A Real Thinker This One Is

Put on your thinking caps for this one, Sturbridge.  When does precedence, supersede an existing law, or does it?  Is precedence that powerful in the judicial world?

For 60 years, according to some, the Tantasqua School Committee and the Sturbridge Board of Selectmen have chosen, and appointed a replacement to the School Committee when one was needed.  They did this together.  60 years of using a system that worked well for both parties, until it was recently discovered that there there is a law that does not allow this to happen.

So, here are the questions of the day, do the past actions, over 60 years, establish enough of a precedent to supersede the newly discovered law?  If an agreement was made between the School Committee , and the Board of Selectmen back then, what were the circumstances around that decision?  Is this newly "discovered" law the sole reason behind the Board of Selectmen wanting to stop the current practice, or is there an agenda we don't see?  And, speaking of agendas, if this law only recently came to light, who brought it to the attention of the Selectmen?  How was it discovered?  Why now?  Was it always known, and just ignored?  What is wrong with the original law, and having the BOS choose the replacement?  Has the town been breaking the law for 60 years?

Ok, enough questions for this morning.  Pour another coffee, and discuss.

Time To Chill

Small town politics, or big city politics, it's all the same.  When one party feels slighted, rubbed the wrong way, poorly represented, or they feel another could do a better job, they voice it.  Most often those voices are what one would expect: voices of disagreement.  Then, there are those that have more of an agenda.  When those that have more of an agenda begin to voice their opinion, then those opinions stop making sense, and become rants.

Fortunately, those that rant, and make little sense as they do, are few.  We can give them their moment at the pulpit, and hopefully they will feel sated, and move on. We can try to tune them out.  In the end, when tuning them does little, we need to be a bit more aggressive.  This morning I took that route.

This morning I received several comments for the posting submitted regarding the Tantasqua School Committee.  Each of the comments were written by the same person.  It's obvious.  Same lack of punctuation, same syntax, same tone, same anger.  This kind of response is not what one would expect from a posting about how a school committee remember is replaced.

There is more to it.  These are personal attacks, and the this blog is not the place for that.  The opposing views can be worded harshly, but opposing views are expected, and accepted.  So, every once in a while, the comment section of a particular posting is closed when I find that intelligent rebuttal has come to an end.  On this particular post, the time may have been several days ago, but I waited until this morning.

If you are passionate abut an issue to the point of becoming emotionally overcome by your passion, then use that energy to effect change, otherwise all that energy will continue to build up inside you, and eventually your head will explode.

It's summer, time to chill.  Pull up a chair in the shade, invite "Mike" or "Sam" over for a bit, take a deep breath, and let out the demons.  You'll feel better, and the perspective you find from the different angle may be the start of a different approach.  It is well worth it.  You look far better with your head intact.

Sixty Years Of Precedent And A Statute

Submited by James P. Ehrhard, www.ehrhardlaw.com -- ed.

On July 7^th the Tantasqua Regional District School Committee (“TRSC”) met in a special session and voted unanimously to not seat any person who is unilaterally picked by any Board of Selectmen to fill a vacancy on the TRSC. Why did the TRSC feel the need to take such strong action in the middle of the 4^th of July holiday week?

The TRSC is the committee which oversees and sets policy for the Tantasqua Regional High School and Tantasqua Regional Middle School. It encompasses the towns of Sturbridge, Brimfield , Wales, Holland and Brookfield. The committee has 18 members from all five towns with each town receiving proportional membership based on population figures. Sturbridge, for example, has seven of the eighteen spots on the committee and Wales has two. The Tantasqua regional school district was created in 1952 under the auspices of Massachusetts General Law chapter 71, section 14B (M.G.L. c. 71, sec. 14B). Pursuant to this statute, a Regional Agreement (“Agreement”) was entered into among all five towns in 1952. Such Agreement delineates, among many other things, the apportionment of funding from the five towns, method of student transportation, and so on. It also states that a method of selecting the members of the committee should be delineated. Section 14B also states in its final clause that all matters in the agreement must not be “incompatible with law”. The TRSC is as a matter of statute highly independent from its five towns and unique from any other local governmental committee.

Thirteen members of the TRSC, regardless of town, are elected in each town's annual election to three year terms of office. The other five members are appointed by each town's elementary school committee from each such committee.  Since 1952, as far as anyone can remember, whenever a vacancy occurred in the middle of an elected member's term, a Joint Meeting between a member's town's Board of Selectmen (“BOS”) and the remaining members of the TRSC from that town would fill the vacancy until the next annual Town Election. For example, if a Sturbridge member of the TRSC vacated his seat, the Sturbridge BOS and the remaining six members from Sturbridge on the TRSC would meet in Joint Session to fill the vacancy. This method is precisely what Massachusetts General Law chapter 41, section 11 (M.G.L. ch. 41, sec. 11) specifies should occur for such a vacancy.

Such a Joint Meeting was scheduled to occur in Sturbridge on July 11^th to fill the vacancy of Francis Simanski who recently passed away. On Thursday, June 30^th, the Sturbridge TRSC members received correspondence from the Sturbridge Town Administrator Shaun Suhoski informing them that the BOS's attorney had advised the BOS that the filling of a vacancy through a Joint Appointment was not proper procedure and that the BOS should unilaterally fill the vacancy. The reason, according to the BOS's attorney, was that the Agreement specifically says so. This advice was in opposition to nearly sixty years of procedure done by all five towns. Indeed, the Town Administrator prior to Shaun Suhoski had received the exact same legal advice from the BOS's attorney in 2002 and yet continued to use the Joint Appointment method.

It is undisputed that the Agreement indeed does say such appointments are filled unilaterally by the BOS. It is also undisputed that the statute, M.G.L. c. 41, sec. 11, says it should be a Joint Appointment. There is, in essence, a clear conflict between an Agreement sub-clause and a statute.

The Sturbridge BOS's chairman proceeded to announce at the BOS meeting on Tuesday, July 5^th that assuming that the BOS's attorney's opinion did not change, he as Chairman was suspending the Joint Appointment method that had been used for nearly sixty years and would have the BOS unilaterally fill vacancies.

The TRSC Chairman called the special session of the TRSC for July 7^th and the vote to not seat any such unilateral appointment passed without dissent, thereby protecting nearly sixty years of procedural precedent. Now remember, this unanimous vote occurred among an elected membership from five distinct towns whose members have wildly varying political, economic, and indeed cultural differences. Yet these members were in passionate agreement that the Sturbridge BOS had no right to change sixty years of precedent supported by statute.

Nonetheless, the Sturbridge BOS will vote to appoint a candidate on July 11^th despite the fact that the TRSC said without equivocation on July 7^ththat such candidate will not be accepted.

The BOS chairman points to the fact that its own attorney and the TRSC's own attorney say that the unilateral appointment should be done. Fair enough. But he fails to note that neither attorney has provided one court opinion which specifically states that a clause in an Agreement which is in opposite to a statute (i.e. M.G.L .41, sec 11) somehow prevails. No such case has been provided because no such case exists.

The closest case which provides guidance actually comes from a lawsuit filed by the Town of Sturbridge in 2006 in the Worcester Superior Court against – guess who? - the TRSC. The case, Town of Sturbridge v. the Tantasqua Regional School District, et al., centered on the fact that the Agreement stated a certain funding formula (i. e. how much each town contributes to the Tantasqua budget) that was different to a statute passed by the Legislature. The statute said Sturbridge should pay more money, the Agreement did not. Guess who won? Tantasqua did. Quoting from Judge James Lemire's opinion, “Thus, the court must address whether G.L. c. 70 sec. 6 overrides that 1952 Agreement. Although no appellate court in Massachusetts has addressed this issue, at least two trial courts have held that the statutory funding scheme established under section 6s supercedes a district agreement with a conflicting funding scheme.”

Of course, the 2006 funding scheme case is not by any means an apples to apples situation. But without on point guiding precedent, you look to cases with a semblance of similarity. Judge Lemire ruled that the statute in question trumped the clause in the Agreement. Any lawyer knows that you often win the cases you should lose and lose the cases you should win. Of course, no one knows how a court would rule on the dispute regarding vacancies, but the answer is not black and white unlike the assertions of the BOS's counsel and the TRSC counsel. Thus, why would the TRSC and, for that matter, Wales, Holland, Brimfield and Brookfield allow the Sturbridge BOS to unilaterally change sixty years of procedure? No reason.

The TRSC will begin the process of removing the unilateral vacancy appointment provision when the school year begins and such change should be voted on at all five town's Annual Town Meetings next Spring.  Therefore, all ambiguity will end.  The BOS should not be taking the unilateral action that it is, all against sixty years of precedent in five towns with a guiding statute.

Escaping

No matter how great a vacation is, how many sights are seen, how many moments shared, there is always the end.

We are at that place now. Sitting in the Fort Lauderdale International Airport awaiting the only flight on JetBlue back to Hartford. It'll be a while.

Sometimes I wish I could shrinkle up my nose like Elizabeth Montgomery used to do, and instantly transport me and Mary, home, with all of our luggage, in an instant. In a shrinkle.

Most importantly, there is family at home waiting. There are welcome home hugs to give, and get. Grass to mow. Mail to get. Cats to scratch, and plants to water. Photos to share, and stories to tell. Then there is work. Always there is work.

I guess that is okay. Without work, there would not be vacations. Trips without the escape from work are just that, trips. Vacations are true escapes.

This past week we escaped, and no one found us.

Success is Wonderful, But Sharing Your Failures May Be Even Better

Crossroads.
                                      Forks in the road.
                                                                             Taking the road less travelled.

Colloquialisms all, but when you look in the rear view, they were all real places where a decision was made in your life that led you to another place, and then to another.  Eventually, those decision GPS directions led you to where you are sitting today. Now for the analogies:  that road that brought you to where you are had some bumpy parts, some down right smooth as fresh pavement parts, and some parts that were wash boarded, washed out, and rutted enough to cause you to bump your head more than once.

I took some turns that weren't the best.  They took me onto some bad terrain.  Some bad land, but I did learn to make better choices.  I still am, and I am putting those lessons into practice.

I guess most of us do learn from our experiences, and choices, and change our direction accordingly.  I could have done better at times, a whole lot better, but there have been times I have done very well.  We've all been told that experience is the best teacher, and I can confirm that.  It is just a question of whether or not we will listen to the teacher.

Recently I drove over to the town where I grew up to check on my step-mother.  Since my Dad passed away in March, she has been alone, and doing the all the things he protected her from all those years together.  Things like doing all the banking, paying the bills, talking to lawyers, and the like.  She has done very well.  He would be very happily surprised.  All those years, watching him, listening to him, and watching the results he obtained was like a classroom.  A course in learning to survive by dealing with things to come.  She learned very well.

Who'd a thunk it?

After my visit, I called an old friend, I had know since first grade, and I had not seen in years.  I asked him if he wanted to get together and grab a bite.  It was 11:00 in the morning, and my call had woken him up.  He was sleeping in.  Really.  A fifty-plus year old guy sleeping in till 11 on a Sunday morning.  I can't remember sleeping in long, even after a rough night, and there was a time, when I had my share of those.  He said grabbing a bite would be great, and asked me to give him an hour.

Okay, an hour it is.

An hour later I arrived at his apartment, I found my way up to his place, and he met me in the hallway.  He led me into his modest home.  A kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom.  Modest may not be the right word, but to my old friend, it was home, and he seemed happy. He owned his own company, paid his bills, and made his own choices, and he was happy.  That is what counts the most.

We went to a local restaurant that was offering brunch, and ordered a great meal.  While we ate, my friend shared some stories of other local old friends that had fallen on hard times over the years, and weren't doing that well in life.  I think he was using their bad times as a barometer in which to measure his own life against.  Something we all do from time to time.

He prefaced his stories by telling me that their tough times had nothing to do with the current economic climate, and went into detail about what these guys were up against, and it all had a common theme.  Poor choices, and bad decisions, something we all make, but the theme here was not learning from the results of those choices.  What made it worse was their not knowing how to correct the issue, how to find help, not having the strength  to fix things, or becoming so despondent as a result that they became paralyzed.  There was a time I was in a similar place.  I could feel for those guys, those former classmates, and friends.

After we finished brunch my old friend looked relieved.  He had spoken aloud about things that he had only been thinking about for some time.  He had received feedback in the form of my head shaking, and mild expletives, and according to his Barometer of Life, he had risen a few points.  He was in a better frame of mind than when he was when I called him, and all we did was talk, and have some awesome Eggs Benedict.

I guess the purpose of all this rambling is to maybe stimulate some reflection in you, and in me, as well.  Living in the past is never good, but learning from it is what we are meant to do.  Otherwise, we will languish back in the day, and never move on to all those adventures we promised ourselves when we were younger.

Yes, we do pay some dues along the way.  It's inevitable.  We loose jobs.  I have, and not by choice.  We suffer through bad relationships.  Our children will disown us, call us lame, ignore us, and cause us to age four years to every one we actually live.  Creditors will call us at some point when we forget a car payment, or the electric bill.  Life will always be there, but it is by our choice how we live it, how we respond to it, and that choice will determine how our ride will be.

I guess that is really the whole point.  Life will always be there, but it is our choice how to live, and respond to it.  It is also our responsibility to share our experiences with those that are in a position to learn from them.  That is one reason why we have been blessed with memory, and our children are number one on the share list.

Share your failures, don't hide them.  Don't pretend to be perfect.  They see right through us.  By sharing our experiences, good, and bad,  we might just help someone avoid being the topic of conversation at brunch someday.