Mrs. Metzler’s Contract Renewed for Five Years: Count the ways this is wrong

Mrs. Metzler’s consulting contract was renewed for 5 years and a total expense of $250,000. This renewal was “problematic” in two ways.

• ONE:  The board did NOT vote on this contract amendment;
• TWO:  multi-year contracts are not permitted without a vote of the legislative body – in others words, multi-year contracts must go to warrant and be approved by voters.

Sneaky doesn’t begin to describe how this contract renewal was handled.  I, a board member, didn’t even know it had been renewed until nearly five months after the fact. This is how that happened.

Realizing that the contract was up for renewal on April 1, 2015, and having heard something that suggested it was already a done deal by watching the March 5th school board meeting Vimeo,* I inquired after it at the March 19th board meeting and learned the contract had been renewed for 5 years. Then I pressed to see the contract which was subsequently released on the board’s confidential Sharepoint site. To my utter astonishment, the contract had been signed by Chairman Steenson in October 2014.

School board chairmen have no authority to sign contracts without an explicit vote of the board.

FLES contract renewal 5 yrs.

Indifference and apathy on the board and in the public allow these abuses of power to continue.

*I was absent for the last part of the March 5th meeting when Superintendent Metzler made the revealing statement.

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