Upon learning that Nancy Clark and Richard Smeeth had won seats on the New Ipswich Planning Board in the March 28 election, we published an editorial April 4 stating that they should recuse themselves from discussions regarding the Silver Scone Teas application.

The reason for our stance was that Smeeth is one of a group of neighbors who has appealed decisions favorable to Silver Scone to the town and brought lawsuits in the matter, and Clark is the group’s lawyer, which we thought presented a conflict of interest.

However, minutes from previous meetings, posted on the town’s website, show that Smeeth – as well as Elizabeth Freeman, another one of Clark’s clients who is an alternate on the Planning Board – had already recused himself from prior discussions. Upon learning that she could not represent her clients in front of the Planning Board while also a member, Clark resigned from the board April 4, after the paper had gone to print.

Smeeth, along with Freeman, did the right thing, and will need to continue doing so. However, we did not. Prior to running the editorial, we did not check to see whether Smeeth had recused himself.

For that, we apologize.

We at the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript strive to be accurate, fair and informative. It’s what we owe our readers and the people we write about. But we make mistakes. When that happens, we try to figure out how the mistake happened, how to make it right and how to prevent it from happening again.

Usually, we print a correction or clarification with the proper information and correct the story online. In this case, we learned of Clark’s resignation before the editorial was online, rendering it outdated, so we never added it to our website.

But some errors deserve more than noting the proper information on Page 2. This is one of those times. We unintentionally but inaccurately implied that people who have done the right thing could possibly not do so. This is especially true when we could have learned otherwise beforehand.

We regret the error. We will strive to learn from this mistake. We owe it to everyone we cover and everyone who reads our publication.

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