remote participation hadn’t even been considered.

I asked the Town Manager about it.

I received no response.

I followed up.

The Town routed my questions through its attorney.

And now, months later, I am reading that the departing Town Manager hopes Berwick remembers his transparency and willingness to talk with anybody, while the very budget discussion that caused me to document concerns about public access is being referenced as part of his record of public engagement.

I don’t need to manufacture that contrast.

The record creates it all by itself.

That’s why I again encourage readers to read the May 28 reporting:

When “Public Participation” Isn’t Truly Public in Berwick

Read what was documented then.

Then read what is being said now.

And decide for yourself what those two records say when placed side by side.

There Is Another Part of Berwick’s Record

There is broader context that I also don’t believe should disappear from a reflection on Berwick government as its Town Manager prepares to leave.

The Town of Berwick has been named as a defendant in at least two federal civil-rights lawsuits filed in 2026.

One is Guay et al. v. Town of Berwick, filed April 8 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine. The federal docket identifies the matter as a civil-rights action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and names the Town of Berwick as a defendant.

That litigation has continued through the year. A July federal court order reflects that the Town had entered the case and addressed several motions brought by the plaintiffs.

The other is my own federal civil-rights litigation, Michaels v. Haynes et al., in which the Town of Berwick is among the defendants.

That is relevant context when discussing the state of municipal government during this period.

And there is a timing detail that, as the plaintiff in that case, naturally caught my attention.

The Town of Berwick was served in my case one week before today’s announcement of Capello’s departure.

One week.

Then came today’s article announcing that Berwick’s Town Manager is preparing to leave for Missouri.

I noticed that timing.

Of course I did.

But transparency requires me to be equally clear about what I don’t know.

I have no evidence that the service of my lawsuit had anything whatsoever to do with Arthur Capello’s decision to leave Berwick.

Timing is not causation.

I will not present coincidence as evidence.

I will not tell readers that one event caused the other when I possess no evidence establishing such a connection.

But neither do I believe the proper response is to erase documented events from the timeline.

The chronology is what it is.

Berwick has faced federal civil-rights litigation this year.

My own case names the Town among its defendants.

The Town was served.

And one week later, the Town published an article announcing Capello’s upcoming departure.

Whether those events have any relationship to one another is something the available record does not establish.

That distinction matters.

In fact, it matters especially in an article about transparency.

If I’m going to demand transparency from government, then I have an obligation to practice it myself.

That means telling readers what I know.

It also means telling them what I don’t.

Transparency Isn’t Something Government Gets to Declare About Itself

Maybe that’s the larger lesson I’ve taken from everything that has happened.

Government officials can believe they’re transparent.

They can believe they’re accessible.

They can sincerely believe they’ve created opportunities for public participation.

But ultimately, those words have to mean something in practice.

Transparency is tested when someone asks a question.

Accessibility is tested when someone cannot get into the room.

Public participation is tested when someone actually tries to participate.

Openness is tested when the questions become uncomfortable.

That’s where these principles stop being words and become experiences.

And my experience matters just as much as the Town Manager’s description of his own tenure.

I Won’t Tell Anyone Else What to Remember

There may be Berwick residents who remember Arthur Capello exactly as he hopes they will.

Maybe they emailed him and received an immediate response.

Maybe they sat down with him personally.

Maybe they asked questions and received answers.

Maybe their experience of Berwick government under his leadership really was one of openness and accessibility.

I won’t tell those residents their experiences didn’t happen.

But my experience happened, too.

And much of mine isn’t dependent upon memory.

It’s documented.

The emails exist.

The follow-up exists.

The Town’s answers exist.

The attorney’s response exists.

The contemporaneous reporting exists.

And the budget meeting Capello references today is the same meeting I was writing about months ago because I couldn’t meaningfully participate in it.

So What Will I Remember?

Arthur Capello is preparing to leave Berwick.

He gets to tell this community what he hopes people remember about his service.

And as one of the residents he served, I get to tell this community what I experienced.

When I hear transparency, I remember asking questions.

When I hear access, I remember trying to participate.

When I hear willingness to talk with anybody, I remember emailing my Town Manager, waiting, following up and ultimately receiving the Town’s answers through its attorney.

And when I hear the May budget discussion invoked in the context of successful public engagement, I remember writing an article titled:

“When ‘Public Participation’ Isn’t Truly Public in Berwick.”

That article wasn’t written today.

It was written then.

That’s precisely why it matters now.

Arthur Capello can tell Berwick what transparency and accessibility looked like from inside the Town Manager’s office.

I can tell Berwick what they looked like from the other side.

The distance between those two experiences is precisely why this reflection needed to be written.

Both belong in the record.

This is mine.

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The Maine Mirror invites Arthur Capello and the Town of Berwick to respond to the experiences and records discussed in this commentary. Any substantive response will be published or incorporated into future coverage.

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