A Harvard resident has filed complaints with the School Building Committee alleging it violated the state’s Open Meeting Law. In two complaints, copies of which she emailed to the Press, Deborah Skauen-Hinchliffe of Still River Road wrote that some subcommittee meetings were held “in secret” and that a vote by the full committee on the maximum budget for the proposed elementary school was taken illegally. Both complaints have been sent to the attorney general’s office.
Skauen-Hinchliffe told the Press Wednesday that she was “appalled” by what she saw as the failure of school officials to uphold the law. “That and the $54 million,” she added, which is the maximum cost of the proposed project set by the committee in a Feb. 2 vote. “It’s all been done in secret.”
Responding to Skauen-Hinchliffe’s complaints, Superintendent Linda Dwight, who chairs the building committee, told the Press in a telephone conversation Tuesday that she had talked with officials at the attorney general’s office to find out what the committee must do to correct any mistakes. “Obviously nothing was done intentionally,” said Dwight, who had just returned to school after the February break, “… and we will do what we need to do to make it right.”
Dwight said the decision on how to respond to the complaints is up to the full building committee, not to her alone. The committee’s next scheduled meeting is March 7.
In emails dated Feb. 7 and 8 (and also later copied to the Press), Skauen-Hinchliffe asked Town Clerk Marlene Kenney for minutes from the building committee’s Feb. 2 meeting and for the agendas and minutes of a subcommittee, often described as a working group, that met more often than the full building committee. She also asked for all the names and contact information of the subcommittee’s members.
Kenney forwarded the requests to Dwight. In a Feb. 20 email response to Skauen-Hinchliffe, Dwight noted she had sent the Feb. 2 minutes of the building committee to Skauen-Hinchliffe, but that minutes for the working group did not yet exist and would be sent when available.
Vote draws complaint
Meanwhile, in a complaint to the building committee dated Feb. 12, Skauen-Hinchliffe wrote that a vote the committee took on Feb. 2 was not on its posted agenda, thereby violating the Open Meeting Law. The vote in question set the maximum budget request for the proposed elementary school at $54 million. She also stated that the vote “was based on actions and recommendations previously taken in secret by a subcommittee,” which she described as another violation of the Open Meeting Law. Skauen-Hinchliffe, who has previously filed similar complaints against other town boards and committees, called the violations “intentional.”
The subcommittee, or working group, in question included project manager Tom Murphy of NV5, architects from Arrowstreet, Dwight, and three or four other members of the building committee. It generally met on the Thursdays between public meetings of the full building committee, and members reported its proposals at the larger meetings. The building committee has 10 voting members, and the working group did not include a quorum of those members. Other designated subcommittees included ones on building longevity, finance, and publicity.
When the full building committee met Feb. 15, it voted to approve a packet of materials as an official submission to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. As part of that submission, the members again approved a maximum cost of $54 million for the project. At that meeting, Dwight described the Feb. 2 vote on the amount as having been informal.
The Feb. 15 vote was cause for a second complaint, which Skauen-Hinchliffe sent to the building committee a week later, on Feb. 22. The new complaint alleged the vote was based on actions that had been “taken in secret” and called Dwight’s description of the Feb. 2 vote “a fabrication.”
To remedy the alleged violations, Skauen-Hinchliffe asked, as she had in the first complaint, that minutes of all subcommittee meetings be posted and all previous meetings be conducted again before the full committee is allowed to revote on the budget. But this time she also asked that individual committee members pay the maximum fine of $1,000 for each violation of the Open Meeting Law.
Also on Feb. 22, Skauen-Hinchliffe emailed the Massachusetts secretary of state’s office, saying that the 25 business days allowed by law was longer than necessary for Dwight to respond to her request for names and contact information of everyone on the subcommittee. She asked the state to “compel the immediate release of all requested information.”
The lawyer for the School Building Committee, Caroline Thibeault, had already asked the attorney general to give the committee more time to respond to the original record requests and complaint, which the attorney general granted in a letter dated Feb. 21, setting March 14 as the due date for the committee’s answer to the complaints.
Dwight said she was confident that the complaints could be resolved without affecting the school project schedule or the vote on the project set to take place at Town Meeting on May 5.
In her conversation with the Press, Skauen-Hinchliffe said her goal was for “everything to come out in the open.” School officials “should be upholding the law,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the Division of Open Government at the attorney general’s office, Emily Snyder, told the Press that her office typically allows 30 days for the parties to a complaint to resolve their dispute before her office steps in. She confirmed that subcommittees are subject to the Open Meeting Law and its requirements.
