Response to Superintendent Secretary letter regarding sale of school property

Letters to the editor


Last week, Superintendent Secretary Terri Dudley presented a letter to the editor explaining why the vote to sell School property to the School Chief Financial Officer was not properly recorded in the January 24, 2019 Board of Education meeting minutes. If you have not read it, I urge you to go online, or find a copy of last week’s paper and read it. It is very informative.
In her letter, Ms. Dudley informs us that the offer to purchase that property was made at the December 13, 2018 BOE meeting. There is no mention of that offer in the minutes of that meeting.
In her letter, Ms. Dudley tells us that she had to leave the January 24, 2019 meeting early and that was why the vote to sell the property was not recorded. According to the minutes, she was there long enough to record the time that the Board exited their executive session at 7:45 p.m. Unfortunately, she could not continue her attendance and record the vote.
In Ms. Dudley’s absence, both the Superintendent and the BOE President had a responsibility to ensure that the vote was recorded. That did not happen.
Ms. Dudley prepared the January 24 meeting minutes for approval at the February 19 meeting. The vote to sell that property was not included in the minutes, yet the Superintendent and five Board members all had a duty to review these minutes and amend as necessary. Instead they voted unanimously to approve the minutes “as written”. From the January 24 minutes: “Action on Executive Session. None Taken.”
Because the vote was never recorded, the School District had to bring in their lawyer (at what expense is anybody’s guess) and prepare a legal document ratifying the sale of that property. This document is titled “Upper Rio Grande School District Resolution of the Board of Education Ratifying Sale of Real Property.” I urge you to contact the Superintendent’s office and get a copy.  I say this because that document specifically states that the offer for that property was made in January 2019, not December 2018, as Ms. Dudley would have us believe.
Tom Haefeli
Del Norte, Colo.