Claremont School Board — January 18, 2022

OBSERVATION Residents said the full budget was hard to find before the hearing, and one member said he had voted to send the budget forward without knowing a position was cut

Josh (Ward 3) at 0:36:29: "One thing that was sort of surprising to me was how hard it was to find the budget before this meeting", followed by a request for "a full version of the budget where we can go line by line". Julie Scala at 1:06:51 asked to "see this budget a little bit earlier". Most speakers addressed two items, the tech center and the autism specialist position. Near the end of the hearing, at 1:38:02, board member Joshua Lambert said: "when I voted yes. So through this budget I was not aware that we were cutting such an important position." The January 5 vote to send this budget to the hearing had carried without dissent (January 5 page), and on January 5 a resident had asked the administration to name the positions being reduced before the hearing.

The statutory calendar was not breached. In an official-ballot (SB 2) district, RSA 40:13, II-a, in force since 2019, requires budgets to be "posted and copies available to the general public on or before the last Monday in January", which in 2022 was January 31, after this hearing. What the record shows is a hearing held before the full line-item budget was in public hands, on a timetable the statute allows. That is a matter of practice, not law, and is recorded as an observation.

Sources: RSA 40:13, II-a (last amended 2019, 192:2, eff. July 10, 2019): budget hearings by the third Tuesday in January; budgets posted by the last Monday in January.

OBSERVATION The candidate-filing notice on the district website gave the wrong term length for the two school board seats, the day before filing opened

At 1:53:13 Petrin reported that the filing notice on the website said "two two year terms". After the clerk confirmed that Nicholas Stone was completing Carolyn Towle's term, the chair stated for "the public listening" that "These are three year terms, two." (1:53:36), and that filing opened the next day and ran "Through the 28th." Whether and when the website was corrected is not in the record. A prospective candidate reading the notice would have had the wrong term. No statute has been identified here that governs the content of such a website notice, so this is an observation; the board deserves credit for catching and correcting it on the record.

Sources: No statute identified; the filing notice itself was not located. Compare RSA 197:26 (unamended since the 1942 revision): the board fills a vacancy "until the next annual meeting", which is why Towle's seat returned to the ballot.

OBSERVATION The nonpublic session was properly moved, but its votes are only partly audible and its outcome is not in any public record

Horsky's motion at 1:41:22 named RSA 91-A:3 and recited the employee exemption ("the dismissal, promotion or compensation of any public employee"), which meets the requirement of RSA 91-A:3, I(b) as it read on this date that the motion "shall state on its face the specific exemption under paragraph II", and the vote was by roll call. The answers from 1:41:37 are largely run together and unattributed in the transcript. The transcript then jumps 50 seconds, from 1:42:12 to 1:43:02, which is where the closed session sits; a second roll call follows at 1:43:02 whose question is not audible (it may be the vote to return to public session). RSA 91-A:3, III required nonpublic minutes to be disclosed within 72 hours unless the board sealed them by a two-thirds recorded vote in public session. No such seal vote is heard and no nonpublic minutes are posted (flag 4). The chair's earlier refusal to discuss a named employee in the public hearing (1:37:45) is consistent with the employee exemption being the subject.

Sources: RSA 91-A:3, I(b), II(a) and III (2022 codification; source note ends 2021, 163:1 and 172:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2022; later amended 2023, 189:1).

OBSERVATION No agenda, packet or minutes for this meeting are posted online, and the board again had no minutes to approve

MAP.md records that the district's 2022 Meeting Documents archive begins with the July 20, 2022 packet and that no Meeting Minutes year folder predates 2023 (checked 9/26/26). That is a limit of what the district posts online, not by itself evidence that records were never made; the board had a written agenda and a handout. On the recording, Lovett says at 1:41:14: "We don't have previous minutes." That is the second meeting in a row without minutes to approve (on January 5 the chair cited "technical difficulties"). RSA 91-A:2, II required minutes to be "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting", and draft minutes suffice, so a delay in approval is not by itself a breach. Two consecutive instances are recorded here as an observation; by February 2 the chair described a backlog of several meetings, and that page grades the pattern MEDIUM (February 2 page).

Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2022 codification; source note ends 2018, 244:1); Input/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md section 160.