Voting "No"

There were a few items on Monday's agenda that I voted against. This wasn't the first time that I was in the minority on a vote, but it does happen often enough that I started thinking about it. A friend of mine joked that I must take a look at the agenda each month and just pick two items to oppose. That had me laughing for a good five minutes. It's not quite that simple.

Webster's definition of "no" actually helps here:

1b—used as a function word to express the negative of an alternative choice or possibility

Isn't that exactly what our Board meetings are about? We voice our vote on alternative choices or possibilities. Sometimes I do not think the outcome of a "yes" vote on the choice presented is the right thing for this District. Part of the job of every Board member is to convince others that their position is the right one. Of course, the Board itself is in agreement on 90% of the issues that are before it which makes that 10% so time consuming and sometimes contentious.

At Monday's meeting I voted "no" on three motions:

1) Approval of Auditors- The District has had Maher Duessel as its auditing firm for over a decade. We'd have to embark on an archaeological expedition in the hall of records to dig out the last time we had someone other than Maher Duessel as the auditor. My vote against awarding this three-year contract to the same firm came down to something that I believe is a best practice. You may remember in 2003 that Sarbanes-Oxley was passed. Part of the Securities Exchange Commission rules regarding Auditor Independence required publicly traded companies to change lead auditors every five years. You can Google "auditor independence" and you will find numerous articles and links pointing you to information about the importance of changing auditors. It is a best practice as defined by the SEC and many other international auditing organizations. If it's good for them, it ought to be good for us. By no means am I suggesting that Maher Duessel is doing anything wrong or that there is anything I am worried about with regards to our books. It is as simple as wanting to have a different set of eyes check our books from time to time. Maher Duessel is clearly capable of handling the job. A new firm may have had the ability to improve our processes by having a different understanding of the information they wanted to see and how to present it. The Board voted in favor of awarding this contract 7-2.

2) Preliminary Budget for 2009-2010- The District prepared a "fake budget" to give to the Pennsylvania Department of Education that requests an exception for Mt Lebanon School District to go over the Act 1 millage increase limit. This budget means that the District, instead of having to go to referendum to pass a budget that requires a millage increase in excess of Act 1 limits, will seek an exception from the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Not a single member of this Board believes we will need to exceed the Act 1 millage increase limits. So why vote for the exception to referendum? I'd rather the Board pass a "real budget" instead of a fake one and show the community that we will be fiscally responsible with their money. Asking for the exception to Act 1 limits while knowing full well we will not use it sends a mixed message to the community and, in my opinion, violates the spirit of the law. Last year in Pennsylvania there were 102 out of 501 school districts that applied for the exception. Only 69 used the full exception as presented to the PDE. You can see the full PDE report on Act 1 exception applications here. The Board voted in favor of submitting the fake budget to PDE by a 6-3 vote with three of the four members of the Board's Audit/Finance Committee casting the minority votes.

3) High School Option 2- This was the option on the high school to partially build new and partially renovate the building. I posted some initial thoughts on this vote on Tuesday. I am pretty certain that there were at least five members of this Board, including myself, that believed strongly that the best way to give our kids the best education possible was to get a new school that allowed for 21st Century instruction of our students. The three board members that changed their votes last week from being in favor of a new school to being in favor of a renovation/new project all said in their statements that they still believed this to be true. The difference in our opinions has always been in how we could afford to build such an option. My opinion was that a referendum would not pass, but that I would allow the voters to decide the fate of such an option. However, I laid out in detail a plan that would have allowed us to get there while costing us less money over the long run. Unfortunately, as I hear people make statements about the plan I put out there, there seems to still be a lot of misunderstanding. That is my fault and I take blame for that. I will learn from it.

I was prepared to read the following statement on Monday night but suspected there was a change in the air and did not read it. I post it here to allow you to see my thinking going into the meeting:

Tonight I am being asked to vote for one of two proposals, each of which has its own problems. As most people know, I have been advocating for some time for this Board to take a more comprehensive approach to this project that includes looking at how all aspects would fit within our budget while considering the long term in a fiscally responsible manner. Having failed to convince a majority of the board on the merits of this idea, I am left with voting on whether to direct the architect to draw up plans for a partly renovated, partly new school, or to draw up plans for a completely new building.

Understand that I do not believe this community can afford either option right now-- not with the economy in shambles, not with our budget set to explode even without a construction project, and not with so many people in Mt Lebanon being affected by the current economic crisis. However, I firmly believe that this community would be divided for a generation if this Board did not send this project to a referendum. For years we would hear "what ifs" and what we "should have done". Therefore, the only way to get this community onto the same page and strive for a unifying objective is to have this go to referendum to allow the community to speak as a whole with their votes. Only then should this Board make its final decision on what direction to take this project.

I will vote to send this project to referendum.

Obviously, a referendum on a new school is not right now in the cards.

I am as interested as everyone else in finding out where the path of Option 2 leads us. I suspect it will take some time to figure it out.

As for voting "no", I am sure it will be happening again in a short time. I do it only when I feel there is a better course of action to the one presented, not to stoke any sort of animosity between board members. I have been told by some that past boards liked to show unity to the community by always voting unanimously on issues before it. I would suggest that doing that defeats the purpose of having a board of nine. After all, we are a Board of Directors, not a Board of Director.

Thanks for reading!

James