Participants
Everyone named or heard in the record. Names follow the project roster for 2015 to 2023 where the transcript garbles them; attendance is shown only as far as the roll call and later records establish it.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Michael Petrin | SAU 6 Board chair (Claremont member) | Presides (roll entry “Mike patron here”). Abstains on the July 25 minutes, saying he was not at that meeting; raises SAU-specific policies; sets November 14 and December 12 as budget dates. |
| Frank Sprague | Claremont School Board chair; SAU 6 member | Answers the roll. Moves both sets of minutes; reads corrections to the September 5 minutes; gives the Claremont update (four contracts in negotiation, the October 20 budget retreat, the Medicaid hit); asks for a proposed SAU budget; volunteers to contact the New Hampshire School Boards Association for model policies. |
| Heather Whitney | SAU 6 member (Claremont) | Answers the roll (the chair hears “Heather Robinson”). Moves the agenda, seconds the July 25 minutes, moves the September 5 minutes and adjournment. |
| Rebecca Zullo | SAU 6 member (Claremont) | Answers the roll (“Rebecca Zulu. Here.”). No speech attributed by name; the attribution report lists an unidentified Claremont-side woman as either Zullo or Towle. |
| Rob Lovett Jr. | SAU 6 member (Claremont) | Answers the roll (“Rob Lovett, junior. Here.”). Named as on the Claremont capital improvement committee. |
| Jason Benware | SAU 6 member (Claremont) | Called (“Jason Benwell”); no answer captured. |
| Carolyn Towle | SAU 6 member (Claremont) | Called (“Carolyn Toll”); no answer captured. On December 5, 2019, when these minutes were approved, she abstained: “I'm going to abstain from voting I wasn't here.” (show 10639), so she was probably absent. |
| Robert McDevitt | SAU 6 member (Unity) | Called; answer not separately captured. |
| Prudence McCormick | SAU 6 member (Unity) | Called; speaks on December scheduling and the joint school board and council meeting. |
| Gary Bader | SAU 6 member (Unity) | Called (spelling unverified); answer not captured. |
| Unidentified | SAU 6 member (Unity) | The first name on the roll is inaudible and answered Here. On December 5, 2019 the clerk calls Erickson first, which suggests but does not establish that this answer is Marjorie Erickson's. A Unity member gives the Unity update (principal “Chip” retiring; budget committee in November); not named on the recording, and not shown to be the same person. |
| Unidentified | Board members (several) | Second the agenda, the September 5 minutes and adjournment; one asks for the budget-to-date figures; one cannot attend November 14. 74 of 271 rows carry no name. |
| Michael Tempesta | Superintendent | Report: a $6.2 million state check received the day before; the business office, software training and the audit schedule; strategic-plan committees and a community college visit; FY2021 building aid. |
| Richard Seaman | Business administrator, SAU 6 (“our business director”) | Corrects the audit years; presents the SAU budget-to-actual report; answers on auditor recommendations and the proposed-budget timing. |
| Mary Woodman | Clerk (called Mary) | Takes the roll. |
| Named, not speaking | Staff and others mentioned | Mr. Small, running the slides; Jamie Young, who with Seaman reconfigured the human-resources area; John Aubin (transcribed “John Auburn”), whose budget modification Seaman is still reconciling; “Chip”, Unity's retiring principal; the governor, who visited Claremont the day before. |
Order of business (reconstructed)
No agenda is in any public share; the chair refers to “a genda in front of us”. Items below follow his transitions.
Items in the order taken up. Movers and seconders are given where the transcript names or clearly attributes them; tallies are not stated.
| Taken up | Item | What happened |
|---|
| 0:00:13 | Call to order, pledge, roll call | Roll at 0:00:52. |
| 0:01:27 | Agenda | No changes. Whitney: “Accept the agenda as presented.” Second not captured; voice vote. |
| 0:02:08 | Minutes of July 25, 2019 | Sprague first moves both sets together; members note they must be taken separately, and Petrin says he “wasn't here for one”. Sprague moves the July 25 minutes (0:02:45), Whitney seconds; approved, with Petrin abstaining (“I abstain as well”). |
| 0:03:06 | Minutes of September 5, 2019 | Whitney moves; second unidentified (“I second Mary.”). Corrections read: the date “to September instead of August” and the chair's name (“It says Petrie should be patron”), plus something “above that item E”. Approved by voice at 0:04:07. |
| 0:04:15 | Superintendent's report | Information only. |
| 0:12:27 | Citizens' comments | None. |
| 0:12:27 | Discussion: Claremont and Unity updates | New standing item. Sprague for Claremont (0:12:51); a Unity member for Unity (0:15:16). |
| 0:17:09 | Discussion: SAU budget planning; budget-to-actual report | Seaman's report at 0:19:19; no vote. |
| 0:23:54 | Discussion: SAU 6 policies | Sprague to contact NHSBA; a continuing agenda item. No vote. |
| 0:27:54 | Future agenda items; meeting dates | Proposed budget at a November 14 meeting; December 12 as the wrap-up; policy as a placeholder. |
| 0:32:23 | Adjournment | Whitney moves; second unidentified; voice vote. |
Discussion timeline
Times are taken from the dialogue transcript (Dialogue/10567 SAU6101019.mp4.CSV) and link into the recording.
Chronological topics. Quotations are verbatim from the transcript, including its errors; bracketed words are editorial.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:52 | Roll call | “Here. Robert McDevitt. Prudence McCormick.” / “Gary Bader, Frank Sprague here. Rebecca Zulu. Here. Jason Benwell, Rob Lovett, junior. Here. Heather Whitney, here, Carolyn Toll and Mike patron here.” Answers are captured only for some names. | |
| 0:02:22 | Two sets of minutes | Sprague: “I make a motion that we get the next from. July and September.” A member: “Do they have to be done separately? I don't think you can combine them.” Petrin: “that's to them separately because I wasn't here for one.” The July 25 minutes pass with his abstention (0:03:02). | MED |
| 0:03:07 | September 5 minutes corrected | Whitney: “I make a motion that we accept the minutes of September 5th, 2019.” Sprague (0:03:22): “It looks like there's some fractions or notations on their.” “So those will be fixed in the official.” A voice: “It's not online.” Petrin: “the date needs to be corrected to September instead of August.” Sprague: “It says Petrie should be patron.” | MED |
| 0:04:29 | State money | Tempesta: “we just got this check for $6.2 million yesterday, which we're very happy about.” Building money (0:10:49) “set for FY 21”, in two allocations, “not in the 6.2 million”. Sprague (0:11:20): the governor “was here yesterday”; for Claremont “about $2.5 million”, and “I don't want to leave one penny of that on the table.” | |
| 0:05:25 | Business office and audits | An accounting and grants manager is “coming on board”; staff trained on Infinite Visions software. “the 18 is going to be finished up in at the end of, this month. And the 19 audit will be finished up by the end of December.” Seaman corrects (0:06:05): “Reversed that we end of this month.” Tempesta: “17.” Seaman: “This month. End of the year. That's right.” Seaman and Jamie Young have “reconfigured an area up there for HR” (0:06:10). | MED |
| 0:06:40 | Strategic-plan committees | Committees with teachers and administrators from both districts; “we're looking for people from the community”. The community college “volunteered to be on 2 or 3 committees today”. He asks board members to join the alternative-programming committee (0:08:04); details on the website (0:09:04). | |
| 0:12:51 | Claremont update | Sprague: “we were negotiating four different contracts with the Sri, the secretaries, maintenance and paraprofessionals”; “This the 20th of October, we're going to be having our budget retreat.” Medicaid (0:14:03): the loss “Could be well north of a half $1 million”. The capital improvement committee will separate emergencies from projects to fund with the state money. | |
| 0:15:16 | Unity update | A Unity member: “We have a nice brand new building”; finishing the master plan with the Unity Planning Board; “we will be looking for a new principal in the coming year. Chip is going to retire at the end of this year.” A search committee will form; Unity's budget committee meets first in November. | |
| 0:17:30 | SAU budget planning | Sprague wants “a proposed budget from, from administration”. Asked the timeline: “We have to have it done by Jane where we ran” [garbled]. A member (0:18:12): last year “I think we had our first meeting maybe the end of October, early November, and we were done by December.” | OBS |
| 0:18:32 | Budget-to-actual report | A member had asked “show us where we are in our budget for this season”. Seaman (0:19:30): columns for budget, year to date, encumbrance and remaining; “we've addressed a little over a million of the million six of the budget. So there's still remains about $264,000 for other items.” “I'm not seeing any surprises”. He has not yet tied in a modification “that John Auburn had brought forward” (0:20:46). A member (0:23:27): “Nightmare, and this is just a relief to see this. It's organized.” | POS |
| 0:23:54 | SAU 6 has no policies | Petrin raises “developing saw six specific policies”. Sprague: “One for not reinventing” the wheel; NHSBA may have models. A member (0:25:06): “right now, we don't have any.” An unidentified member, who says the policy push “was me driving it” (0:25:30), at 0:26:11: on business-office procedures “We had nothing to protect us”; “All of the audits have talked to to the lack of procedures and policies.” “Even like basic code of ethics things” (0:26:42). Seaman (0:26:58): the auditors “haven't spoken to me about that yet”. | MED |
| 0:28:10 | Next meeting dates | Proposed budget “in a couple of weeks” (Tempesta); Seaman: “three, four weeks”. Petrin (0:28:48): four weeks is about November 7, the day after a Claremont meeting; the board settles on the 14th (0:30:06), though one member “won't be able to attend on the 14th”. Wrap-up: “Second Thursday in December is the 12th” (0:31:09). | OBS |
| 0:31:18 | Calendar conflicts | McCormick asks about the joint school board and council meeting that December week. | |
| 0:32:23 | Adjournment | Whitney: “There's nothing else. I make a motion to adjourn.” Voice vote. | |
Items flagged for review
These flags are a reviewer's aid, not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each cites the rule it rests on, read as it stood on October 10, 2019, or is labeled an observation where no verified rule applies.
MEDIUM No minutes of this meeting, or of the two sets it approved, are in any public share
This meeting approved the July 25 minutes eleven weeks after that meeting, and the September 5 minutes with corrections to the date and the chair's name (0:02:22 to 0:04:07). None of the three sets, and no agenda, is in any district share; the Drive archives begin in 2022. RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes open to public inspection within five business days, kept as permanent records, naming each motion's mover and seconder. Where a public body maintains a website, as SAU 6 did (the superintendent points viewers to “our website”, 0:09:04), ¶II-b requires it to post approved minutes or a notice of where they can be reviewed. A voice at 0:03:35 says “It's not online.”; the recording does not make clear what is meant. Graded MEDIUM because the record mitigates the absence: on December 5, 2019 the board took up the “minutes from October 10th, 2019”, moved by Lovett and seconded by Zullo, with Towle abstaining (Dialogue/10639 SAU6120519.mp4.CSV, about five minutes in).
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II and II-b, 2019 codification (minutes within 5 business days; permanent records; mover and seconder; website posting or notice); RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d), 2019 codification (SAU board is a public body)
MEDIUM SAU 6 had no written policies of its own, and members say every audit cited missing procedures
Asked about SAU-specific policies, a member said “right now, we don't have any” (0:25:06), and an unidentified member who said the push “was me driving it” (0:25:30) said of the business office “We had nothing to protect us” and “All of the audits have talked to to the lack of procedures and policies” (0:26:11), down to “basic code of ethics things” (0:26:42). SAU 6 administers federal grants for both districts (it had just hired an accountant/grants manager). For a non-federal entity spending federal awards, the Uniform Guidance requires written procedures for payment and cash management and for determining the allowability of costs, and effective internal control over the awards. The audits themselves are not in the record, so this page cannot confirm what they said; Seaman said the auditors had not yet raised it with him (0:26:58). Graded MEDIUM as a probable control weakness, on members' own account. In mitigation, the board made SAU policy a continuing agenda item and Sprague undertook to obtain NHSBA models.
Sources: 2 CFR 200.302(b)(6)–(7), 2019 edition (written procedures for payment and for allowability of costs); 2 CFR 200.303(a), 2019 edition (effective internal control over federal awards)
MEDIUM FY2017 audits due at the end of October 2019, FY2018 by year end
After a correction from Seaman, the superintendent's schedule is the FY2017 audit “end of this month” and FY2018 by the end of the year (0:05:25 to 0:06:07). Fiscal 2017 ended June 30, 2017. Where a district spends $750,000 or more in federal awards, the single-audit reporting package is due nine months after year end, March 31, 2018 for FY2017 and March 31, 2019 for FY2018. The recording gives no federal-expenditure figure, so the threshold is not confirmed here and this stays MEDIUM. The same backlog is reported on the September 5 SAU 6 page and the October 2 Claremont page.
Sources: 2 CFR 200.512(a)(1), 2019 edition (nine months after period end); 2 CFR 200.501(a), 2019 edition ($750,000 threshold)
OBSERVATION SAU budget calendar set for November 14 and December 12; the corpus holds no November 14 meeting
The SAU board must adopt its budget at a meeting held before January 1. The board planned a proposed budget for November 14 and a wrap-up on December 12 (0:29:06, 0:31:09), which fits that deadline. The next SAU 6 recording in this project is December 5, 2019 (MAP.md section 118), and that meeting approves these October 10 minutes rather than any November minutes, which suggests the November 14 meeting was not held. This page cannot confirm that; nothing in MAP.md records a November meeting, a cancellation or a notice.
Sources: RSA 194-C:9, I, 2019 codification (SAU budget adopted at a meeting held before January 1); Dialogue/10639 SAU6120519.mp4.CSV
OBSERVATION Recording does not establish who was present
The roll call captures answers for Sprague, Zullo, Lovett, Whitney, Petrin and an inaudible first name (0:00:52); McDevitt, McCormick, Bader, Benware and Towle are called with no answer heard, though McCormick speaks later. Towle's abstention on December 5 (“I wasn't here”) indicates she was absent. With eleven names called and no minutes, a reader cannot confirm from the public record which members voted on the two sets of minutes, or how many Unity members attended, a concern members raised on September 5.
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II, 2019 codification (minutes include the names of members)
POSITIVE Monthly budget-to-actual reporting with encumbrances, presented in public
In his second week, Seaman gave the board a line-item report showing budget, year-to-date actuals, encumbrances and remaining balances (about $264,000 left of roughly $1.6 million), said he would bring it back monthly, and flagged the items he had not yet reconciled (0:19:30 to 0:21:05). No statute requires an SAU board to receive monthly budget-to-actual reports. A member's reaction (“this is just a relief to see this”, 0:23:27) indicates the board had not been getting them.
Sources: the recording; no rule requires this practice.
Appendix: source files
Official and public sources
- Cablecast: SAU #6 SCHOOL BOARD meeting 10-10-19 (show 10567)
- Agenda, packet and minutes: none found. MAP.md section 112 records no Drive material because neither share holds a year folder older than 2022 and the Meeting Minutes share starts at 2023 (checked September 26, 2026).
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
Laws and rules cited on this page