GrokSHOT! – Gilford School Board decides it is above the normal SB2 Legislative process... - Granite Grok

GrokSHOT! – Gilford School Board decides it is above the normal SB2 Legislative process…

…by which the Gilford School Board develops its budget, submits it to the Budget Committee (which can change that budget), and the budget prepared by the BudCom is presented to the Gilford Taxpayers at the NH SB2 mandated “Public Hearing” so that the townfolk can ask questions about the budget (and hurl invectives if it “offends” them).  The next to last step is the “Deliberative Session” at which time the budget line items can be changed by votes of the townfolk.  The final step in the process is to actually vote, up or down, on the budget in the safety and privacy of the voting booth (to me, a much better time to vote than the traditional Town Meeting format).

Unlike the municipal budget process (in which excess and unspent funds can be carried forward to future years in a “Rainy Day fund”), the School Board is to return all funds not spent to the taxpayers.  THIS School Board, the Gilford School Board, has decided that it is above this process – and more and more over the last few years, decided that it would purchase more goods and services with “end of year excess monies”.  In this case, because they didn’t ask the right questions at the right time, a $65,000 one last nite.  Of COURSE I spoke up:

Yes, they HAD the time to inject this “emergency item” into this year’s budget process – the Budget Committee was still in session on January 1 when it should have come up.  The Gilford School Board COULD have brought it up during their Public Session.  They COULD have brought it up during the Deliberative session.

But they didn’t.  They kept it quiet that their energy management vendor was lapsing tech support (er, in cases like this, one CAN pay extra monies for such support – if one asks for it) from Jan 1 until 6/2 – six months.

They’ve done this a number of times before and gotten yelled at before.  No longer on the BudComm, I talked with a current member to let them know of my ire.

We’ll see.

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