001okay we are now streaming and recording i'll do a call adam grippo here stay tam here ann harrigan here andrew martelly here anthony peregini here sam rosenberg here timothy white okay mr chairman you have a quorum thank you heather i ask that we stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty so good evening everyone thank you for joining us jeffrey thank you for joining us this fine evening i know you're very good but uh so we'll look at some good information from you and for those that may be watching welcome uh there's a special meaning of the board of ed it is uh wednesday august 17th and we have essentially one agenda item and
002that's essentially to discuss um more or less the do's and don'ts to the school modernization referendum um advocacy non-advocacy rep towards the uh referendum date that will hopefully be set next week so uh but before we jump into that heather do you know if we have any questions via email or not receive any correspondence okay uh we may check it back later in case anybody sends anything into the covet address but that being said jeffrey welcome um thank you the floor is all yours or the camera i should say sure thanks folks nice to see you all tonight uh the the memo that was uh circulated in connection with tonight's meeting is a memo that i had written about four months ago to the town manager because there started to be questions regarding uh advocacy
003rules in connection with referenda and the advocacy rules come out of the connecticut state elections enforcement commission in other words a referendum is regulated as an election okay so the rules that apply are consistent with other election laws in terms of uh spending money and advocacy and when it comes to a referendum there's basically three general rules that interact with one another the first has to do with the fact that the rules don't apply until a referendum is pending and the referendum is pending once the date of the referendum is set so cheshire's got a town council as its legislative body and if the town council at its meeting next tuesday or some future meeting date uh calls a referendum sets a referendum for whatever date then once that happens then we are in the
004prohibition period in terms of expending public funds or property advocating for or against approval of a referendum so the first thing to know is that once the town council sets a referendum date then those rules are triggered the second thing to be aware of is the fact that we're talking about a prohibition on using public funds public resources and of course the policy decision behind the prohibition is that most municipalities have deeper pockets than most residents so it would be an unfair advantage if public taxpayer funds could be used to advocate for or against the referendum in comparison to the resources that are available to the average citizen so when we talk about public funds or public resources the sec state elections enforcement commission has uh construed public uh funds and public resources pretty broadly
005so it's you know it's not just town funds from any source it's not just board of ed funds from any source but its use of any resources which includes you know the computers whether it be the server the personal computer owned by the school district school facilities school supplies school equipment school postal permits teachers staff anybody that's being paid by taxpayer dollars on the town government or board of ed side is considered to be a public resource okay so that's the second thing to be aware of is that the prohibition applies to public resources which means town government or board of ed owned operated leased paid for and then the third issue is advocacy and the definition of advocacy comes from multiple state elections enforcement commission decisions and the commission has traditionally applied advocacy in
006a broad manner and the general interpretation of the advocacy ban means that any communication which urges a particular result either by express wording of advocacy or when considered as a whole would make the ordinary reasonable person believe that a particular result is urged constitutes advocacy so the emphasis by the sec decisions has always been on the entire communication you know they'll consider the style the tenor the timing and in the memo there's three decisions that i cited uh one decision involved a uh mailer that threatened program cuts if a referendum wasn't approved and that was in connection with the budget referendum and that was found to be advocacy another was using a public school one call system to disseminate automated messages and the concern was that the substance of the message included benefits of passage
007and negative impacts of failure of the proposed budget that once again is considered to be advocacy because a reasonable person would conclude that the negative impacts are in fact negative impacts and that the good thing is to keep the programs or ad programs depending upon what that particular budget sought to do so you know really the only exceptions to the use of public funds or public resources for advocacy purposes are explanatory text and there are specific rules that govern adoption of explanatory text and those rules are the legislative body of the town and this town the town council would have to authorize the creation of the explanatory text the town clerk would prepare the text i as the town attorney would have to approve the text the text has to be neutral it can identify
008the intent and purpose of the referendum but it can't advocate for or against the uh referendum in addition to explanatory text there can be uh a bona fide news conference at which public officials express their views on a pending referendum and you can also use public funds facilities and supplies to respond to a request for information from a constituent concerning the referendum including a public official's views on the referendum the exception to that exception is that if you respond to a citizen's request with knowledge that the response will be disseminated to others in the community then you lose that exception in other words if somebody sends an email saying hey i'd like to know if the referendum fails what the plans are for repairing or dealing with other challenges we have in the existing school
009facilities and once i get your response i'm going to put it up on facebook so the rest of the town can see it or i'm going to circulate it to the pto whatever so if you know that it's going to be disseminated and you express your views then you're advocating and you're doing an end run around the prohibition on using public resources to advocate for or against approval of the referendum there's been some questions that have been asked about political action committees which are known as political committees in connecticut there's a whole separate set of rules that deal with political committees and a political committee is basically an organization that gets registered with the town and with the state as a political committee and then can go out and raise money to be used in
010advocating for or against a referendum question and in terms of a public official's ability to participate in a political committee again you can't use public resources so if somebody who works for the school system wants to participate in the activities of the political committee he or she is free to do so without using public resources they can't use their work computer they can't use a copy machine in the principal's office uh they can't use a postal permit etc so individuals don't relinquish their first amendment rights when they decide to be elected or appointed officials of a municipality what they do is they subject themselves to the sec regulations and you know what that means is you can use your own money or you can contribute money to a political committee as long as you don't
011fall under one of the categories of banned individuals okay you just can't use public funds so individuals have rights and by virtue of being a board of ed member or any other town official you don't relinquish those first amendment rights you just are subject to the sec statutory and regulatory requirements in terms of spending your money and uh how you make contributions to a political committee is regulated by the sec and you're prohibited from using government resources except in those limited exceptions that i mentioned explanatory texts and uh a news conference also there there is some sec i was going to say case law there are some sec decisions that talk about you know if there's a regular newsletter that's put out by say the superintendent then you know there's nothing wrong with providing information
012about the referendum in that newsletter the only thing that you have to be careful about is making sure that you don't use kids as couriers and making sure that again you're not using public funds or public resources to advocate for or against the uh referendum you can certainly provide factual information it's just advocacy that's banned in other words you can provide information about the date and the time and the polling locations and what it is you're looking to build you know the subject of the of the referendum it's just advocacy that is prohibited if you do provide information using public funds or public resources okay so again the big the big three is once the referendum date is set the rules kick in and those rules involve advocacy and use of public funds and public
013resources andrew so if the superintendent put out a notice saying this is when the referendum is going to be this is the cost of school project i guess where it's we have to be here he has to be careful is he can't say as a result of increased enrollment this is necessary like would that be too much like giving reasons why we're doing it well i mean again it's all in the it's all in the presentation okay if you were to have a factual piece that set forth what the current capacity is for existing school facilities and what the projected enrollment was over the next five ten years whatever enrollment study you have and leave it at that that's not advocacy that's public that's public information got it okay if on the other hand you
014were to say if we don't build these new schools then we will not have capacity for your children and your children will be placed in trailers that's advocacy right because you're telling people their kids are going in trailers and most parents don't want their kids in trailers got it thanks uh ann and sam and adam and did you have a hand up earlier oh sorry uh go ahead samantha so i had a similar question to andrew but i just want to kind of um go back to delineate the role of the superintendent are you stating that he's not considered part of the board or a public entity or both i just he plays a dual role in a sense here the superintendent's a public official okay so separate from that i'm going to go to
015the board side now as an individual our limitations are what and i live with attorneys i get the legal lease jeff but you're going to have to simplify some of this stuff because it's almost seven o'clock do you have a board issued email account uh cheshire public schools account is our board issue email okay and that email is maintained on the cheshire board of ed server right yes so you should not use that email account to advocate for or against the referendum because that is a public resource so now i have a personal email account what can i do through that venue your your personal email account you can do whatever you want with so long as you're not sending emails as a board member you're not you know denoting it as you know of
016a board's videos individuals view correct that's pretty much the mindset right right and i mean i don't know if you have board issued ipads or laptops or anything but same thing if you do they can't be used in connection with advocating for or against the approval of a referendum and then we have postcards that we've been helping um dr solon distribute personally we can continue to do so what's on the postcard it just directs individuals to the website for school modernization and then obviously from that point on the information is disseminated through the website whatever factual information on that site as long as it's not advocating either on the postcard or on the website after the referendum is pending today i don't care what's on there you know have at it but once the referendum
017is pending and we go into the cone of silence then we have to be careful about having you hand out postcards if they're printed by the board of ed using board of ed resources then then once the referendum's pending if there's any advocacy on that postcard or a link on there whether it's a barcode an old-fashioned hypertext link whatever it is we have to be careful that there's no advocacy directly or indirectly okay got it thank you adam and then uh thank you um so in a couple of weeks we're going to be having a finance meeting where we're going to be talking about the cost of trailers if a referendum doesn't pass is that considered advocacy even though we're just speaking about factual information you're talking about in a finance committee of the board
018of ed meeting yes absolutely it's your job okay so we can just so it's it do so is it advocacy if we talk about it in the context of a failed referendum no it's planning okay great um and then secondly um if there is language um used in a in material that's not from the board of ed so like from a pack or something like that where let's say one of us is quoted or the superintendent is quoted is that considered aborted a use of board of ed property or anything like that or if a video clip is taken from a public hearing where we're talking about advocating for something um for and that another group uses is that of are we violating anything is the board or the town violating anything for letting that
019group use a publicly disseminated material so you're not who's who's in your hypothetical who's paying for the dissemination of the material um i would say the pack is they would just went out to youtube and grabbed the quote or whatever so they grab public information and they disseminated it with their funds or not there's no issue with that you know i mean any anything that's in the public domain on youtube you know if somebody if you if you for example does you're hypothetical there's no issue with it okay but i'll take it a step further if you have a budget committee meeting and in that budget committee meeting you talk about well we need to plan mr superintendent in the event that this referendum fails for how we're going to accommodate you know you'll talk
020about class size right and you'll talk about what your plan b is so those meeting minutes will be posted on the town of cheshire board of ed website i assume at some point if somebody goes and takes those minutes off the website and turns them into a mailer as long as it's not funded with public funds there's no prohibition on that in other words if if i go do it okay and i say you know what it's gonna cost me less than a thousand bucks i don't need to register as a political committee i'm gonna spend my own money i'm just going to do a targeted mailing of this of this one page from the meeting minutes to let people know this is real that's fine as long as it's not public funds again keep
021in mind what the what the purpose behind the rule is the purpose is to have a level playing field we don't want you know the government which like i said before typically has bigger deeper pockets than the average citizen to have superior access to communication channels because they have more resources we want everybody to have a level playing field so as long as it's not the board of vet or the town of cheshire that's paying to disseminate that information then there's no issue thank you thanks adam uh faith uh thanks tony um my question has to do is very similar to adams i was gonna ask about um about our upcoming meeting but i do want all right so we're i just want to um kind of preamp something if we need to if we're
022in this meeting and we're discussing actual facts figures this and that but then someone says one of our members says golly i hope these schools pass because we're up a creek without a paddle are we going to get in trouble because that is that's not really planning i mean i'm just so i guess i'm asking do we need to couch our ourselves no no no keep in mind what's regulated okay what's regulated are targeted communications communications that are being sent to electors to influence them on election day okay what you do in your meeting you you're nothing changes you do your you know you're elected to to be a board member i was a board of ed member for six years in trouble and i chaired the facilities committee and i and i get it
023okay i get it that this whole thing if you don't do this stuff every day as a lawyer some of this stuff may not make a lot of sense to you but by by no means should you uh be worried about saying something in a board meeting and having that be deemed some kind of a violation of the prohibition on advocacy now at the same time you know if there's a camera in the room and you pick up the microphone and make a speech and look into the camera and say ladies and gentlemen boys and girls those of you voting on november 8th i want you to listen to me loud and clear you better vote yes then sec may look at that and say hey you're kind of flaunting your role on the board
024by doing indirectly what you can't do directly so i wouldn't recommend any soliloquies or or any uh you know person debates with the microphone but at the same time if you're in the in the you know context of an agenda item talking about planning and asking questions about what'll happen if the agent if the referendum fails that's perfectly perfectly fine okay and then just a just a comment sam had asked about the cards and these are the cards um and they do say how new schools benefit everyone in cheshire so i assume after the referendum is set these do even with such a it's really kind of benign but they do become advocacy okay thank you yep if that's what it says on there absolutely okay thank you um so jeff thank you i'm sure
025any more questions i i'm pretty sure it has her hand up like i had let me go up next to and then the tim in the order we're using the raised hand feature but it's okay that's okay um so obviously board meetings we're not gonna pontificate the microphone why voters should vote for referendum you know that's not going to happen um because that will violate things and and i know no board member wants to advocate or try to sell anything what we do want to do is get the facts out you know namely you know i assume i'm just talking dr solon i'm sure he's working with you and vincent determined on the modernization site where information can stay up but can't ozzy things like the enrollment studies the facility master plan studies all the
026factual things that don't advocate for a particular thing is going to be a reference should be available um there might be a couple videos that jeff's done recently that might be more advocation i think he's going to take those down after next tuesday but during board meetings uh and even town council meetings any committee meetings we can expect members of the public to you know come up during public comment and ask questions about the project and you know we're going to answer with facts we're not going to try to advocate someone says hey why should i vote for this i i would say respectfully i can't tell you how but look at the facts make your own decision um so i can see where you know if we're not watching ourselves during public uh comment
027uh but the board is pretty good about that so it's a town council you mentioned advocacy what about town council and board members it might be against the plan i mean advocacy and non-advocacy i mean it covers both correct we can't be out there saying don't fall for it right well the definition of advocacy is urging a particular result it doesn't matter whether you're urging the approval of the rejection the same the same the same rule applies to both sides of the issue thanks and you know in terms of people asking i mean you know i've been involved in a lot of school construction projects and you know the taxpayer pays for certain deliverables and those deliverables should be available on the website and should be easy to find that's not advocacy right you know
028advocacy would be sending a mailer uh or a postcard in everybody's mailbox uh or putting up on the town or board of ed website text that says vote yes on november 8th click here to find out why you know then you're then you're using that deliverable as a backup for your advocacy yeah and uh before i'll turn this over to uh and next but quickly so you know as with anything in any town you know no matter how many of us and how often we try to point people to the website hey where can i find more information that's uh people still hard time finding information um i assume the pack whatever that is will probably help with that but uh can the school district for example use powers uh it's not power school anymore
029but uh power school communications to if jeff wanted to send a letter just letting folks know where to find information on school monetization that points them to the monetization website via the school email system but it's not advocating for anything i assume that's okay yeah it's fine it's it's just informational yeah um again i think that's where we'll keep a watchful eye is communicating where to find information uh we can never get that out there enough to the community so uh i'm gonna turn over to ann and then tim i'll go ahead and thanks tony um it sounds like as an individual i can give money to the pack would that be correct yes and as long as you're not not that dropped you but as long as you don't fall into one of those
030prohibited you know like if you're a state contractor for example i'll have to fill out the form exactly and uh my other question is we have lawn signs up in front of our schools right now that say please support new schools those will be taken down because they were bought i guess with public funds so as soon as referendum data is set those will be taken down can i as an individual buy them from the school and put them on my front lawn i'm to say no um because what you're doing i mean [Music] it's a it's a great question because it triggers two areas of the law number one does the board of ed have the authority to sell you the sign okay because it was bought with taxpayer money and there's no statute
031in title 10 of the general statutes that says one of the roles the board of ed has is to sell signs so there's a legal standing question about whether or not they have the ability to sell it and if they do have the ability to sell it they have to put them out to bid why does a board member get to buy the sign right so that's question number two and then number question number three is if a board member buys a sign and that sign constitutes advocacy does the board member reimbursing the board of ed for it you know take it out of the prohibition and my suggestion would be not to look to make new law on that topic that makes sense to me that makes sense um so those signs are going
032to have to go to go to the wayside i guess yeah i typically i tell everybody with any referendum don't throw any signs away because you may be using them again someday well there's other phases maybe uh hopefully down the road so uh but the other thing too jeff i think the other issue too is those signs um were bought and paid for at public funds so therefore even if we were able to sell them you're you're you're indirect as a board you're indirectly violating using publicly funded materials to so again it's a good idea i know an ann should probably make her own signs but no that's a good question thanks for asking that think of that thank you sure uh tim you had your hand up earlier thanks tony it's yours um let
033me see so uh you had mentioned uh you you mentioned that um like school employees just say teachers uh shouldn't be involved in it i'm just curious in general can teachers advocate on their own time outside of regular school hours again as long as they're not doing it while they're being paid by the district or anything or using you know a computer or a printer or a copier or any other school resource okay um am i so replying to just to clarify in this one circle back to uh using school email if if i am replying to questions people send to me on my my board email and i have no reasonable expectation that it'll be further disseminated i mean a lot of people send me emails and it's just tim what about this and
034it's not intended to be you know replicated in a mailer or newspaper or anything just based on if it's a regular communication can i reply using the school email or do i have to go over to my if somebody if somebody sends you a question on your board of vet email account yeah and you have no reason to believe okay that your response is going to be disseminated to others in the community you can respond on your board of vet account okay and that's gonna i i'm confident that will be the majority of the emails that i get just a normal one-on-one i mean you said you were on a board you know what i'm talking about oh yeah and the the my last question right now at least is um so i want to
035parse this a little bit more school mailers as a reminder to parents to vote not advocating for any sort of outcome but simply advocating voting i think people i think a reasonable person could conclude that if you're subset of voters you're reminding his parents it's leading a certain way has that ever been looked at i mean is it well no i mean the the sec has specifically held that although children can't be used as couriers of information that advocates a position a notice that's limited to time place and question can be sent home to parents via the kids okay all right yeah sorry i missed that if you had said no no worries all right yeah i'm done thanks tony no problem uh faith you had a question yeah yeah i just posted in the
036chat it um i just what are the consequences or um the penalties if we you're muted faith we lost we lost faith's audio uh yeah we lost your audio fate but in the chat uh while she's is checking her in um what are the consequences if there's an impression they're fine if so is it against whom and does that delay suspend or impact the referendum the sec has jurisdiction over violations of the statute and what happens is somebody files a complaint they do an investigation and if if if you don't resolve it voluntarily and they find there to be a violation the statute allows them to fine you twice the amount of the improper expenditure or a thousand dollars whichever is greater so you know let's say you had let's say you had a mailer
037that was sent out by the superintendent paid for with board of ed funds that advocated for approval or denial of the referendum and let's say that cost you know two thousand dollars then they could theoretically levy a fine for twice the amount of the improper expenditure um the official that authorizes the expenditure is personally liable cannot be reimbursed or indemnified by the town of the board of ed it's good to know thank you jeff sure any other questions for for jeff while we have him uh adam thank you i just wanted to verify this because uh this one's kind of blowing my mind um you're saying that the superintendent only the superintendent and or all of the principals i won't even want to make that clarification can use parent square to remind parents to vote
038on november 8th what's the vote what is parent square that would that would be the uh the app that we currently use to really primarily communicate with parents about things going on at school electronic school newsletters electronic yeah you could you can you can say in that school newsletter that on november 8th at your usual polling location from 6 a.m to 8 p.m i assume the polling hours there will be a [Music] question to be voted on regarding construction of new schools what do you know whatever the wording is yes yes you just can't advocate for a position on it you can't you can't say please get out and vote yes you can't do that just tell them just tell them the date the time and what it is so if this so can the
039superintendent do that can also the principal do that because usually sometimes they both send a message is it is it considered as they have to come from one location no no it doesn't have to come from one nope okay so that's not considered an in-kind contribution or any any kind of violation sec it's not advocacy okay in order for it to be a violation it has to be public funds or resources for advocacy and if it's not and if it's you know sec has specifically said that notices limited to time place and question to be voted upon are okay okay so if it says don't forget to vote that would be advocacy but if it's just a reminder that something is happening on november 8th a reminder to vote or no not even a reminder
040to vote just a reminder that there is an opportunity to vote that's not advocacy well i'll tell you i it's not advocacy and saying please don't forget to vote probably pushes the envelope a little bit but may or may not be considered advocacy you know what i'm saying i mean i okay i i guess the question is you know would a reasonable person construe please don't forget to vote as advocating for a yes vote maybe maybe you know people i know people do people do encourage people to get out and vote to vote no right i'm just asking because from uh from a political point of view a political party would pay a lot of money just to send that message out and so you're saying that the board of education can use their own
041system to say that something is happening on november 8th and that's not considered advocacy nope as long as it's limited to time place and question okay i think for me that's not much based on what jeff just said those three criteria time place in question it's no different than when the town sends out the mailer of the referendum questions that will be on the ballot november indicating what the questions are time place location i'm pretty sure it doesn't advocate the vote it's more of an informational thing i i can envision dr sullin doing that and maybe he'll say oh by then and oh by the way there's also a school modernization question on there or highlighted you know that might be pushing a little bit too but um right i mean usually what what most
042towns do you know whether it's charter revision whether it's election you know uh uh charter revision or other referendum questions school construction projects included is they'll say something like tuesday november 8th is election day the polls will be open from 6 a.m to 8pm you'll vote at your usual polling location on the ballot this year is a question as to whether the town should construct two new elementary schools that's not advocacy so that something like that is fine tim i think you had your hand up thanks tony yeah something something that i recall uh jeff mentioning was use of the town's for lack of a better phrase red alert system it's something i was so i was under council 20 years ago when we adopted this thing and i remember it being used into being
043described to us intentionally for like emergency situations there's nothing related to an emergency in terms of a referendum coming up would that be is there any law governing anything like that well again i mean it's there can't be it can't be used for advocacy no but even simply to remind people to vote it's a lot of people think it's different there's different schools of thought on it some people think it's not appropriate because of what you said which is it's supposed to be used for emergencies and some residents some electors get very annoyed and very frustrated when they get a call telling them to go vote when they already voted or when the emergency notification system is used for something that they don't regard as an emergency they think this isn't what we pay for
044this for other people don't mind so it's really more of a you know policy question about whether you want to use that resource to let people know it's election day okay thank you the interesting thing you know with all the polls that get done the interesting thing would be a poll in a town where that system was used asking to try to figure out how many people actually voted because they got that call so unless there's uh any other questions or comments i'm going to move to the journal meeting but before i do that uh jeff i'm certain um board members might think about this over the next few days next week it's any other questions uh what's the best way to get those two get them send them over to dr solon and sure
045andrew andrew knows how to reach me too well i know andrew knows where to find you he's got you on speed dial you can you can always email me or call me i'm always here you can always find me somehow and i'm happy to answer any questions for you yeah hopefully we won't pepper you too much with them no no worries at all that's what i'm here for right well that's pretty much the meeting thank you jeff it's very informational and i appreciate your time you put into this to educate us uh so thank you i just have white uh unfortunately sam had a drop uh to pick up something so she looked about two minutes ago for heather's notes about 7 14. that being said do i have a motion to adjourn so moved
046uh adam uh made the motion and seconded all those in favor raise your hands it looks to be unanimous thank you team the the meaning thank you jeff goodnight folks thank you good night all right everyone all right thank you heather and team hey tony welcome have a good night