Former board members of the nonprofit council that runs Chilmark’s town-owned tennis courts are recommending that its president, Suellen Lazarus, not return to her position this year. Should she return, former board members are ready to involve the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission.

This is from a letter submitted to a town committee by Chris Fischer, one of two former Chilmark Town Affairs Council board members who resigned this April. Fischer’s is one of two dozen other letters on the correspondence page of the Chilmark Community Center Moderator’s Committee, many of which are by people familiar with the center’s summer programming and criticize of a lack of transparency and accountability from the council.

Fischer’s letter — which was available as recently as Friday — was removed from the correspondence page.

“Suellen Lazarus is unfit for her position,” Fischer wrote. “She has led the CTAC board and our community down a destructive path that has divided our community.”

“She preached secrecy and when I did the proper diligence and spoke to members of our community I was treated like a traitor,” he added. “She displays little to no leadership skills and her adversarial approach to our community is both unkind and unnecessary.”

Fischer also laid out an ultimatum of sorts should Lazarus return this coming summer, stating that himself and other former council members will ask the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission to disqualify her from serving.

Fischer is not the only former council member to call last month for Lazarus’ removal. Suzanne Modigliani, former council secretary, called for the president’s departure in a letter to the committee. “Sue Ellen Lazarus needs to be terminated from her position NOW,” Modigliani wrote.

“She continues to seek to maintain power and has manipulated the board terms so she can continue to serve,” she wrote. “[An] example was after the most recent treasurer resigned and a member said there was no treasurer, Sue Ellen said ‘I will do it.’”

An August 7 letter from former board member Dan Karnovsky states that his resignation this past summer came after being excluded from decision-making around summer programming. “There are many reasons for the decision, but chief among them is that I have been completely and deliberately excluded from all discussions and decision-making regarding the sailing program for the last two summers,” he wrote.

An August 6 letter from former council board member Heather Quinn also stated that council by-laws allowed much of the body’s decision-making to occur within the Executive Committee, a group selected by the president. “In addition, I was left to wonder what financial resources had been used to engage in the adversarial campaign against FACT,” Quinn wrote.

Not all of the letters have been critical. A letter from a current board member, Morgan Baker-Brelis, supported Lazarus.

“I have worked with several chairs/presidents of CTAC, and I can honestly say Suellen has been by far the most effective,” wrote Baker-Brelis. She also complimented Lazarus’ response following a controversial 2021 incident at the community center summer camp in which two white children placed a strap around the neck of a Black child.

Baker-Brelis also supported Lazarus’ work towards fairness and equity. “To that end, she has reconciled how much staff is paid so young women are paid the same as young men, and that the playschool counselors are paid the same as other counselors,” she wrote.

Correspondences to the committee follow the question of how to best manage the tennis courts at the Chilmark Community Center, which reached a fever pitch in spring as players and other residents publicly called for changes at the nonprofit Chilmark Town Affairs Council.

In April, after over a hundred residents backed FACT’s campaign to remove the council’s summer control, a compromise of sorts was reached at town meeting: a public committee was formed to review summer management of the community center, as well as the management of the tennis courts year-round. 

The committee is set to produce a report for town officials by the end of January, and as it gathers input from Chilmarkers most familiar with the topic, Lazarus has been blamed again for much of the controversy and asked to resign.

Fischer’s August 30 letter to the committee also alleged that the council and community center executive director Susan Pimental Andrien were behind the making of a controversial video that upset many in town for its treatment of long-serving tennis professional Eddie Stahl. The council decided this June not to bring back Stahl for summer 2025.

The video, released days before the town meeting vote and taken down sooner after, was made by Kyle Williams of A Long Talk, a group that provides anti-racism training to organizations. Council detractors felt that the video, in its attempt to rally a vote in support of the council, deployed vague allegations of racism against Stahl and stirred up resentment ahead of town meeting.

“[Council president] Suellen provided images. [Community center executive director] Susan [Andrien] helped edit the video and they both had prior knowledge of its release,” Fischer wrote.

“Kyle was on CTAC payroll,” he added. “Kyle was paid to do the work he did with the video.”

Lazarus, in a comment to The Times, denied claims made in the letter.

“Much of what he says in his letter simply is untrue, and is contradictory of his strongly supportive and complimentary statements made to me and to CTAC management as recently as April of this year, when he resigned after a two-month tenure on CTAC’s board of directors,” she said.

“I am disheartened that Chris chose to make these incorrect allegations,” Lazarus stated. “It is discouraging to see such untrue characterization based on factual misunderstandings from Chris and others who have been long-time friends. As board chair and as a board member for many years, I’ve spent countless hours working as a volunteer to continue to improve and strengthen activities of the Chilmark Community Center.”

Andrien also denied the allegations in a statement to The Times. “I am disheartened that Chris chose to make these incorrect allegations. It is discouraging to see such untrue characterization based on factual misunderstandings from Chris and others. As Executive Director I have spent countless hours working to continue to improve and strengthen the activities of the Chilmark Community Center. Much of what he says in his letter is untrue and contradicts his strongly supportive and complimentary statements made to me and CTAC management as recently as April of this year both before and after he resigned from a two-month tenure on the board of directors.”

Lazarus told The Times in April that the council neither approved nor helped make the video, but she did say that she provided photos of camp counselors and children shown in the video. She said that those photos had been previously used in the public domain without objection, and that the council was aware beforehand that the video was being made but did not know what it would contain.

The Friends of Chilmark Tennis, the nonprofit behind the spring town meeting proposal to take power away from the council, also weighed in in an August 22 letter. “As evidenced this summer by numerous testimonies from former Board members to its executive failures, CTAC has ceased to operate in accordance with good governance structures for a charitable non-profit. In short, it has become a non-functioning Board in the hands of a small number of individuals who no longer prioritize the needs of the Chilmark community,” FACT wrote.