February 20, 2014 Board Meeting

As always, these are my opinions only and not the opinions of the Pendleton County School Board or any other individual board members.

 

The Chairman of the Board was not present.  The Board Vice-Chairman was conducting the meeting.  I had an issue with one item (Orders of the Treasurer) on the consent agenda and attempted to move it to the action agenda.  I will assume he did not understand what I was requesting since this was not honored during the meeting.  This may be a combination of his lack of understanding of the request and my lack of clear communication.  The bottom line is I ended up voting against the entire consent agenda because these items are always voted as a block unless an individual item is moved to the action agenda.

 

My issue with the Orders of the Treasurer was a lease payment to a Ford dealership in Lexington, KY.  When I looked at the dealership’s website, I noticed that the Director of Sales was our Superintendent’s brother.  I asked my fellow board members if this was a conflict of interest.  While I don’t deny that our district received the government rate for this lease, there are other Ford dealerships we could have used that are geographically closer than Lexington.  My question was met with a comment from our board attorney that said I owed our Superintendent an apology for raising this concern.  While I don’t normally discount the advice of O’Hara, Ruberg, Taylor, Sloan, and Sergent Law Offices, on this particular matter I could not disagree more with our board attorney, Don Ruberg.  Financial decisions are the responsibility of all elected board members.  In Amanda Van Benschoten’s recent article in the Kentucky Enquirer (March 24, 2014) on Board Oversight, State Auditor Adam Edelen commented that “when you have a high degree of oversight from our elected officials backed up by a high level of engagement by the general public, it really does create an environment where the potential for abuse is significantly diminished.”  While this particular contract was not illegal, I questioned its appropriateness.  I decided to stay focused on the issue and withhold my response to counsel until next month’s meeting.