Councilman accused of vulgar tirade at City Hall

Councilman Richard Fagnant denies accusations of threats, verbal abuse against Zoning Board chairman

WOONSOCKET – The chairman of the Zoning Board of Review is confirming that Councilman Richard Fagnant allegedly made what amounts to a verbal assault against him after Monday night’s council meeting, threatening to shove an umbrella “up my ass” and repeatedly berating him as a “piece of s—t” as the chairman walked away from the councilman.

Zoning Board Chairman Alan M. Leclaire said the encounter took place moments after a meeting during which Fagnant excoriated him for causing delays in hearings for a Massachusetts businessman who wants to open an indoor shooting range on River Street. Leclaire said Fagnant’s tirade was full of “misstatements and dubious information,” so he approached Fagnant after the meeting in attempts to set the record straight.

“He got upset with me,” Leclaire told The Call. “He started getting loud and nasty and he was saying he was going to shove that umbrella up my ass. He was holding it in his hand a foot away from my face.”

A retired policeman who worked for the Woonsocket Police Department for more than 20 years, Leclaire has served as chairman of the Zoning Board for the last several. Fagnant is a former alternate member of the board whose term dovetailed with that of Leclaire, but Fagnant stepped down after being elected to the City Council for

the first time last year, campaigning on themes of being the taxpayer’s guardian and a corruption-fighter.

He’s also come to be known for his blunt and, often, politically incorrect manner – for which he’s been called out in the past. In the run-up to the election, critics assailed him for sharing a photoshopped image of President Obama on Facebook with a Marine holding a gun to his head. The Secret Service later visited him at home, the police said. Last week, officials in the Planning Department were outraged that he emailed them a request for information in which he labeled them “cronies.”

Reached for comment about the Leclaire incident, Fagnant said there was a testy encounter between himself and the zoning chairman after Monday’s meeting, but he denied using offensive language and he claimed it was he who was threatened by Leclaire, not the other way around.

“I knew the minute the meeting was over he was going to come over and attack me and that’s exactly what he did,” said Fagnant.

Fagnant said he had made statements about the “inefficiencies of the zoning board” and the city’s zoning official during the meeting, so he expected Leclaire to approach him after the meeting. Fagnant called his statements “the true facts” and when Leclaire came up to him he told him, “If you don’t like what I said that’s too bad. Then he got more aggressive. I basically told him…please, get away from me, you’re getting very aggressive and I don’t like it. He made a movement and I said, ‘You come one more step toward me I’m going to defend myself with my umbrella.’”

Fagnant said he never used foul or threatening language. “I deny that fully,” he said. He claims he’s become a target of entrenched officials who are making up stories about him because he’s rattling their cages – which is what his supporters elected him to do.

“I don’t threaten people,” the councilman said. “I don’t make statements like that. These people are all part of the same bureaucratic joke that’s been running this city for a while. They’re really out to derail me to make me look bad. They don’t like that I’m outing them.”

Fagnant later issued an unsolicited written statement reiterating his version of events, doubling down on his portrayal of Leclaire as the aggressor. He said he was seriously contemplating filing criminal charges of “senior abuse” against Leclaire with the WPD and, possibly, seeking a restraining order to keep the zoning chairman away from him “for safety reasons.”

Despite Fagnant’s denial, Leclaire’s story is corroborated by others. There were still some spectators from the meeting milling about Harris Hall at the time of the encounter, and at least one says she heard Fagnant’s umbrella remarks.

Margaux Morisseau of NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley was at the meeting to answer questions about the organization’s application to rent River Island Park for a food festival next month. She said she heard Fagnant tell Leclaire what he was going to do with his umbrella, using the very words Leclaire did when recounted the events.

Since the meeting, Leclaire has committed his version of the encounter to writing – part of an e-mail he distributed to every member of the council, Fagnant included, to correct Fagnant’s telling of the zoning board’s problems in scheduling a hearing for the firing range. The email says: “At the council meeting last night, I spoke to Fagnant and he was initially brash with me. He calmed down a little and I was able to explain the first instance. Upon being advised he was wrong with the first statement he became upset and raised his voice. He told me to leave him alone or he would shove the umbrella he was holding ‘up my ass.’ At that point I decided to walk away and as I did he continued to yell and insult me. Calling me the worst Zoning chairman ever and multiple times calling me a ‘piece of s—t.” I do not consider this conduct from a city representative appropriate. Moreover, he has repeatedly misstated facts on the record without properly researching the accurate information.”

In a phone interview, Leclaire said Fagnant’s comments could be legally constituted as a criminal assault, but he does not intend to file a police complaint.

The underlying issue behind the incident involves an application filed by Mark Chapman, who wants to start a gun supply shop and a shooting range on River Street. He needs a variance from the zoning board to start the shooting range, but for various technical reasons, a hearing on the petition has been postponed two times.

During the council meeting, Fagnant claimed the board did not initially have enough members, or quorum, to lawfully consider the petition. But Leclaire says that doesn’t fairly explain what happened. He said there were five members present, but one, Kathryn Dumais, recused herself because her husband is a close friend and a co-worker of Chapman. Only then did the quorum become an issue.

Leclaire said Chapman himself might have been aware of Dumais’ conflict and therefore did not appear at the hearing.

A second issue that Fagnant talked about simply “never occurred,” according to Leclaire. Fagnant, he said, claimed another meeting was canceled because Zoning Officer Carl Johnson allegedly had a conflict involving a second job. “This is a lie,” said Leclaire.

However, during this meeting, there were two excused absences and another member unexpectedly did not show up. He and Johnson made numerous phone calls, but were unable to assemble a quorum and canceled the meeting.

“This was unexpected,” he said.