Council questions Weeks

LYNN – Mayoral computer consultant Kenneth Weeks commented for the first time publicly about why he took and examined a council computer on Sept. 17 but abruptly left Tuesday’s night City Council meeting after council questions turned to his 2010 hiring.”Did you participate in the bidding process prior to bids being selected?” City Council President Timothy Phelan asked Weeks minutes before the Lynnfield resident followed his attorney, George Hazel, out of the council chamber.Hazel said councilors “didn’t vote to authorize questions on the bidding process” involved in Weeks’ hiring by a mayoral aide when councilors ordered the consultant to appear before them.Although he attended Tuesday’s meeting in response to a council subpoena, Weeks is going to Superior Court on Oct. 31 to challenge the council’s authority to question him. City attorneys will attend the hearing.”The city charter is very broad – the council can investigate any affair of the city and use subpoena power to conduct such an investigation,” assistant city solicitor James Lamanna said Tuesday.Weeks is at the center of a campaign season controversy between Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy and Phelan that erupted after council executive assistant Terry Young complained to city lawyers about Weeks taking her office computer on Sept. 17.Young sat feet away from Weeks Tuesday as he told councilors how Kennedy’s suspicions about a Phelan campaign letter prompted her to go with Weeks to the council office and order Weeks to take the computer.”Did you think that was normal or legal?” asked Ward 3 Councilor Darren Cyr.”I work for the mayor. I was doing what I was asked by my boss,” Weeks replied.Weeks said he has “limited administrative rights” as mayoral computer consultant to override password protection on city computers and review their contents. Ward 1 Councilor Wayne Lozzi asked Weeks if he was aware that the city employee Internet policy requires workers to be given notice before their computers are examined.Weeks said Young and council aide Julia Hogan were not in the council office when Weeks and Kennedy walked into it. He acknowledged opening an office counter partition gate to gain access to the office.Hazel repeatedly declined to allow councilors to question Weeks about any topics except the Sept. 17 incident but council interest in Weeks extends beyond the events of that evening. The second of two subpoenas councilors sent to Weeks this month listed several questions councilors want answered, including the circumstances of his hiring, his duties as a contractor and how much he is paid.City purchasing records list $66,000 in payments made from the mayor’s office to Weeks’ firm, Northeast Tech Pros, since 2010 or pending for payment.A 2011 city memorandum written by Kennedy’s executive assistant Mary Chalmers (now Fountain) lists the work Weeks was hired to perform, including upgrading and improving the City Hall computer system, providing computer technology support for the city, and mapping out its network of servers, computers and “other network support devices.”In an Oct. 3 statement, the mayor’s former chief of staff, Claire Cavanagh, said she followed state procurement laws when Kennedy directed her in January 2010 to hire an information technology specialist.Cavanagh said she only sought the initial vendor quotations that led to Weeks’ hiring before leaving her mayoral job.Cavanagh in her statement indicated Weeks “personally provided me with the name of the three vendors to call, including himself” in 2010.”I have not been involved since and the facts speak for themselves,” she noted in a written statement.Weeks, in an Oct. 3 interview, offered a different recollection of their conversation. He said Cavanagh told him she did not know any information technology vendors and said, “?Do you have people you used?'””I gave her two companies I worked with previously and I gave her my information,” he said.Procurement law allows services valued between $5,000 and