Gracie Gato's Speakeasy Podcast
Four Beds and a Boardroom
Description
Part 1 of 2: Four Beds and a Boardroom For ten straight years, the City of Concord wrote the exact same check — twelve thousand, five hundred dollars — to the same domestic violence nonprofit. No contract. No fee schedule. No public accounting of where the money went or what services it bought. The city’s police department helped staff the nonprofit’s annual fundraiser. Without a contract. Without an invoice. Without anyone in the city explaining how that squared with the 2008 resolution requiring nonprofits to pay for police labor on a fee basis. The city’s own website promoted the nonprofit as the primary public resource for domestic violence survivors — without disclosing that the nonprofit was, at the time, chaired by the Mayor’s wife, treasured by a sitting City Councilor, and sponsored at its annual fundraiser by the former Mayor’s own private lobbying firm. And in 2020 — quietly, with no press release and no public discussion — the City Manager stopped using the nonprofit’s name on the budget line. The check is still $12,500. The recipient is still the same. But somewhere along the way, somebody decided that the specificity of the original line item had become a problem. Tonight on the Speakeasy, we ask why. In this episode: * The 1978 nonprofit that became something else in 2014 * The 2008 resolution that built the legal architecture for everything that followed * The 9-Month Status Report in which the Concord Police Department admitted, in writing on the city’s own website, that it had been providing uncompensated services to a private nonprofit * The annual fundraiser that grossed $51,816 and netted $2,288 — a 4.4% margin * The Wedge Sponsor on the 2016 flyer whose name nobody in Concord wants to talk about * The HUD-funded offices with a sign on the door that says they don’t have staff * Two campaign-finance receipts from the fall of 2017 that should not have appeared in a Concord City Council race * And the day job nobody has told you about yet Next week: we follow the money out of Concord. We follow it to the State House. We follow it to a 2018 settlement, a 2019 court order, and a grand jury report that — to this day — is sealed in a Merrimack County file cabinet. Get full access to The Gracie Gato Podcast at gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe [https://gracieformermrsgato.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]
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