The Andover Select Board named Tony Serio, 34, the new director of Andover Youth Services at its meeting Wednesday night.
Serio, who starts work Aug. 8, was selected from a pool of 38 applicants. He has been the assistant director of Youth and Family Services in Lexington since 2018.
Serio replaces Bill Fahey, who was fired last May for “misconduct.” Fahey is suing the town and Andover Town Manager Andrew Flanagan for wrongful termination.
Fahey was fired in May 2021 for unspecified “conduct.” In addition to public backlash, the firing led to the resignation of the division’s full-time staff. Last July, the town released more details from its report on Fahey, claiming he held closed-door meetings with program participants and downloading pornographic material containing a former employee and showing it to the employee’s family
Last fall, the town commissioned a report from the law firm Nixon Peabody LLC which found Fahey oversaw $103,000 in payments from the nonprofit foundation to himself and five Youth Services staff members.
The town turned the report over to the Massachusetts Ethics Commission in January, alleging the payments violated state law prohibiting public employees from receiving gifts for their work. The Hurston Family Foundation, which funded the payments, and Fahey dispute the report’s findings and said the payments were not for work done as town employees.
So all you want to do is talk about Bill Fayhey? The poor new Director( Welcome to Andover) gets a few lines in this announcement piece! Your reporting is NOT reporting. Truly, the local paper likes living in the past.
We certainly hope to interview the new director and discuss his background and his plan for moving AYS forward. But not mentioning the context and background of his hiring would be irresponsible journalism. We cannot ignore the history of this issue simply because many readers find that history upsetting.