{"id":76,"date":"2008-07-17T15:55:55","date_gmt":"2008-07-17T19:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/?p=76"},"modified":"2017-12-18T16:22:19","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T21:22:19","slug":"court-gives-go-ahead-for-special-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/2008\/07\/17\/court-gives-go-ahead-for-special-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Court gives go-ahead for special vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 17, 2008
\nKeene Sentinel<\/a><\/p>\n

Monadnock election will coincide with primary<\/strong><\/p>\n

SWANZEY CENTER \u2014 Dueling factions in the Monadnock Regional School District may still not agree on exactly what constitutes an \u201cemergency\u201d in their schools. But the law has sided with teachers and school officials.<\/p>\n

The groups scored a victory Monday when Cheshire County Superior Court Judge Brian T. Tucker ordered the district to hold a special election for voters to weigh a newly negotiated teachers\u2019 contract.<\/p>\n

The special election, which will be held with the state primary election Sept. 9, runs against objections waged by three parties: Sullivan selectmen, Fitzwilliam selectmen and Swanzey resident Richard E. Bauries of the Monadnock School Taxpayers Association, a district watchdog group.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for both towns, along with Bauries, who represented himself, and attorneys for the district and teachers\u2019 union argued their cases before Tucker in a June 12 Superior Court hearing.<\/p>\n

In March, voters defeated a proposed four-year teachers\u2019 contract, 1,628 to 1,532, according to recount totals. District taxpayers similarly voted down a teachers contract in 2006, and last year the union and school board failed to negotiate a contract in time for it to make it to the ballot.<\/p>\n

Central to the recent Superior Court case was whether the situation that\u2019s resulted from this lack of a contract \u2014 low morale and frozen wages \u2014 qualifies as the \u201cemergency\u201d required by state statute to hold a special election before the regular district meeting in March.<\/p>\n

Such an emergency is defined by state statute as \u201ca sudden or unexpected situation or occurrence … of a serious and urgent nature\u201d demanding prompt action, including an immediate expenditure of money.<\/p>\n

At the June 12 hearing, Bauries said the problems at Monadnock don\u2019t fit the bill, saying that while raises are frozen until voters pass a new contract, teachers are still receiving their salaries along with 90 percent of their health insurance costs.<\/p>\n

But Tucker disagreed, citing a \u201csignificant decline\u201d in teacher morale and the labor unrest that many believe led to the \u201csick-out\u201d last March when 29 teachers from the middle\/high school called in ill after the teachers\u2019 contract was defeated.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than twenty teachers have resigned, including experienced teachers,\u201d Tucker wrote, adding that \u201cmost applicants tend to be young and relatively inexperienced.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tucker also cited evidence presented by J. Joseph McKittrick, the attorney representing the teachers\u2019 union, that 60 percent of the staff is being paid below their experience levels because raises have been frozen, in the absence of a a voter-approved contract, since July 2005.<\/p>\n

And despite the fact that Monadnock voters have a history of rejecting teachers\u2019 contracts \u2014 along with operating budgets \u2014 Tucker wrote, \u201cThe emergency was not foreseeable or avoidable. The union and the district presented a contract at the … annual meeting that they believed satisfied the requirements of the voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

When that was rejected, Tucker wrote, the union made concessions the district hadn\u2019t predicted. These include the teachers\u2019 agreement to a faster phase-out of early retirement, a controversial benefit that enables veteran teachers to retire early while receiving a portion of their salaries for a set period of time.<\/p>\n

The new contract increases the amount of so-called longevity payments \u2014 financial incentives available through a pool of money to veteran teachers for staying in the district. But it also gets rid of the the much-debated evergreen clause, which allows benefits such as pay raises to continue during negotiations for a new contract.<\/p>\n

Monadnock district attorney Paul L. Apple said this morning he doesn\u2019t know yet how House Bill 1436, which requires including an evergreen clause in contracts for public employees, will affect the Monadnock teachers\u2019 agreement. Gov. John H. Lynch signed that bill, which is effective upon passage, into law Tuesday.<\/p>\n

In his ruling Monday, Tucker wrote that requiring teachers to wait until March before bringing their contract to voters would have an \u201cadverse consequence\u201d for both staff and students.<\/p>\n

In an e-mail Tuesday, Superintendent Kenneth R. Dassau wrote, \u201cThe administration and school board are naturally excited over the judge\u2019s decision. I am very hopeful that the public will positively respond to the opportunity provided by the Judge and will approve this latest contract effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

School board Chairman Eugene M. White of Swanzey said he could understand how \u201cemergency\u201d could be interpreted both ways but was pleased by Tucker\u2019s take.<\/p>\n

Teachers \u201cmade a lot of concessions to get this done,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m hoping the voters will realize that this is a good deal, and they will pass it and we can put this behind us.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Bauries said this morning that the latest contract is padded with unnecessary spending such as early retirement, which the town of Sullivan has charged was never legal in the first place in a case pending in Superior Court.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur position is that we vehemently oppose the contract because of all the pork that\u2019s in it,\u201d he said, adding that the members of the Monadnock School Taxpayers Association\u2019s executive council, who he declined to identify, will be meeting to discuss the group\u2019s next step.<\/p>\n

Sullivan Selectman Chairman Richard Hotchkiss said he can\u2019t comment until he\u2019s read Tucker\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

But Fitzwilliam Selectman Carmen M. Yon maintained his position.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t an emergency that needed to have a special meeting,\u201d he said Tuesday. Teachers should have a contract, he said, but argued that the new agreement is too similar to the most recently defeated contract to warrant a new vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new one is not that much different,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ll probably just go through the same thing all over again and waste some more of the taxpayers\u2019 money.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the school board set an official-ballot first session for Aug. 9 at a to-be-determined location.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 17, 2008 Keene Sentinel Monadnock election will coincide with primary SWANZEY CENTER \u2014 Dueling factions in the Monadnock Regional School District may still not agree on exactly what constitutes an \u201cemergency\u201d in their schools. But the law has sided with teachers and school officials. The groups scored a victory Monday when Cheshire County Superior […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,71,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-nh","category-governor-watch","category-special-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6681,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/6681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}