The Shadow
After conducting interviews last week and making the vote Tuesday evening, Bert Baker and Jonathan Arritt were appointed to the Covington City School Board during a called meeting that was held prior to the June work session of Covington City Council.
Baker, who currently serves as the vice chairman, was reappointed after getting three votes from District 1 Councilman C.J. Entsminger, District 2 Councilman Allan Tucker and Covington Vice Mayor/ District 5 Councilman David Crosier.
Arritt, who was the newly appointed member and will take the seat of current Chairman Eddy Clemons, was voted in by Covington Mayor/District 4 Council-man Tom Sibold, Crosier, Tucker and Hunter.
With Baker and Arritt winning seats on the school board, the roles of vice chairman and chairman will not be determined until the school board holds its re-organizational meeting at a later date.
The current structure of the school board that consists of Baker (vice chairman), Clemons (chairman), Tamala Preston, Erika Hunter and Tonya Jones will stay intact until Sunday, June 30.
The new regime of Baker, Arritt, Preston, Hunter and Jones will begin Monday, July 1.
To round out the votes, Clemons received two votes from Entsminger and Hunter, while Temple Kessinger received one vote from Sibold.
After the voting period, Sibold took a moment to thank Clemons for his nine years of service to the Covington City School Board.
“I want to thank you for your nine years of service on the school board,” Sibold said.
Clemons, who was in the audience during the vote, replied, “Thank you.”
Later in the called meeting, the consideration of the first reading of Ordinance O-19-06 regarding adoption of fiscal year 2019-2020 budget took place.
During the first reading, interim City Manager Clay Goodman offered remarks about a request that came in from the Covington City Public School System.
As previously discussed, the Covington City School Board approved that a request be sent in to the city to secure funding to hire a special education teacher that was lost due to budget reductions.
That request was officially sent in to Goodman in the amount of $50,000.
“Mr. Mayor, members of the council, I’d like to bring to your attention a memo I received from the school superintendent, Melinda Snead-Johnson, on Friday, May 31,” Goodman said.
Goodman continued, “In that memo, she reported that school board members asked her to request from city council a consideration of reinstatement of funds in the amount of $50,000 to add an additional special education teacher to support their special education program.”
It was also noted in the memo that a special education teacher was originally placed in the 2019-2020 fiscal year budget for the school system prior to budget reductions.
“Special education is very important and it is needed at Jeter-Watson Intermediate School. I think that if we can swing it, that we should,” Tucker said.
Crosier then posed the questions, “If we do that now, would we have to re-advertise? Would we have to go through the whole thing [budget process] again? How does that impact the budget if we were to do it right now instead of doing it in July after the first of the new [fiscal] year?”
Goodman than answered Crosier by saying, “You cannot add to the budget. If you add to the budget you have to readvertise as required by state law. You also would have to provide the funds. There is $65,000 that we put aside from the general reassessment that was unallocated.”
Goodman then said that $11,500 of that money was already dedicated to adding No Fault Insurance to the city’s Municipal Insurance Program.
“That would leave you a balance of over $50,000 in that account and council controls that account,” Goodman said.
“If that’s for special education, I?have no problem with that,” Crosier said.
Entsminger then asked, “Do we make a motion to table their request until after the new budget is adopted in July? Is that the way to go with it?”
Goodman answered, “No sir. I think I’d hit it head on if that’s what you want to do.”
Goodman then expressed a concern that with a portion of contingency money already dedicated to adding No Fault Insurance and distributing the rest for the special education teacher, there would be nothing left.
“There would be absolutely no contingency in the general fund budget, which is already at over $18 million,” Goodman said.
It was mentioned again that if this move is made, a concern was present that the budget would be re-worked.
City Attorney Mark Popovich assured council that would not be the case.
Goodman then asked to look at Ordinance O-19-06 again and add the amendments of adding $50,000 to education and reducing $50,000 out of non-departmental transfers and reserves.
After the first reading was approved with the two changes, Sibold stated, “I’d like to see us add a caveat or something to it, that if they have extra money at the end of the year, which they usually do, that we would get that money back. That’s our contingency money.”
This caveat was voted on approved.
Sibold then made the following declaration, “Every department and every agency got cut for the same reason, we didn’t have any money. When you got money coming in, you have money going out. When the money going out exceeds the money coming in, that’s when you’re in trouble. That’s why we made cuts.”
“I guess I can be the bad guy since we’re dealing with children. The bottom line is we budgeted what we budgeted to the schools because we had to cut everybody. I’m not sure if it’s unprecedented, but it’s real unusual for somebody to come back after the budget public hearing to ask for more money,” Sibold continued.
Clemons, who was still in the audience, asked for a chance to respond, but was denied by Sibold, which resulted in Clemons walking out.
After discussion, city council voted 4-1 (Sibold dissenting) to approve the first reading of the fiscal year 2019-2020 budget with the amended changes regarding the schools.
The second reading of the proposed budget is scheduled for Tuesday.
