Anybody at the 1/9 meeting?

joeyouknow said...

Ooh. Anybody at the 1/9 meeting?
Kate Fratti was!
I will expand upon this tasty little tidbit tomorrow.

January 9, 2008 10:29 PM

Joe! Expansion, please! If you send me something in a comment or email, I will gladly post it as an article.

Please keep in mind the Alice Roosevelt Longworth posting challenge as well.

ADDED Jan 10, 12 noon. Many thanks to joeyouknow

The first new board agenda meeting was held last night, 1/9/08. The board went through the proposed agenda from the administration. There was discussion (+ confusion). One highlight was when Reba Dunford, Business Manager went through the budget cuts that Mr. Hellmann asked her to make. She explained (once again) that there is not fat in the budget and pointed out the necessity of each item to the educational and business needs of the district. Finally, she said that instead of cutting necessary programs, the administration decided to liquidate the contingency fund ($120,000) which hasn't been used the past couple of years and can be covered, in case of emergency by the Capital Projects fund, which still has $3 million in it.

Later, Dr. Yonson showed a piece of the tape from the December business meeting. The purpose of showing that tape was twofold: 1) to make her case to the board that the board was advised properly about the budget process (the complaint that led to the Jan. 2 special meeting) and 2) to clear her good name (ref. Kate Fratti's column reprinted on this site). Dr. Yonson was very upset, to say the least, about the comments that she and the administration did not advise the board that going on with the preliminary budget process precluded the need for the referendum. And that this was stated numerous times at a public meeting that she was unable to attend, and that it was told to Kate Fratti of the Courier Times. Friends and colleagues from out of the district were calling her to lend their support, which is how she found out about the debacle.

So it was duly shown that the board was advised, both by document (in November) and live and in person. Discussions about the issue took place between the people who never heard about the process and the people who were explaining the process right up there on the big screen. Three board members did speak up at the January meeting saying that they remembered said conversation. Five did not. Majority rules. As does reality! Sorta.

After Dr. Yonson's proof was presented (and this is the good part), Marlys Mihock told her she'd got to have a thick skin in this job and you can't trust everything you read in the paper. Why, who knows who said what and if it was even recorded properly...

At which point...

The stranger in the brown shirt with the notebook...

Speaks up....

And says.... (I'll quote for dramatic purposes, but it's just my recollection)

"But Marlys, you told me..."
Flipping through notebook, reading...
"Not one of the administrators told us that told you that there was a deadline to cap the budget!"

I could not stifle the laugh.

Yep.

PWNED! (see Wikipedia, old people) [ed: link added]

Kate Fratti was there. She apologized for not double checking her facts. She spoke up, out of turn, inappropriately at a school board meeting, because she, like Dr. Yonson, had her own good name to defend.

Truly, Marlys has her own definition of the truth. And it seems her memory's for crap, too. So except for putting the defeasement (giving back at a cost) of the construction bond on this month's agenda, it was a better than usual meeting.

Thanks joeyouknow! Did Marlys at least have the good grace to somewhat apologize, or was it brushed off as just another outrageous thing she said, and she didn't care that she was caught?

It sounds like Dr Yonson and the award winning Mrs Dunford may be in for a bit of a rough ride from the new and improved school board. But a double helping of kudos for them both, and Kate Fratti as well.