001special meeting of the central buck school district board meeting for July 1st it is seven o'clock we can rise for the Pledge of Allegiance and the purpose of this meeting tonight is to take action to approve the appointment of an interim solicitor and to vote on whether to issue a request for proposals for general solicitor services and for general purposes and now we'll take roll call. Duggar is here, he's online. Mr. Duggar is here. Here. Present. Have we received the public comment? We're gonna have public comment here in a few minutes. I believe that this board is already and will continue to violate the Sunshine Act if this meeting is allowed to continue. The board called this meeting at the last minute after canceling the July regularly scheduled board meeting. You're required to advertise the
002meeting including publishing paid advertisements in the local newspaper prior. If you have payments or receipts of publishing in newspapers I'm requesting that you show them to the public at this time. I believe that with printing deadlines there is no way for you to advertise this in the newspapers which is according to the Sunshine Law procedure within 24 hours. This is what I'm saying is that this board is violating the Sunshine Act because you did not fulfill this way of public notice. Within the agenda there is no financial contract provided for the public and therefore there is no ability for the public to make meaningful public comment on the solicitor's appointment. Under the Sunshine Law the board must disclose all contracts and payments within the agenda before voting on it. You therefore cannot move forward with
003this meeting and appointment today. There is no reason given in the agenda why Whistler and Perlstein was no longer our solicitor. Why were they fired or did they quit? How is the public supposed to make meaningful public comment as to the hiring of this new solicitor without knowledge of the events or details that preceded it? The lack of transparency is appalling and again the rush to appoint a new solicitor is suspicious as there was no emergency which is required. Ms. Harris I believe you've gone beyond a point of order as we understand the objection it is noted. I would like to state that the public meeting was in fact published on June 29th and the publication cost was a hundred and fifteen dollars and twenty seven cents. If you have nothing else then I'd like
004to move on to public comment. Well there's one more thing with policy 903 on the agenda you're violating the agenda rules where in your policy it says that there are two public comment. Policy is not about the Sunshine Act Ms. Harris. It doesn't matter I'm also pointing out that you're violating your public comment time at this time. You're not allowing us to have two public comment sessions and therefore we are not required to have two periods of public comment. Yes you are because you're violating in public in policy 903. Ms. Harris I'm gonna ask you to wrap up your point of order and I will offer you the floor as part of your public comment after I speak and introduce the public comment. Ms. Harris please wrap up your point of order as I believe
005it's been noted for the record. You are welcome to share that opinion during your period of public comment Ms. Harris. Person wishing to make public comment were required to register prior to the start of tonight's meeting. Any current CBS students registered to speak they will be permitted to do so. Please note that public comment during special board meetings is limited to agenda items only and is not intended to be a question and answer session. If your comments are not about agenda items you will be asked to cease your comments. If a question is posed the individual may be referred to the superintendent for follow-up. When your name is called please approach the podium and begin stating your name and municipality. Each speaker is allotted three minutes. You will be asked to cease your comments at
006three minutes. We kindly ask that all comments be directed to the board as a whole rather than to individual members. We appreciate your cooperation in maintaining a respectful environment. Please be considered of all speakers and their opinions including those that differ from your own. Thank you for your understanding and Ms. Harris now is the beginning of your public comment. You will have be allotted three minutes for your comment. Clearly you are in litigation over Sunshine Act violations yet here we are as a board where you're going to violate it again. I already outlined the reasons. First of all I do believe that yes you may have noted that the board meeting needed to be done. However how did this you gave no explanation of why we are getting a new interim solicitor. You have not
007stated why it's an emergency and there was no contract provided in the public agenda which you needed to provide in order to give full sunshine law transparency. There was also no explanation about why we are giving why we lost our other solicitor and so how am I supposed to make meaningful public comment if I can don't know the details of it. There was no emergency and as you can see there's barely anybody here. This time and having this meeting on this date is literally the time when most people take vacation in our community and they are gone they are out of town they don't even know about this meeting so whether or not you posted it you did it purposely in that you are deceptive against the people that are on vacation they have no
008knowledge of it at all and certainly they weren't going to make an attempt to be here. I also think that this is a conflict of interest in that I have heard that this law firm was previously named Rudolph Clark and when I looked at the website I noticed that representative Steve Sanisario's face is on the front page of the website which is very confusing because he's also not listed as an attorney so what I don't understand is why is the head of the Democratic Party's face on this law firm's website and how you all cannot think that this is a complete conflict of interest in that the head of the Democratic Party is also part of your party the majority of you there and how hiring the solicitor is not a total conflict of interest.
009The other thing I have concerns about is the solicitor himself and that I from what I understand and which I'm not sure is completely correct but from what I understand he is from Pennsbury School District and there is a lot of I guess there's a lot of issues with how he was acting as a solicitor in Pennsbury and he was involved in litigation with the First Amendment litigation and what I would like to understand is if you all asked whether our liability insurance is going to cover this solicitor and whether there would be an increase in insurance premium costs because he is known into the into the insurance industry as being a risk and if there was a financial cost in addition to what you are currently supposedly paying him in a contract that I
010don't even know about you have not also provided that as well so I need this board to completely be transparent I also need mr. Amuso to state whether he has a conflict of interest in being our solicitor in the interim thank you it moves us to our information discussion portion of the meeting before our two courses of action do any board members wish to speak or provide any discussion on these topics I'll speak briefly I want to thank board leadership for bringing the matter that brings us here this evening to everyone on the board's attention from start to finish it was two weeks before we were sitting here today this is a grave issue one that I as an officer of the court take very seriously I don't care if anybody believes it or not
011this is absolutely nothing to do with politics nothing the appointment of mr. Amuso I've had a number of interactions with him I have found him perfectly fine with me nevertheless I'm going to recuse myself from this vote due to potential legal implications that we are at least in part addressing tonight as a board it is not a reflection on mr. Amuso or any type of political statement on my part and that's that thank you mr. pepper does anybody else wish to comment I will just comment to say that the need to move forward with this action was pressing as often as the case matters of legal representation do carry privilege between the client and the attorney themselves so there are not open matters that we would be able to discuss with the public as it
012relates to that and this appointment we already have a contract with the law firm that mr. Amuso works for and he would be providing us these interim services under and pursuant to that prior contract where his billing rates and his firm's billing rates have already been made public so I just wanted to make sure that was clear and again this is just interim to allow us the opportunity to issue another RFP to replace mr. Diazio and Whistler as our general solicitor we intend to move quickly with that process and we hope and intend to have a new appointment before the public in August but we did feel as though it was critical to move forward with this at this time and on this time frame just making sure nobody else has any other comments okay
013so with that can I get a motion to appoint mr. Peter Amuso as our interim solicitor so moved and I got a second moved by miss Reynolds second by mr. Kim Ikata any comments on this specifically all in favor aye any opposed abstain motion carries mr. Duggar were you able to vote thank you all right so it's six no and one abstention motion carries can I get a motion to approve the issuance of a request for proposals for general solicitor services so moved motion moved by miss Reynolds seconded by mr. Duggar any comments on this specific item all in favor aye any opposed motion carries seven zero I will ask one last time give me one second we were able to review policy 903 during the meeting tonight and if anybody here wishes to make
014any additional comments on a non agenda item they are welcome to do so at this time even if you were not to were not given the opportunity to sign up prior to the meeting all right seeing no one did I get a motion to adjourn so all right we are adjourned our next scheduled meeting is August 21st