Council Member Outlines Reason Behind Vote

At the Legislative Council Finance Committee meeting held just prior to (Wednesday night's) regular meeting of the Legislative Council, there were many concerns over the School Administrators Contract expressed by the Finance Committee members and I support those concerns which resulted in a 5-to-1 vote to reject the School Administrators Contract.

A lot of factors dealing with the contract were taken into consideration by the committee and not all of them were unreasonable which you covered well in . At the Legislative Council meeting, when the motion to reject the School Administrators contract that I put on the floor was in discussion, it became clear to me that there was a high degree of uncertainty as to whether the changes sought would come to fruition in arbitration the next step following rejection of the contract. 

The current statutory criteria used by arbitrators is vague and it limits the review capacity of the Legislative Council in that it effectively turns over the contract settlement that will affect our budget to arbitrators who are not town residents.  

After careful consideration, I felt it was a crap-shoot at best to get the changes we were looking for by moving the process to the Arbitration stage and voted not to take that financial risk associated with a rejection.

Ben Spragg