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August
27, 2007
School Board
Continues to Stifle Access |
By STEPHEN BEALE
Union Leader
Correspondents
GOFFSTOWN -
The school board last week declined to move its meetings to the town hall or shift them from Mondays to Thursdays, but the resident who asked for the change says he is not giving up on his quest to raise the visibility of the board in the public eye.
The town board of selectmen decides what happens to one third of his tax bill, Guy Caron points out, while the remainder falls under the jurisdiction of the school board. Both boards meet on Mondays, preventing him from keeping up with how his tax dollars are spent, Caron said.
“I can’t believe they get away with this,” Caron said.
The problem is compounded by the fact that school board meetings are not televised live, Caron adds, hence his request to move meetings to Thursdays so the board can meet at the town hall where live broadcast is possible.
“Even if we changed it to Thursdays, there would still be some conflicts unfortunately,” said Keith Allard, chairman of the school board.
The planning board meets on the second and fourth Thursday of each month, but Caron said there would be no conflict if the school took the first and third Thursdays. Allard, however, maintains that holidays, school vacations, and other disruptions of the regular meeting cycle make such conflicts inevitable.
Allard said the request for a new meeting night has come from only one person: Caron. “I don’t think there’s a large group of people out there who would like to see the meeting night changed,” Allard said.
Not so, says Caron, who is the chairman of the nearly 500-member Goffstown Residents Association. When he approached the board about the issue in March, Caron said he did so on behalf of the association. Moreover, 83 percent of respondents to a poll on the association Web site last spring said they wanted the school board meetings rescheduled.
“Allard, Superintendent (Darrell) Lockwood and the school board are obviously determined to make it as difficult as possible for taxpayers to keep an eye on what they’re doing and how they’re spending our money,” Caron wrote in an e-mail.
The school board also prefers to continue meeting at the high school, Allard added, because it is more convenient for other school officials to attend and easier for board members to access school district equipment and documents.
The town cable department has told the board that it will soon be able to televise the meetings live, making the move to the town hall unnecessary, Allard said.
So far, the board has taken some steps towards easing public access. Last spring, when Caron first raised the issue, the board voted to post its minutes online within days, not weeks of its meetings.
The board also said it would put DVD copies of its meetings in the public library, but Caron says the library hasn’t received any since May. “So much for promoting openness and accountability,” Caron said.
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