Sweetwater HS District Received Vote of No Confidence from CBOC

At the last Sweetwater High School District Board Meeting, a month after the District's Bond Rating was reduced, the Chair of the School District's Bond Oversight Committee submitted a Letter of No Confidence to the Board for "..not providing information for us conduct our work, not listening and taking our concerns seriously, and recently attempts to limit the areas that we can review; specifically the Project Labor Agreement.”

Sweetwater High School District Board Meeting Transcript January 27, 2020

51:00 Agenda Item C2: CBOC Report by Chair Nick Marinovich

56:00 "Bylaws are used against the Committees to nitpick. The intent of the law is to have people there that are going to report to the public the proper expending of money."

57:00 "At the last meeting I was insulted by the Union Member. Not one of you [Board Members] spoke up or called me to say; ‘hey, that wasn’t right’."

58:45: "When I’m up here speaking please pay attention and try to look like you’re interested at least."

59:00: "There’s a number of reasons this Committee matters. It’s the law, it says we’re supposed to do certain things."

1:00:00: "When the Bond Oversight Program is broken, so is the District. In my opinion; the relationship between the Oversight Committee and the Board is the worst than in the corruption era and that’s hard to do."

1:01:00: "The Committee voted a letter of ‘No Confidence’. It means the Committee is not happy with how they are being treated."

“These concerns and issues are, to varying degrees, indicative of a breakdown in trust, communications, and support for this Bond Oversight Committee. It is unfortunate since we’ve had a good working relationship in the past.”

“In short, the Vote of No Confidence for the District was in the context of not providing information for us conduct our work, not listening and taking our concerns seriously, and recently attempts to limit the areas that we can review; specifically the Project Labor Agreement.”

1:02:00: "In closing, I’m hoping we can have a joint meeting with the Board. The current Chair, who’s been here eight years just got off the Board, so I could at least give some perspective as to where this oversight function is going to move. There was a lot of information in that Chair Report if you’d just read it carefully. It gives you information that you wouldn’t otherwise because Staff may not want to give it or may not be empowered or not appropriate. It’s like having an independent budget analysis-type function with the Oversight Report."

Board VP Nicholas Segura: 1:03:00: "I’d like to offer to Mr. Marinovich; instead of seeing our lack of questioning of your Report that it’s because we’re disengaged or we don’t care. Perhaps it would be better if you looked that your reports are so well written that it leaves nothing for us to ask about. And you yourself just said that. So something to think about, perhaps."

Marinovich: Did I say it was well-written?

Segura: Well, you’ve said other things that perhaps are the reason we don’t ask questions. You don’t have to assume that we’re out to get you, okay?

Bond Oversight Committee Report and Letter of No Confidence: https://sweetwaterschools.novusagenda.com/agendapublic/CoverSheet.aspx?ItemID=6797&MeetingID=543

Video of SUHSD Board Meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz_5diitJpM&t=808s