letter to Quenten...

Here is the letter I wrote to Quenten July 31 and copied to the entire Board and the Irregular:

OK, Quenten. That was fun while it lasted, but back to reality:

You claimed last week you were responding to a complaint from Mike. This week your task is to prove that what you did July 29 was legal.

You did not find a lawyer who would say the original vote was invalid. You have not produced a law stating written ballots for officers are illegal under sunshine laws...admittedly a gray area in existing law which has never been tested but cannot be written by school lawyers on the fly. All you have is our policy in effect which we followed to the letter July 15 and the inconvenient fact that we have no policy for the removal of a sitting chair after an election at our first meeting in July. That's the bottom line. We can do no more than follow the letter of the law as it stood on July 15, which we indeed did...that is until July 29.

I did not resign and still have not resigned. I do not intend to do so as long as I am in good health.

You suggested there was some shadowy financial reason we needed another vote, but that did not rise to the level of law, and certainly has had no effect on all the other districts in the state that follow this same voting policy. Your communications with Drummond Woodsum laid out a course of action we could take to be "conservative," but they did not address the thorny issue that a different voting outcome from the original could not be endorsed under our existing policy. The original vote was, after all, legal by all accounts, and that history cannot be rewritten for convenience...or to be "conservative." Your charge was to remove any doubt that we were in compliance with sunshine laws.

The burden of proof now is upon you to show that Judy could replace me as chair where there is no such provision in either our policy or Maine law.

I'm sure Judy would make a fine chair. In fact, I nominated her and she declined that first night because of her frequent absences...but, the Board elected another chair that night, and that person is still chair until you prove otherwise.

Until you can get a definitive answer to this question---one that could stand up in court, as it may well have to---I suggest Judy run meetings with her title undefined and you schedule meetings only when she will be present. There will be no more need for meeting theatrics until this is settled since Judy is either chair or vice chair under either outcome and thus legal for running meetings. If she has to do that all year, so be it.

I can be patient, but I cannot stand by while you create new laws, new interpretations, and new Board policy to suit each purpose. The Board is bound by laws which are changed only by legislatures and courts, and if you wish to change Board policies, there is a procedure for that, too. Our laws and policies July 15 were clear and were not changed July 29.

--apm