Citizen group walks out of meeting
A number of residents protesting inadequate public input into Uniontown Area School Board’s Saturday work session staged a walkout near the start of the marathon meeting. About 40 citizens gathered at the 9 a.m. start of the meeting, but decided, after alleging it was made clear to the public that their input would not be received, to walkout.
The walkout occurred early in the meeting, about 10:20 a.m., an hour and a half into the six-hour session that lasted until about 3 p.m. with a lunch break and another 10-minute break in between. It involved most members of the Citizens Advisory Committee exiting from the meeting room. About 15 citizens still remained in the public seating.
Ron Machesky, chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee formed to add public input into the high school project, addressed the board prior to the citizens’ departure.
“You lied to our Citizens Advisory Committee. We were supposed to speak,” said Machesky, who alleged it was made clear that public comment would not be received. “This is not doing what the meeting was advertised to do.”
The meeting room took on a different look Saturday, as tables were joined to form a square, where board members faced the district’s architects and construction managers and Buildings and Grounds Director Rob Smalley.
Typically, at meetings, the public faces the majority of board members seated at a single row of tables and the architects and construction managers will sit with the public. While the backs of the architects and construction managers faced members of the public, the public seating arrangement had not changed.
Resident Jerri Mazza called the meeting “a joke” and pointed the finger at board member Harry “Dutch” Kaufman, who was conducting the session as chair of the board’s buildings and grounds committee.
“You’re a poor excuse for a human being,” she said to Kaufman, as she passed before the tables, heading for the doors. “You’re nothing but a liar.”
When he opened public comment at the meeting’s end, a Franklin Township taxpayer said there were “a large number of representatives of the citizens group here today who obviously had no input into this.”
“Their input is as critical as the other people here today,” said the taxpayer, who declined to provide her name to the newspaper.
Kaufman said that the board has in the past provided public comment three times at a meeting and heard from other constituents in the community. He also said he thinks the Citizens Advisory Committee has had a lot of input into the project.
“Today was the time for the board to sit down with their … advisers,” Kaufman said. “It would not have been as productive if we added 26 other voices. … Don’t think that we have done anything different or wrong or nasty. That wasn’t our intent.
“I don’t think we need a hostile atmosphere to move forward for the good of the students,” he added.
Reached by phone Saturday for a statement on the walkout, Machesky explained that the Citizens Advisory Committee was told that the whole purpose of the meeting was to sit down and hammer out a building project. Machesky said the Citizens Advisory Committee had an idea for a high school project with a cost of $20 to $25 million, but no plans were presented to the board at Saturday’s meeting.
“(Saturday) started with no one was going to speak. It was just a work session meeting and that ended up trying to justify Plan A,” Machesky said, referring to the original drawing the majority of board members rejected in the summer.
“Having family and giving up a Saturday, we felt like it was a total waste of time to sit there and listen to how they’re going to save money on a plan they already have looked at,” he said.
He also said the board would not permit applause when the public felt board members made “a decent statement.” Kaufman said “no outbursts will be permitted” after the public applauded board members Ken Meadows and William Rittenhouse Jr. for statements aimed to clarify their understanding of the meeting’s intent.
One comment that was met with applause came from Meadows, who said the savings talked about are good if the board uses Plan A.
“I was under the understanding that we were going to give direction (to the architect) on whether to begin a new plan,” said Meadows. “Don’t tell me it was a blank sheet of paper.”
His comments came after about an hour and a half of discussion at the meeting’s start that revolved around the cost savings prepared by Altman.
After the citizen walkout, Meadows called for the board to go “need by need” to see what items could be cut. Clay said the board was going to get to that, but first “needed a starting point.”
Steve Gavorchik, the only member of the Citizens Advisory Committee present at the opening of public comment, said he believes “the footprint” of the building project is still too large.
“The board still needs to take a look at what they really need and won’t need,” said Gavorchik.
He said, “If you need the gym, keep the gym, but pare down the cafeteria area. I still think you need to cut down in other areas.”
Work to pare the project down apparently will continue, with Altman telling Gavorchik that he is “very conscious” of the need to cut the cost of the project.