LI Lawmaker: Probe Last-Minute Sachem School District Meeting

HOLBROOK, NY — Assemblyman Doug Smith has asked the New York State Education Department to probe the Sachem Board of Education about an emergency meeting in which the sale of four acres of district property in Holbrook was approved.

Smith, a Republican from Holbrook, penned a Dec. 27 letter to Education Commissioner Betty Rosa, with Attorney General Leticia James, and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli copied, asking for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the meeting and the approval of the sale of 245 Union Ave. in Holbrook.

Sachem officials called a meeting Dec. 22 with the property sale as the single agenda item, giving just seven hours notice to Board of Education members and “virtually no notice to the public in violation of the Open Meetings Law,” Smith said.

Smith, who was working to have the property preserved, was notified of the 7:15 p.m. meeting about six hours earlier and had “25 separate telephone conversations” about the matter with multiple officials and community leaders. During those, he aired “many concerns” about the property sale, “including the impossibility of myself and the constituents I represent to attend this meeting on such short notice.”

Around 4 p.m., Smith notified the school district they still hadn't conspicuously posted any notice of the meeting as required by law, on either the homepage of the district or on any social media accounts, he said, adding that an image was placed on the district’s Facebook page at 5:39 p.m. The image did not include a location, but said it would be livestreamed on YouTube, though there was no link provided.

The only posted notice of this meeting on the Sachem website was buried pages deep where regular board meetings are posted, and there was no location or time, Smith said.

The meeting violated the state’s Public Officer’s Law, Smith said. The district’s failure to comply was intentional in a matter of public interest, and there was “a failure to present a satisfactory explanation for the last-minute call of the meeting and for the patent adequacy of the notice,” according to Smith.

After the meeting started, the board went into private executive session for about 45 minutes, Smith said.

“Sachem has approximately 92,000 residents and an annual budget of $350 million,” Smith said. “They have the technology to send robocalls, text messages, mass email alerts, and have many other methods of alerting the community of other events, but none of these efforts were expanded for this meeting that was so urgent it demanded a vote within a few hours.”

School board members also told him that the same “loose notification protocols for emergency meetings” had been used over the last several years, including at a meeting to fill a vacancy with a board member who had previously chosen not to seek reelection, Smith said.

One owner of the business that agreed to buy the property told Newsday they were canceling the sale because the land was not worth the same it was months ago when they offered $2 million.

Abdul Mused, a co-owner of Bello Poultry Market on Union Avenue, told the outlet he agreed "100 percent" the property should be preserved as a park.

Smith could not be immediately reached, but on his Facebook page he posted a "Sachem update," saying he looked forward to the next regularly scheduled board meeting Jan. 11 "where the community can have an opportunity to be heard," and that he hoped to see the property sold to the county "to be preserved as a community park for many generations of Sachem residents to enjoy in the years to come."

Patch has reached out to the school district and state Board of Education for comment.