During a recent school board meeting, the board and voters in attendance gutted several warrant articles proposed by Conan Salada, which had been signed by dozens of voters. In a Keene Sentinel editorial, the editors of the paper actually side with liberty activists, saying they think the articles should have been left alone for voters to decide as-is. Here’s the editorial:
If anything can be said to be at once both riveting and interminable, Saturday’s Keene School District deliberative session fits the bill. The nearly six-hour meeting consisted largely of a back-and-forth between school officials and members of the Free Keene movement.
The latter had proposed several articles by petition for the March 11 school district ballot, some attempting to reduce the proposed school budget, others seeking to limit the school board’s power.
Each attempt ultimately failed, both because of the somewhat predetermined nature of school district deliberative sessions and because school officials were prepared for them.
To begin with, anyone attempting to outmuscle a school district at its own deliberative session is in for a hard time of it. Such meetings are rarely without overwhelming contingents of school district employees, their friends and relatives, and others with more than just a taxpayer’s stake in the outcome. It’s among the biggest flaws of the official-ballot system.
Beyond that, Keene’s school officials arrived at the meeting with a clear tactical advantage. They’ve seen attempts to cut budgets and rein in school board powers before, and they were armed with a range of parliamentary moves to thwart the effort.
They swapped the order of the budget-lowering articles to negate their effect and then relied on a motion to make them merely advisory. Challenged on moving the order of the articles, the board’s vice-chairwoman rather shockingly acknowledged the only intent of the swap was to ensure the articles failed.
The other petition articles were dealt with through motions to change certain words, thereby wholly subverting their intent. In a couple of cases, school district attorney John Wrigley noted the articles would not have passed muster legally anyway, because the powers they sought to restrict are granted by state law, not local voters.
The other two would have revoked the school board’s authority to spend surplus funds for emergency uses and required rebating any surplus to taxpayers at the end of the fiscal year. Each was subverted by a motion to amend the wording to instead solidify the board’s power.
We’re not certain either article would have accomplished anything more than to increase costs to taxpayers. Now, surplus funds are used as a base for the following year’s budget, meaning they’re essentially lowering the taxes that need to be raised for that year’s budget. Sending taxpayers a check in September, then turning around and asking for the money back in March as part of the next budget seems pointless, and possibly more expensive. And when emergencies arise, the district must deal with them, whether it’s by using surplus cash on hand or raiding other accounts that will then need to be replenished.It’s understandable that those in attendance would opt to disarm measures to cut the budget that could, through the complexities of state law, otherwise result in duplicate budgets being passed.
That said, the Machiavellian legal maneuvering school district officials used to avoid letting voters decide the merits of the articles strikes us as undemocratic and adds to a sense that the board doesn’t trust those it serves. In the case of articles that would not have so dire an effect as to potentially put taxpayers on the hook for multiple budgets and that would not run afoul of state law, our feeling is the deliberative session voters should have allowed them to remain intact and, as one petitioner requested, “let the people decide.”
