Response from First Selectman Camillo to David Wold’s letter (Saturday, June 28) to the RTM, which was also submitted as a LTE to Greenwich Free Press.
Wold’s letter was in response to a statement from Camillo on Friday that included Wold’s apology over the flag incident.
Dear RTM members,
I apologize for having to take up time on your weekend to respond to an email that was just sent out to the entire body today by Mr. David Wold, but I wanted to set the record straight for the RTM and this will be my final statement on this.
It is important that people who may not be aware of the details of this situation and what led up to it are fully in receipt of the actual facts.
With his message to the RTM, Mr. Wold has sent a false, misleading, and factually incorrect email after I asked him to publicly apologize for illegally taking down the Filipino flag from the Town Hall flagpole.
Here are the facts:
Due to the number of requests we were getting for new flag raisings, on the advice of town counsel, the Board of Selectmen decided to put in place a flag raising policy. We had seen that a lack of a policy had led to controversy in other jurisdictions, so we decided to grandfather the flags that we had already raised with an annual vote every January to approve that year’s flag raisings.
The Board of Selectmen has stated from the beginning that any group or individual that is requesting a flag raising would be responsible for organizing it and letting the Town know so that we would clear the calendar and I would have a proclamation ready if they wanted one.
We cannot burden hard-working Town staff with having to remember every time somebody wants to raise a flag. Since the flag policy was unanimously approved, not one organization nor any individual has had an issue complying with it except for Mr. Wold, who has repeatedly caused issues.
For as long as I can remember, wonderful organizations and citizen groups in town have reached out to us each year before their annual flag raising and asked for a proclamation and set up the time and organize the events that celebrate diverse cultures, remember historic events and tragedies and bring people in our community together.
Mr. Wold is fully aware of what the Town flag policy is and yet continues to deliberately misinterpret it to serve his own needs. And as he continues to ignore Town policy and tradition, he has also filed baseless discrimination complaints against several people, including me, because he falsely says we are discriminating against him. All we have ever asked is for Mr. Wold to follow the rules and show consideration for others. But unlike every other resident and group that does flag raisings in Greenwich, Mr. Wold has shown himself unwilling to do this.
Mr. Wold has repeatedly disrupted government meetings and has wasted Town employee time and taxpayer money on his seemingly endless requests of not just the Office of the First Selectman but also of the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Department of Public Works and other busy Town departments.
If Mr. Wold had simply made a mistake this would have been handled differently. I would have spoken to him privately and politely told him not to do it again, which would have ended the matter. But his improper and completely unauthorized removal of the Filipino flag came after years of frequent harassment of Town officials and volunteers.
Mr. Wold’s continued disruptive behavior has become a problem for many people in Town Hall and in town government, as well as even some private citizens.
Furthermore, Mr. Wold’s misleading and self-serving email to you left out the fact that If he truly felt he was doing nothing wrong, he could’ve easily taken that Filipino flag and given it to the GPD for safekeeping. But he did not do that, nor did he let anyone know he had the flag. We had to investigate and include GPD to find out he had taken the flag. Only when an officer responded to his home, did Mr. Wold return the flag.
When asked to make a public apology to the Filipino community, Mr. Wold agreed but then expressed no remorse or genuine regret for his actions other than the words he typed out. His message to the RTM shows that he objects to the “public” part of a public apology and any information that was included with his apology, which was posted on the Town website and social media and sent to local reporters, was merely to provide necessary background to what he was apologizing for.
All of the time and money we waste on non-issues like this are time and money that we do not get back.
I will let this statement stand as my final comment on this situation, but all of our meetings are public and taped. Certainly someone could go back and find several examples of meetings where Mr. Wold did not follow simple rules that everyone else in the public does. He has been the only one that has had to be admonished several times for disregarding protocol and rules.
I could go on further, but I do not want take up any more of your time on a weekend. But please know these are verifiable facts and many people in town have been subjected to Mr. Wold’s disruptive behavior and it is not going to be tolerated anymore.
See also:
June 28, 2025
Incident Involving Removal of Filipino Flag at Town Hall Resolved by Apology
June 25, 2025