 Order of the Dallas Newtown School District Special Meeting of April 23, 2019. It has five articles on the morning. I'm Gus Goodman, I was elected to be the school moderator. I've stopped for one meeting, but for the year, and so you're stuck with me. We ran into each other this first time. Okay, well then, I will try to explain the drill that we're going through and welcome. So thank you for coming tonight, it's great to have anybody who's here. So basically these meetings have been run by Robert's Rules of Order. I interpret them as best I can. We've worked off five articles that were cast out at the desk as we came in, and were on front porch form, and I took a few other places. My role is to facilitate the discussion that I would like that you want to have. I've talked to a couple people about the articles and how they are worn, and some of them are imprecise, so I know they plan to offer some amendments to them as we go through it. You're basically functioning, the school board, which is up here, gave us this warning, and you're functioning in essence as the legislature to decide whether what they put in front of us is the action you want to take. Everybody's voice is equal. We're going to try to do this without setting up the microphones, but if people are having a hard time hearing, please interrupt and the microphones will get rolled out for a small group tonight. And if I'm not speaking loud enough, tell me. The basic functioning of this meeting is to try to address each other with civility, to speak to the issues, and to speak to the moderator, not necessarily to each other. Please, when I call on you, identify yourself. I'll go back and forth across the room. Once you've spoken, the public people have it, you may have to wait a while before I call on you a second time. If you'd like to have a side conversation, especially for those of us including me that don't hear as well as we used to, the background noise can be disconcerting, so please take the side conversations outside. We can have amendments to articles, we can have amendments to amendments. That's about as far as we can go with how we need to dispose of an amendment to an amendment before we have a further amendment. Disagreement is fine, and passionate disagreement is fine, but let's not make it personal. We've got a couple of issues in front of us today. If you're confused about what we're about to do, please take the point of order, point of information, or just say, could you stop by confused. If you think I've made a mistake in my ruling, or by the way I'm proceeding, you can call me that, I can challenge the ruling of a moderator, and you know a rule of moderators. If that is my main mistake, or at least in the judgment I have of you, I've made a mistake and we should proceed in a different way. It's the end of May, it takes a two-thirds motion and you do need to be recognized to call the question, you can't just shout it out. But if a whole bunch of people shout it out, that's also usually an indication that at least some of you are tired of the debate. And I ask periodically, are you ready for the question? So those are, I think, functionally the rules of this meeting. It's a beautiful evening app. I hope we get out early enough to enjoy a little bit of it, but we'll be here as long as you want to be here. So that article one is to collect a school district treasurer. And are there any nominations for the office of school district treasurer? I will nominate Mary Hornsby. Do we have a second? Hi, second. Are there any further nominations for Mary Hornsby to serve as school district treasurer? She's hearing none. But I have a motion that we close nominations and ask the clerk to cast one ballot for Mary Hornsby to serve as school district treasurer. So moved. We have a second. Second. All those in favor of ending the debate and having the clerk cast one ballot for Mary Hornsby, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. Particle two reads, shallow voters in the Callas school district approve a grant of an option agreement from the Callas school district to the town of Callas, which gives the town of Callas the right to place the real estate upon which the Callas elementary school is currently located from the Callas school district or its successors in interest of the first price of one dollar and the event property is no longer used for educational purposes. Did somebody like to move that article? So moved. We have a second. Second. Okay. We are ready for discussion. I'd like to amend article two. Okay. So rather than reading shallow voters of the Callas school district approve the grant of an option agreement, I would like to amend to read, shallow voters of the Callas school district authorize the school board to approve a grant of an option agreement. So rather than the voters here tonight approving this agreement now, you're authorizing your school board to approve this agreement in the future. So that's how we were hoping it would actually be. Is there a second for the amendment? Second. Okay. It's been moved to the second. It's a proposal for discussion on the amendment. Peter. I just have a question. Please speak up. I just have a question. It's different. So Jim, there's a question from a voter. Wow. Town's attorney. Town's attorney. Not the school attorney. And he is being asked the question of why this amendment. What difference does it make? My opinion, the problem is it's pending rules in order to allow me to speak. Well, I'm going to ask if there's no objection to have someone who doesn't live in town speak to this issue. Absolutely. No objection to your words. We may speak. Sure. So the question is why is this amendment necessary? What's different between what's irrelevant? It's just by way of a little bit of background. These documents were originally proposed and discussed between the school board and the select board back in January. At the time they were presented as drafts in part of the discussion, but have not yet been formalized and agreed upon by the school district and by the town. There are changes that will need to be made. There's some language in there that needs to be tweaked. So the basic purpose of them will remain the same, but there are things that need to be modified in order to make them truly effective. So what you would be doing is authorizing the school board to effectively approve these after those changes have been, non-substantive changes have been made. The difference being that we're not actually asking, they're not asking for you to approve the language right now. That would not be actually a good thing. Authorizing them to approve the language after these changes have been put into place. Would that be in consultation with the select board? Yes. That would be in consultation with the select board, hopefully with the district's attorney because this is a legal document that they are attracting and granting to the town so that we can get those last details worked out. There's a hand up to the board that was shown to be into the question. That's what we're looking at. Okay, great. So while Jim's here standing, would it be putting too fine a point or would it be to the betterment to instead state authorized the Calis Elementary School Board? So it's clear that we're distinguishing between a future board come July 1, the Merge Board. We will have these done by July 1. John, I very much anticipate the purpose is to have this taken care of before July 1, so I don't think that's that important. So it's clear. Yes. Can I pass it from Calis? Could I offer a friendly amendment that would put July 1, authorize the school board by July 1, 2019? Would you accept that? I would accept that amendment. Oh, I would accept that, friendly amendment. Okay, further discussion. Yes. I'm Craig Lyon. I had a couple of questions. One is how are educational purposes defined? And perhaps that's not all worked out yet. I could foresee a unified school district board saying that we're going to have a basket weaving course for adults Thursday evenings, etc. So there's an educational purpose. So I'd like to see that defined. And that leads into my perhaps larger question, which is, will we, the voters, get to see the final language prior to shaking his head? I'm just, I'm sorry, I'm thinking while I'm doing that stuff. Please. Will we get a chance to see the language before the school board made an improvement? Will it be available online or to pick up copies? Or are the school board meetings open so we can attend and participate? But moving, you know, I just walked in, I've got these four documents, oh God, left my glasses in my truck. There's not time to read all this right now. I want to digest this all. This isn't the final version, so I'd like a chance to digest what's coming. So I think the question then to the school board is, would you make a final agreement available in the comments before you? Yes, so these documents are on the school. They're available now at Calis-Mentor School and at the Washington Central Office and on the website. And definitely once we have our final versions, we would also put those out to the public and they would be part of our packet for our meetings. That would be a public information as well. So whenever the, those meetings are worn, would there be a note of, I don't know, language that's out there and worn? A job. Yeah, it would be an item in the agenda. Right. It would be part of our action agenda to improve. So what will happen to you next month? You can either May or June, because we technically didn't exist. It would show what I wanted. I can't hear it. So this would be either May school board meeting or June school board meeting. So and also it would probably be a joint meeting for the school board and the select board to review and make it each week. And it would also be on the town's website to trust me to money to find stuff in the town's website and the school board's website. So I've got at least two chances to miss it. Right. At least. At least. Yes, Peter. Peter Harvey, another point of information. It looks like the town could end up owning the land but not the building. How would that work? So I think I'll cover your point. I'll cover the earlier question to this line. With regard to what does it mean to be used for educational purposes? The language that's currently drafted is if the premises have ceased to be occupied and used by the district board, success or an interest, for on-site education with children under an accredited academic curriculum for a period of 108 days, the notion being that it's not absolute. Yes. Okay. And then to your question, could we end up with just the land and not the building or vice versa? And how would that affect how it works? It isn't intended to be that. It's currently drafted to be an exclusive and irrevocable option to purchase improved real estate. So improved. These are the improvements located in the town of Calis, Washington County, State of Vermont, known as the Calis Elementary School Building, the land upon which the same is situated. So it's the building intention for the building of the land. It's in the option agreement. In the language of the option agreement. That's what this means. That's not what this means. I don't think so. No. We're not on that one yet. We're trying to purchase the public estate upon which. Generally, I would just say that generally real estate is, when we transact, there's a transaction from the sale of real estate. It includes not only the land but the improvements thereon. It's generically the way it's done. If you'd like to amend, have a second amendment to the article to state real estate improvements. Yes. Perhaps. Would you folks who make the motion accept that as a family amendment? Real estate and improvements? We'll vote on the first one. We have to vote on the first one. A friendly amendment. No, they've accepted it as part of their amendment. So we don't have to vote on that as an amendment. Trying to keep it as simple as possible. Thank you. So, yes. I'm listening. And the other piece is simple. I need some clarity about referring to the article to the language here versus this other piece of paper with the option of it. But the C-plan is deep on referring to this as a true language as opposed to what the warning was. Sure. The warning language, again going back to the original amendment, the authorization for the school board to negotiate inside this document which may change over time. When I've been asked questions about what this might be, I'm referring back to the draft language right now because that is effectively what we have to talk about. Okay. My other question wasn't a little bit unclear. Where does the buck stop for this, for the select board and for school board? Well, I am not sure at an end of the act except to say that as I understand this motion, we're authorizing the school board to take action. I mean, to these people referring to and the select board, and I'm just not sure with that relationship with the other two. I think the school board is the authorized authority. Let me work collaboratively with the select board. Thank you. I'll address that too. So in order to convey for a school district to convey real estate, its board has to be authorized by the voters to do so. That's why this is being done at a school district meeting. But in order for the town to accept that document, or to accept that conveyance, there does not have to be a town vote as well. The select board acting under its own authority can do that. Okay. We're in discussion of the question. Yes. This is just a question that Dean Martin, given the changed language and what we're doing is authorizing the school board to do so. With all the best of intentions, if you didn't do it, what would the outcome be? Well, there's a choice of this. The voters don't do it. Well, just do it. I can't hear it. Just vote with you. All of us don't just do it. What if they can't agree or can't do it? There's the danger moving ahead because a property is conveyed to the consolidated board and no longer belongs to the town accounts, it's been bought and paid for by the town accounts. And this provides us, you know, handed supposing articles within the legislation that has been pushed down on us, you know, that there it is supposed to be returned if it's under the ceases to be used as the school should be, you know, sold and given back to the town for a dollar. But we don't trust that because that is something that future consolidated boards will have the ability to change. And that isn't because we would be a big, a small minority and it's a big asset. So this gives us, this protects the rights of the town, which is paid for this, maintained this, you know, it locks that down for us. So from my perspective, this authorizing the board to enter into this agreement or to negotiate this agreement is an added layer to what we already should be getting through the articles of agreement with the unified district. This is just our way of ensuring that happens. So we have a real interest in making sure that it does. If we were not to be able to come up with a solution, we would be at the will of the articles of agreement with the unified district, which do outline essentially the same or similar thing. But to address the immediate term, I would just say that we've met with the select board. We all agreed with the intention of these documents. We've also met at the board meeting, I think in February, and we discussed the documents, we had covered the documents, we just haven't gotten to the formal process of then going back to the select board, moving them from draft to final to approval. But we're on that path. I don't see any obstacle to us as we're completing the process. Okay. Don, in agreement and collaboration with the select, it's really just really protecting the rights of the town because we aren't very trusting of what after our experience in the F4 years. Not at all trusting of what... Yes. If people do need to make their voices. Brandico, is there a deadline in question here? I'm not just hearing a drop dead date, but it's sounding like there is. So there was a friendly amendment that we would negotiate, or we would sign this prior to July 1 of this year. We would cease to exist at that point. Well, as a student, the board would like that point, is then the conciliatory point to be safe, which I don't make sure that we get this as well as we are the board and the authority. Any last questions? I think somebody else might go first. Somebody did want to go. Okay, we'll keep you from asking your question. Go ask your question, but I already have a long, long question. I've had my hand up for a long time. I'm not getting it. The F4 amendment goes only so far. So, school board member Chris Catterett brought up that the friendly amendment set by July 1. July 1 is too late. So it would be prior to July 1 should be the friendly amendment. It's number one and number two. And Nadine's concern, quite frankly, the politics with all this act of 46 consolidation have made me sick to my stomach as well as many people across our district, or multiple districts. Would it be appropriate, Jim, to instead of saying authorized, say direct, like the school board in that way it's not, that would not be appropriate? Okay. But the student authorizes the proper term. Okay. So my question has been answered. Thank you. Two last questions. Were there any limitations on the town of the use of the building if this goes through, if you go through this? And the other one is, have other towns done this, or are we kind of up in the air about what this is? Thank you. As to limitations on the town's use, the pledge in the option presently is that for its part in this partial consideration for the district granting the town an option to purchase the subject premises, the town covenants agrees that for so long it is economically practical, it will endeavor to maintain the subject premises for community cities and public use. Senior sector. Perhaps. You know, some public use. So that would be the school pledges that so long as it's economically practical it will be available for use by the public. Okay. And the other is this, is this like, are we treading? Are we treading? No. The town of Newbury and Newbury school district entered into a similar agreement for the Newbury school, a Newbury elementary school property under very similar circumstances to what you were experiencing during council. And that was effectively the model of doing this. Thank you very much. We've shared this with the other districts. We've also shared all of this information with the other districts in our supervisor union. It's quite interesting to see that they won't have to be the same color. No, we don't need to if you're ready for me to read the amendment. Let's skip one note. I was just going to ask you to state it. Okay. So as I understand the amendment which is what we're on this article would read shall the voters of the Calis school district authorize the school board prior to July 1 to approve a grant of an option agreement from the Calis school district to the town of Calis which gives the town of Calis the right to purchase the real estate upon which the Calis elementary school is currently located and improvements from the Calis school district or its successors in interest for the purchase price of one dollar in the event the property is no longer used for educational purposes. I think the date that our friendly amendment was so June 30th I think prior we say prior to July 1 she's the same Calis school board Calis school board No, Jim said 5, the way it is. Are you ready for that question? All those in favor, we say aye. Opposed. All those in favor, order two. As a method, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Article 3, shall the voters of the Callis School District approve the granting of easement from the Callis School District to the town of Callis, which gives the town of Callis the right and perpetuity to use the real estate and buildings owned by the Callis School District or its successors in interest for certain public purposes as specified in the easement deed. Somebody want to move this article so they have a second. It's been moved in second to the discussion. I'd like to amend the article to read shall the voters of the Callis School District authorize the school board to approve the granting of easement. So similar to this. Second. You're right there. Second. Discussion? Might I also specify, you just said school board. Yeah, that's what I heard. Discussion? We may want to add, I think you need to speak up, we may want to add, again, the prior to July 1st. Acceptable to you. Further discussion? Does this mean that town can't sell it with the town, with this transposure to the town? Great. No, article three is a easement which allows us to use the building while it's part of the consolidated district. So this is guaranteeing our right to use this building as our emergency shelter, as a meeting space for town meeting, and for recreational purposes, even though we don't own it as a school district. All right, I remember that conversation. I'm confused. Direct to the side, sir. Direct to the side, sir. Absolutely, yeah, right. Further discussion about this article? No, none. I'll read the R&D amendment to you. Shall the voters of the Callis School District authorize the school board prior to July 1st to approve the granting of easement from the Callis School District to the town of Callis, which gives the town of Callis the right to use the real estate and buildings owned by the Callis School District or its successors and interests for certain popular purposes, as specified in the easement to be ready for the amendment, as sir. Again, shall the voters of the Callis School District authorize the Callis School Board? Excuse me. I would also offer that, again, just like with the last one, since we've added the friendly amendment to do so prior to July 1, saying to school board, it's as effective as saying Callis, just in case that matters to folks. I just left out the word Callis, so if everybody understands the effect of the school board they can tend to say, I won't meet it again. Are you ready for the amendment? All those in favor of the amendment, please say aye. Aye. So are you ready to vote on Article 3 as amended? Seeing no hands, all those in favor of Article 3 as amended, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Article 3 carries. Article 4 reads, shall the voters of the Callis School District approve the use agreement between the Callis School District and the town of Callis, which gives the town of Callis the right to use the real estate and buildings owned by the school board? For its successors and interests, for certain public purposes, and specify the use agreement for a period of 10 years? Somebody move this article. Somebody move it. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. We have discussion. So we'll amend this by saying, shall the voters of the Callis School District authorize the Callis School Board to approve the use agreement between the town of Callis School District and the town of Callis School District to approve the use agreement prior to July 1? Second. Second. Discussion? I think. I would also encourage the 10 years to either, to at times, however, to strike on the right. Specified in the use agreement? Yeah. So strike on the right. Opposed? Are you both? Is this a friendly amendment to strike on those last words for a period of 10 years? Strike for a period of 10 years? Okay. We have an amendment on the floor. Yes. I have a question on this. Is this all of the plate, all of the ideas you left after here? Is this the shelter, recreational, town, or is this the building that elects kids to string in the floor of the town stands? Are you going to be able to do it? Yeah. Can you speak up, please? Great. Are you going to be able to do a lot of things in the building except what is listed in this document, in this document, the moxison? So this is these two, Article 3 and 4, are both in the event or during the time that this building is owned by the Consolidated Board of all the six towns, this is what we as Calais have the right to use the building for. So now if the Consolidated Board decides to sell this property, and Article 2 comes into effect and we buy it back for a dollar, then we can do whatever we want with it. Further discussion? I just have a question about that. I thought we were averting the Consolidated Board owning it by Article 2. No. That's only in the event that this Unified District no longer uses it for school purposes. Right. Okay. You can't go over here. So what's the difference between the east and the east? What's the difference between the east and the east agreement? That's the legal question. That's my share. Okay. So the use agreement is just an agreement between the town and the school board to allow the town to circle uses of the building in the property. The easement creates an encumbrance on the title to the property to make sure that that use agreement or those rights stay with the property even if it changes hands. The purpose of doing that is that the articles of agreement specify that when the property is transferred over to the Union District Board, it's transferred subject to all encumbrances of record. So the notion is creating an encumbrance by this easement deed so that this will always have to do with the school. The use agreement, the difficulty with the use agreement is that we probably couldn't create a use agreement of perpetual duration. Okay. That it would have to have a defined term and then be refined or renewed for certain periods. And it also doesn't run with the land. We could have, you know, change the structure. So this is the easement. The easement creates a more perpetual permanent record. It goes with the title of the property that runs with the land. But the easement doesn't guarantee that you can use it. No, the easement does guarantee you can use it. Why doesn't it even use it with it? It adds some detail that's not in the easement deed. Some details and new ones about how to use it. If I might miss the topic, unless there's an objection. Jim, as you think about how this school board is constructed in my work world, we have an open, on land, public access easements. They are perpetual. And I just want to ask you to think about whether what you really want is a public access easement for emergency shelter, for town meeting, and so on. So maybe there's a way to construct something that's stronger than the easement. If I might just, the easement deed does create rights not only for the town but also for the public. The public access easement for those purposes, so we try to think of that. The detail and the nuance that's not in the easement deed that's in the use agreement. The use agreement addresses things like insurance. It addresses things like indemnification. It addresses some of the things that we wouldn't normally put in an easement deed and expect to exist in the future. It seems to me the whole Act 46 unified district, and it's all about a fear that we might lose callous kids to easement work. And all I'm hearing today is real estate. I'm not hearing anything about retaining this as an educational institution for callous kids. Is that correct? Well today, you're right. Because today's meeting is really about the future is uncertain. What can we put in place? What can we control in this moment? Here's something we can do. Well controlling real estate, we're not controlling the education of our kids. We don't have a legal mechanism. I just want clarity. Yes. The second part is there's nothing here that would identify callous residents to take care of rural and regional elementary schools. Correct. But nothing that we would have offered as we don't do. We can't do that. We can't. I'll figure it out. I'll do that school. Further discussion of the amendment? If not, I'm going to read the amendment. It's the best I understood we would at all friendly amendments to it. Shall the voters of the callous school district authorize the callous schools award prior to July 1 to enter into a loose agreement between the callous school district and the town of callous which gives the town of callous the right to use the real estate and buildings owned by the callous school district for its successors and interests for certain public purposes as specified in the loose agreement period. Are you ready for that question? Yes. All those who favor to say aye. Aye. Those opposed. And the ayes have it. Article 4 is passed. Article 5 is to transact any other business that may legally come before the meeting. That was for the amendment. Thank you. Are you ready to vote on the article as amended? If so, all those who favor the article as amended, please say aye. Those opposed. The now article is passed. Thank you. Article 5 is to transact any other business that may legally come before the meeting. Are you ready to vote? Yes. All those in favor. Would you agree? Yes. If this is a proper time to hear John's comment I came here with a similar feeling and I was going to perhaps seven people at the pre-town meeting one day evening I asked the school board members where do you stand? I am all for the school board pushing this legal battle as far as humanly possible and my sense was there was a majority that agreed with me and I am reiterating my interest and support of that position. Thank you. John. We are still committed to doing everything we can to not be consolidated. As you know the school board and others from Washington Central and our own select board have joined the loss of objecting to the forced merger. We have gotten a list of those people who are defending us asking each applicant to raise $500 towards the cost of the lawyers who will be representing us probably in front of the Supreme Court. So Denise is going to be passing a hat as our school board is going to be passing a hat. We are not expected to use tax dollars so we are going to be asking for your tax dollars in addition to your taxes. Now to do this there is almost 50 people here in the room now at 10 months a piece that gets a $500 and I know there are many people in town who are willing to put their money forward to get what they want if they can. So we will be asking for that money how to collect it to have it sent to the town office or to some other thing that decision hasn't been made but we need to find a way to say this is where the money needs to be sent and I myself want to make it as anonymous as possible I don't want to know if checks come in and find and we'll find somebody to take care of them but I don't want to know what I don't think anybody does we just want to collect the money To add to that the lawyers have donated the time this is covering core costs and filing costs so they are anything else? Mack is there a little cuts actually the alliance of board members and I'll put it on front porch forum you all get front porch forum I'll put it on front porch forum and I'll look at that site and tell you where to go on there and I know there's a place there you can send the checks gets the information there's an address on that site there's an address on that site where you can send checks so we can I did it myself already please something like that well they had a go fund go fund I think that one is still up I'll give you both so there are many people who are not here tonight are you going to put an explanation on front porch forum also would you intent this or raise that one? yes I will we need to get to a few others that you have now is the time to do it and you can talk to your neighbors and other people and air emails this is a bigger issue we need to be pressing still hard on our legislators if we want this to go through we have to do this if this case doesn't turn this way we are going to get much deeper and much more difficult and we'll probably fail as in the other states where it has failed it takes years and years to get in the market I'm not sure it's not doing a great thing it's kind of a problem it's up people in control where is that in the legislature is it being negotiated well it's stuck right now but realistically all that they're talking about best case scenario is in the lay of a year they basically have to say we're going to consolidate you know who that buys time that's 100% of our public and you've seen sacrificing a bunch of great like it's really kind of a black man he's a very big stick way other business after this discussion is over anything more on this as for the last question this is something we've already brought along including myself just looking at over in the event of copies this is article 2 the event of copies is no longer used for educational purposes what could educational purposes mean district offices or storage something like that he read the language it's very specific about education of children in an approved that I remember the exact language but it's very specific about approved educational purposes as an act of school great thank you