To the editor:

Talk about screw-ups! The one with Covid-19 vaccine for senior citizens at town hall on Friday was the blunder of blunders.

An email was promulgated by the Peck Center for Adult Enrichment at 12:36 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 28 stating that a limited number of vaccines (47 in total) were available for Barrington residents 75 years of age and older.

The requirements, among other things, stated interested parties had to register at town hall on Friday, Jan. 29 between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m. Below the three stated requirements was a section of the email, separated by a solid line, that said vaccines may be reserved by calling the Peck Center.

Nowhere in the notice did it say that one had to reserve a vaccine prior to registering on Friday.

Eager to get the vaccine I tried a total of 69 times to contact the Peck Center, beginning one minute after I received the email only to get a busy signal each time I called. My last call was after the center closed and the phone line was still busy. Thank God I am not one to think that someone may have taken the phone off the hook and left it there all day.

So, not expecting any miracles, my wife and I showed up at town hall at 8:40 a.m. Friday morning. We were not allowed in because we were not on the list. When I asked how one got on the list, I got a shoulder shrug. When I stated I had called the Peck Center several times on Thursday only to get a constant busy signal, I got another shoulder shrug.

So I have a shoulder shrug of my own. This one is for the town manager. My shrug is my indication he has overstayed his welcome and it might be time for him to move on down the road. He is paid way too much money to oversee a screw-up like this one.

Town council, if you are listening, do your job!

For those who think I am too harsh, let me remind you that my in box has been jammed with pretty uninformative, and sometimes incorrect, messages from our town manager. We get so many we have nicknamed them CunhaCovidGrams. Our master communicator screwed up big time, and this is in an area regarding life and death issues for a vulnerable part of our population.

I am sure the first line of rebuttal will be “I did not write the email. It came from the Peck Center.” To that I reply, with a naval analogy: when a ship is involved in a collision at sea three individuals are automatically doomed with career ending entries in their service records. The three individuals are the Officer of the Deck, the Junior Officer of the Deck and the Captain.

By the way, it would be nice to get a list of the 47 people on the list. We would not want to assume that the old Rhode Island fix was in and there are folks on the list that should not be there.

Respectfully submitted,

Robert Ryan

Barrington