Board of Alderman To Vote on Putting School Board Autonomy on Ballot
“YES” Vote Nullifies the Work of Elected School Charter Commission — OPINION
MANCHESTER, NH — Members of the Manchester Board of Mayor and Aldermen will consider a proposal to put a City Charter amendment on the municipal ballot granting autonomy to the Board of the School Committee.
BOSC autonomy would include the right to set property tax rates, according to to School Committee Member-at-Large Jim O’Connell in unofficial remarks on my Ward 13 with Jon Hopwood public access TV show.
Based on a prior ruling by former City Solicitor Thomas Clark, it only takes a majority of alderman to put a Charter Amendment on the municipal ballot, a position supported by current City Solicitor Emily Rice.
Whether that simple majority actually means eight votes — a majority of one-half plus one in a 14-member body (the mayor under the charter serves as the chair of the BMA and can only vote in case of a tie )—or half plus one of those alderman who are at tonight’s meeting (in the case of 12 aldermen in attendance, that would be seven votes) remains to be seen.
Mayor Joyce Craig has it within her power to veto a vote of the BMA.
“The cat’s is the Bag,” the old saw says. Whether the bag with its captured feline subsequently will wind up be in the Merrimack River remains to be seen. I’d advise against betting Pussy doesn’t wind up drowned and deprived of one of Her nine lives after tonight’s BMA vote.
Its’ a stunning move, seeing how it negates the months of work put in by the School Charter Commission, an elected body. A YES vote means that the taxpayer’s money spent on the School Charter Commission has been wasted.
What is even more startling is that the BMA — as a body and as individuals — have not publicly discussed, let alone invited public debate, over the School Board and amending the City Charter. In essence, the recommendations of the elected School Charter Commission are being summarily dismissed without a public hearing.
What’s coming more sharply into focus is that School Board autonomy is linked to a proposed school facilities building project. That project includes:
- Building a new super high school to replace West and Central and house secondary school students who would have attended Memorial as a neighborhood school;
- Retrofitting of Memorial to become the new Manchester School of Technology site while MST is turned into a incubator housing all kindergartners;
- Building new elementary schools; and
- Refurbishing of extant school not slated for closure.
Former BOSC member-at-large and current mayoral candidate Richard H. Girard, who handled city budget projections as Mayor Ray Wisczorek’s chief of staff, says the entire project could cost north of half-a-billion dollars.
Girard worked out the numbers based on the project’s wish list, and forecasted the cost of constructing new schools from scratch and retrofitting old schools, for both elementary and secondary school facilities.
Rumors of a nine-figure-costing super high school (price tag currently being floated as being around $105 million) have circulated around City Hall for at least half the time I started covering the beat in 2013.
Pundits and Inside Queen City Politics Cognozetti always said, after being told of these rumors and the intent to spin the School Board off into an autonomous authority with taxation powers, “That ain’t gonna happen.”
Then again, one Queen City power broker told me, “All power is exercised behind closed doors.” The stifling of public debate by the Manchester Board of Mayor and Alderman proves the truth of that maxim.
The corollary, of course, is that the real decisions are made by politicians in private, shielded from the gaze of the public eye. Like Superman, they inoculate themselves with lead (secrecy) from kryptonite (the public’s right-to-know embedded in the New Hampshire Constitution).
When we ponder the naked exercise of political power, we inevitably reach the inescapable conclusion: It is exercised behind closed doors. But what does that say about the state of democracy in Manchester, New Hampshire in the Year of Our Lord, 2021?
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Illustration @ 2021 by Jon Hopwood — All Rights Reserved
