August 11, 2008
Seacoast Online
PORTSMOUTH — The School Board has been court-ordered to record minutes at every meeting it holds, and to pay $225 in court costs to the city man who brought the board to court.
“I’m satisfied with the outcome,” said Tom Morgan. “It remains to be seen if they will obey the law. I’d love to see each meeting on television so everyone can see what they’re doing.”
Morgan sued the School Board under the state’s Right-to-Know law. Assistant City Attorney Kathleen Dwyer, representing the school district, and Morgan met for a hearing on July 28 in Rockingham County Superior Court.
Morgan filed his petition in June because minutes were not drafted for a May 20 session during which plans to renovate the middle school were discussed. He said he checked and found more meetings without minutes.
“I had trouble getting minutes a few years ago and was shut down three times,” Morgan said. “At the time, I didn’t pursue it. The middle school is an important issue. I was looking to see what might be discussed at the May 27 meeting. I checked the agenda to see if they’d be talking about the middle school; I called a board member, and he said maybe they would discuss it, even though it wasn’t on the agenda. I skipped the meeting only to learn there was a motion made to instruct the architects to design a school for 650 students. That’s a huge decision. The minutes said they made the motion based on a May 20 discussion.”
The May 20 minutes were not on the city Web site, so Morgan went in search of them.
“I went to City Hall, and no one had seen the minutes,” Morgan said. “I wrote a letter to the City Council saying this was no way to do business. I still thought they existed at the time, and I was just having trouble finding them. As a last resort, I went to the superintendent’s office. A pleasant lady said, ‘They don’t exist; that’s why you can’t find them.'”
Morgan said he was told at the School Department that it is policy not to take minutes for certain types of meetings.
Morgan went to court and filed his suit. Then he went on the city’s Web site, looking for more missing minutes.
“I knew I’d need the information to make my court case stronger,” Morgan said. “I found 15 instances going back to January 2006. I didn’t go any further back. I wrote a letter to (Superintendent) Bob Lister, asking for all the missing minutes. In court, it became obvious they didn’t exist.”
Dwyer said in court that the mistake might have arisen because Lister’s longtime secretary, Patty Wojnar, died earlier this year, and a variety of district employees have been tasked with keeping the minutes. New secretary Amy Noble will take minutes from now on.
“I told the court this was part of larger pattern,” Morgan said. “The meetings are usually held at Little Harbour School, where there are no broadcast facilities,” he said. “So, they only broadcast about half of them at City Hall. The focus on minutes becomes less important if they would broadcast all the meetings. They are not interested in doing that.”