Sullivan West board at odds with itself

By KIMBERLY M. WEYANDT

LAKE HUNTINGTON, NY — Patience wore thin at the September 21 Sullivan West School Board meeting as members discussed a motion requesting that they appoint five consultants, about whom they knew nothing.

According to the motion, Superintendent Alan Derry recommended appointing the following consultants for the 2005-06 school year: Pete Montalvo and Maureen Ryan for transportation matters, Mike Robinson for cafeteria matters, and Rick Linden and Charlie Winters for business matters.

Immediately after he heard the motion, board member Arthur Norden asked that it be postponed.

“I would like to know the specific purposes of the hiring of these people,” Norden said. “I’d like to know what contract they will be hired under, what they’re going to cost, what the expectations are, how they’re charging, exactly how much money we budgeted for consultants and how much we plan on spending.”

Norden added: “Specifically, why Charlie Winters and Rick Linden? Why do you think they’re qualified?”

Board member Angela Daley and President Richard Sandler agreed that it seemed like there was a lot of information to discuss.

Derry replied: “I don’t think so at all.” The superintendent stated that he was not requesting permission to hire any specific person.

“The issue here is approval for me to go ahead and begin arrangements for people who have all helped us in the past, have worked for us in the past, within the parameters of a budget that you approved. The budget line for this is $10,000,” Derry said.

“The fact of the matter is that Charlie Winters’ financial plan, which he called fund management or plan balance, was an absolute deliberate plan to violate property tax law 13-18,” Norden said. “His plan was to spend down a fund balance in an illegal manner, absolutely contrary to a real property tax law and the commissioners regulations.”

Norden said: “The commissioner recently ruled on that in an appeal to the commissioner saying that it was absolutely and positively illegal what he wanted to do with his financial plan.”

Derry reiterated that the motion, if approved, would only give him permission to check the availability of the people named, not adopt any type of contract.

“In the way that this is worded it says ‘motion to appoint’, and in every other place that we’ve appointed, it meant that the people were going to start taking on the job that we’ve appointed them to,” said board member Sean Bailey. “If these are people that we are going to approach and not necessarily hire, why would we appoint them?”

Derry replied: “I don’t think it makes any difference one way or another.”

Norden asked: “If it doesn’t matter if we change the wording to ‘motion to appoint’ or ‘motion to approach’… why not change it to approach?”

“We can’t change it, the motion is on the table,” Derry said.

Bailey and Norden offered the only votes against the motion, which passed 8-2.