The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Discussions continue over vacancy procedure
What the Town Council chairwoman described as “our olive branch” has been sent back as “Return to Sender.”
EAST HAMPTON >> What the Town Council chairwoman described as “our olive branch” has been sent back marked “Return to Sender.”
The council and the Board of Education are at odds over a lingering issue of who has the power to fill a vacancy on the school board. The issue has pingponged back and forth between the board and the council since the November election, when board member Josh Piteo was elected to the council.
The issue was further complicated because a disparity in swearing in the new board following the election. The council is sworn in the day after the election; the new school board is not sworn in for another two weeks.
Following Piteo’s resignation, the existing board moved to fill the vacancy. But that effort was challenged by a group of Republicans who said they feared the existing board would appoint a democrat to fill Piteo’s seat. He is a Republican.
The Republicans demanded the next highest vote getter — Republican Town Committee Chairman Michael Rose — be appointed to fill Piteo’s seat. The board then voted to take no action until the new board was sworn in.
But in a council meeting two hours later, Councilor Ted Hintz Jr. moved to have the council appoint Rose to the seat. School boardmembers felt they had bene double-crossed and so they scheduled a meeting to appoint their own candidate to the post.
In the meantime, it emerged Hintz had brought up Rose’s appointment under “subcommittee appointments” on the council agenda. The council had to hold a special — and rare — Friday evening meeting to withdraw Rose’s appointment. Rather than see himself become a political football, Rose then withdrew his name from consideration.
The very next morning, in an even rarer Saturday morning meeting, the school board appointed former board member Jeff Carlson to fill the vacancy. And then the board filed suit, demanding that a judge settle once and for who has the power to fill a vacancy.
Both the council and the board relied on attorney’s opinions to support their actions. But councilors later acknowledged their attorney had failed to research a statue that appeared to give the school board the power.
For the board’s part, they stood on a town charter section which appears to give the school board the appointment power for up to 30 days after a seat becomes vacant. If the board does not act within the 30-day time limit, then the council could fill the vacancy.
Town Council Chairwoman Patience R. Anderson sought to defuse the issue by proposing the issue be decided by a charter revision commission which was then in the process of being organized by the council. That proposal was Anderson’s olive branch to the school board.
But this week, the school board rejected it. The board voted unanimously to propose a counter-offer: that the board’s appointment power will remain paramount until “the Charter Revision Commission’s proposed amend-ments… have been approved at a referendum and become effective.”
The commission held its first meeting last week and is scheduled to complete its deliberations by Dec. 1. If they stick to that schedule, any new amendment would likely not take effect until 2017.
In response to the board’s stance, Anderson said in an email on Feb. 10: “The Town Council has consistently said we would allow the Board of Education to continue filling vacancies until such time as the charter is revised.”
Noting that the issue was included in the CRC’s “list of charges,” Anderson said, “There is no need to approve any other language... There is no need for a lawsuit. This is a frivolous waste of taxpayer dollars and our time when we are facing so many more important issues,” Anderson wrote.