Participants
Everyone the recording shows taking part. Names follow the project's dialogue file and the 2015 to 2023 roster; no minutes are online to check spellings against. Where the dialogue file says Unidentified, this page does too.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Brian Rapp | Chair | Presided over the warrant articles; asked that each be moved separately; explained the hearing's time limits; voted no on the budget. |
| Chris Irish | Vice chair | Called for the vote; proposed that members be free to defend their own positions despite the ethics policy; moved the security article; said he is not running again. Attribution medium: his diarizer cluster also carries other voices, and some chair-like lines in it could be Rapp's. |
| Michelle Pierce | Member | Urged residents to attend the deliberative session; asked for five-minute speaking limits instead of three; asked about card access, bus disposal and roofing bids; moved the roofing article. |
| Alex Herzog; Michael Petrin; Frank Sprague; Rebecca Zullo | Members | Voted on the roll call (Herzog no, Petrin no, Sprague yes, Zullo yes). Zullo's and Pierce's answers are embedded in the clerk's rows. |
| Mary Woodman | School district clerk / recording secretary | Called the roll; corrected the filing-period dates printed on the agenda. The filing-period rows are assigned to her with an uncertainty note. |
| Josh Malloy | Director of Instructional Technology (surname from the roster; not spoken here) | Explained the 20 percent match for the state infrastructure grant: cameras, door access control and shades. |
| Michael O'Neill | Business administrator, SAU 6 | Explained the bus lease-purchase and the CMS flat-roof replacement. |
| Cory LeClair | Assistant superintendent (attribution uncertain) | Explained that the moderator runs the deliberative session and how warrant articles have been presented; undertook to report on the time limit. The next speaker (labelled Irish) says "Thank you. Corey." at 0:05:51. |
| Unidentified | Various | The mover and seconder of the bus article, a staff speaker on what the district may say about warrant articles (0:13:51), and the member addressed as Becca (0:09:14), unresolved between Zullo and Pierce. 43 of 257 rows (16.7 percent). |
Order of business (reconstructed)
No agenda for this meeting is posted in any district share, so this list is reconstructed from the chair's transitions. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped entry for the full text.
| Taken up | Item | Agenda text / disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:00 | FY19 operating budget to the deliberative session (continued from part 1) | Irish's motion to move $31,148,256.95, Pierce seconding. Roll call from 0:01:15: Irish yes, Herzog no, Petrin no, Pierce yes, Sprague yes, Zullo yes, Rapp no. Carried 4-3. |
| 0:01:48 | Members' public positions; hearing time limits | Consensus, without a motion, that members may defend their own positions; Pierce's request for five-minute limits deferred to the next meeting (0:05:51). |
| 0:06:08 | Special warrant article: security upgrades, $141,000 | Irish moved "with board support" (0:13:41); Pierce seconded; carried by voice at 0:14:55. |
| 0:14:59 | Special warrant article: school bus replacement lease | Moved and seconded by unidentified members, "recommended by the board" (0:17:25); carried by voice at 0:17:37. |
| 0:17:39 | Special warrant article: roofing improvements, $100,000 | Pierce moved (0:19:26), with recommendation; carried by voice at 0:19:43. |
| 0:20:09 | Article 1, election of district officers | Informational; no vote needed. Filing period stated as January 24 to February 2 at 4 p.m. |
| 0:22:34 | Adjournment | Moved and seconded; voice vote at 0:22:42. The clerk asks who seconded (0:22:45). |
Discussion timeline
Chronological, from the dialogue CSV. Times are the start of the cited exchange, taken from the CSV's own second count. Hover over (or Tab to) a clipped cell for the full entry.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:15 | Appeal to voters | Pierce: "on February 7th is when you come out and you come out and vote and you come out to deliberate for this new budget"; "there are things that probably could be done without losing our staff." | |
| 0:01:15 | Budget roll call | Irish, Pierce, Sprague and Zullo yes; Herzog, Petrin and Rapp no. $31,148,256.95 goes to the deliberative session, 4-3. | POSITIVE |
| 0:01:48 | Suspending the unity expectation | Irish: "we have a policy that we've talked a lot about prior to tonight that says once the board makes a decision, we all support that decision. That's in our ethics policy." At 0:02:11: "Alex is going to talk to his people. I'm going to talk to my people." At 0:02:41: "So we are all good with suspending that rule". | OBSERVATION |
| 0:02:59 | Three minutes or five | Pierce asks "who set a time limit today?" Woodman at 0:03:12: "It was in your information that came with your agenda." Pierce at 0:03:28: "the City council allows five minutes for per person". Rapp at 0:03:55: speakers get three minutes, then a second turn. | OBSERVATION |
| 0:05:03 | Who sets the rules | LeClair (uncertain): "Deliberative session is run by the moderator." If the limit came from a previous board, "then you can arbitrarily set it at something else." An unidentified speaker at 0:05:29: "This is the seventh consecutive year we've done it this way." Rapp at 0:05:41: "we're out of order." | OBSERVATION |
| 0:06:08 | Security match | Rapp: the $141,000 is "the matching funds for, a grant that we're looking to do for security upgrades." Malloy at 0:07:08: "that 141 would be our portion. 20%." Irish at 0:07:34: "represents about $720,000 worth of improvements". | |
| 0:07:43 | What it buys | Malloy: "cameras in all the schools, door access control in the buildings that don't have them, and shades". At 0:11:10, if the article fails: "I really don't think it's going to happen again." At 0:12:40: "the governor has complete discretion about what gets approved or not approved." | |
| 0:09:55 | Explaining the articles | LeClair (uncertain): "each board member sort of takes one of the Warren articles, and they describe to the public who are in attendance and viewing from home what it means." Irish at 0:10:47: "I think it'd be great to get that stuff on the website." | POSITIVE |
| 0:13:33 | Each article separately | Rapp: "I'd prefer to just vote to move each warrant to the deliberative session individually." Unidentified at 0:13:51: it would "be inappropriate to say, vote for it and not vote for it. But it is appropriate to give them the facts". | POSITIVE |
| 0:15:09 | Bus lease | O'Neill: "The oldest busses in the fleet are 20 years old." "My recommendation is we continue with $39,000 a year in the budget for the leases." At 0:16:21: "I'm leaning towards getting two more propane busses." | |
| 0:17:43 | CMS roof | O'Neill: replacing the flat roof at CMS, "Looks like the cost to be about $107,000"; at 0:18:41: "The estimate in this book is $170,000 to do that roof. And I can get a quote for 107." At 0:18:58: "we put it out to bid". | |
| 0:20:20 | Seats and filing period | Irish: "There's three, three year terms and one for a one year term". Woodman at 0:20:58: "Contrary to the dates on your agenda. It is wrong." At 0:21:39: "4 p.m. on February 2nd. It's the final time you can get in to do it." Irish at 0:22:07: "I made it pretty clear I'm not running". | POSITIVE |
Items flagged for review
Flags are a reviewer's aid generated by comparing the meeting against the law in force on January 3, 2018, cited as it then read. They are not findings of violation, and nothing here is legal advice. Where no verified rule applies, the flag says so and is recorded as an observation. 4 flags follow, ordered by severity.
OBSERVATION The board set aside a provision of its own ethics policy by informal consensus, with no motion or vote
Immediately after the 4-3 vote Irish described a policy under which members "all support" a board decision once made, and proposed that for the deliberative session members be free to argue their own positions (0:01:48, 0:02:41). No motion was made and no vote was taken; the item moved on. The policy's text is not available to this project, so whether it can be suspended, and how, is not verified; no statute governs the point. The observation is that a departure from a written board policy rests on an unrecorded consensus, which the minutes may or may not capture. Members' freedom to speak for themselves at a public meeting is not in question.
Sources: the recording at the times cited. No statutory rule applies; the district's ethics policy was not available.
OBSERVATION Nobody at the table could say where the three-minute speaking limit comes from
Pierce asked who set the limit used at the evening's hearing and asked for five minutes (0:02:59). The clerk pointed to the information sent with the agenda; the assistant superintendent (attribution uncertain) said she did not know whether it came from policy, Robert's Rules or "a previous board", and that the deliberative session is the moderator's to run (0:05:03). The question was deferred to the next meeting (0:05:51); on January 31 the moderator announced her own limits for the deliberative session (January 31 page). No statute sets a limit for a school board budget hearing, and none is cited here.
Sources: the recording at the times cited.
OBSERVATION Minutes were kept, but none for this period are online
This meeting's minutes were approved with a correction on January 31, 2018, so they exist. RSA 91-A:2, II as it read in 2018 required minutes naming members and "persons appearing before the public bodies", with a brief description of the subject matter and final decisions, open to inspection "not more than 5 business days after the meeting". Neither district Drive share reaches back before 2022, and these minutes could not be located online (MAP.md section 56). Graded on the project's online-availability limb; the record shows no lapse. Two things the minutes would need to capture are unclear on tape: who moved and seconded the bus article (0:17:25), and who seconded adjournment (0:22:45).
Sources: RSA 91-A:2, II (2017 codification; the text in force for all of 2018; the mover-and-seconder requirement began Jan. 1, 2019).
POSITIVE The budget went by roll call, each warrant article was moved on its own with a recommendation, and staff drew the line between informing and electioneering
Each member's vote on the operating budget is on the record (0:01:15). The chair asked that each special article be moved separately "just in case there are any changes" (0:13:33), and each carried a stated board recommendation. An unidentified staff speaker reminded the board that it would be "inappropriate to say, vote for it" but appropriate to give voters the facts (0:13:51); RSA 659:44-a, in force from January 1, 2017, forbids a public employee to "electioneer while in the performance of his or her official duties" (elected board members are outside that definition). The clerk also corrected, on the record, the filing-period dates printed on the agenda (0:20:58); the corrected window, January 24 to 4 p.m. on Friday, February 2, runs from the seventh Wednesday before the March 13 election to the Friday of the following week, as RSA 669:19 prescribes and RSA 671:19 applies to school districts (the closing hour was not checked against statute).
Sources: RSA 659:44-a, I-III (source note ends 2016, 176:1, eff. Jan. 1, 2017); RSA 273-A:1, IX (definition of public employee; elected officials excluded); RSA 669:19 (2017 codification; source note ends 2011, 40:1); RSA 671:19 (2017 codification; unamended since 1979).
Appendix: source files
Official and public sources
- Cablecast show 9550, "Part 2 of 2 SCHOOL BOARD MEETING of 1-3-18": Claremont Community Television. Every timestamp on this page links into this recording.
- No Drive material: neither the Claremont nor the SAU 6 share holds a year folder older than 2022, and the Meeting Minutes share starts at 2023 (MAP.md section 56, checked 9/26/26).
- Related recordings (pages named by recording): part 1 of this meeting (show 9549); the budget public hearing the same evening (shows 9547 and 9548); the January 31, 2018 meeting (show 9586).
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
Dialogue/9550 SchoolBoard010318.mp4.CSV (257 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Input/Videos/9550 SchoolBoard010318.mp4Input/Transcripts/9550 SchoolBoard010318.mp4.jsonScripts/attribution_reports_2015_2023/9550 SchoolBoard010318.mp4.mdInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 56
Laws and rules cited on this page