Most of these board members are relatively new to town. Us that have been here a long time remember days not so long ago, when the Middle School roof was leaking. Trash cans were placed in classrooms to catch the drips. The district had no money for a new roof. I recall sitting in on a presentation by Superintendent Bowman at the time…he outlined the expenses on staff, district-wide, at a very detailed level. He convinced me the district was operating as lean as it could be…and yet…there was still no money for a new roof. In the spring of 2016, voters surprisingly stepped up to help! We passed a 1.09% sales tax coupled with a property tax reduction! This has made a huge difference to our schools, and yes, the Middle School got their new roof. 🙂

This current school board has been completely reckless with spending and an insult to taxpayers who deserve more from our elected officials. Let’s look at some examples.

The board spent around $100k of district money to bring Merit Academy into the district. The feasibility study for the middle school cost our district $51,596.53. Caplan and Ernest, lawyers brought on solely for closing the deal with Merit, cost us $32,268.50. Brad Miller incurred some uncertain amount of legal fees until he stepped away from the deal at the end (his legal fees for the first five months of 2022 were about $66k and he was very involved with this beginning in January). The board was not required to give Merit any of the sales tax revenue…they could have withheld enough of that sales tax revenue to reimburse the district for expenses incurred bringing in Merit.

Miller’s legal advice to the board led to them violating Open Meetings Law in January, leading to a preliminary injunction and subsequent legal fees incurred by defending themselves in court. The exact cost is unknown, as Miller did not invoice separately for this court case and he redacts details from the invoices we request through CORA.

In June, Illingworth called for a special board meeting, where they decided to remove Superintendent Neal from the district. Having no cause for doing so, it cost the district $275k to break his contract (plus whatever legal fees were incurred by Miller for this).

Having put in place two very competent co-superintendents, Del Garrick and Tina Cassens, the board then proceeded to hire a new temporary interim superintendent, Ken Witt. Which on the surface is not necessarily financially bad, this board found a way to really screw taxpayers over on this one. They’re paying Witt an annual rate of $155k, plus a $500 car allowance and $100 cell phone allowance. The contract makes it very difficult to remove Witt, as doing so would require 120 day notice or comparable financial compensation! To top it all off, Witt is allowed to keep working at ERBOCES, where is also being paid $155k, gets a $500 car allowance, and a cell phone provided to him. Taxpayers are paying Witt more than $310k to work two fulltime jobs. You can read Witt’s contract with Woodland Park here, or read his ERBOCES contract here (that contract has been extended). Our district alone is paying a full time salary to someone that’s barely working here part time.