Participants
Everyone heard on the recording. Names follow the August 5 agenda and the project's 2026 roster; staff named only in passing are described by role.
| Name | Role | Participation |
|---|
| Candace Crawford | Chair, Finance Subcommittee; board chair | Opens the meeting and reads the attendance (0:00:01, 0:00:10). Questions the starting deficit (0:02:00), the $868,000 assessment (0:05:49), business-office staffing (0:29:20) and the budget calendar (0:58:43); raises the negotiating team (1:02:31). |
| Heather Whitney | Member, Finance Subcommittee | Present at the roll. Asks about vacancies and grant recovery (0:18:22, 0:19:03); proposes bank-account and manifest policies (0:54:12, 0:54:57); points to the budget-calendar policy (0:59:07); disputes the negotiating-team assumption (1:03:05, 1:03:48). |
| Don Lavalette | Member, Finance Subcommittee | Not named in the opening attendance; first heard at 0:39:58 and addressed by name at 0:56:54. Comments on the procurement guide as a teacher (0:53:25). |
| Dr. Timothy Broadrick | Superintendent, SAU 6 (acting in the business administrator's role) | Reports the year-end process (0:00:30 to 0:19:51), the forensic audit (0:20:06), business-office staffing (0:21:18), tuition agreements (0:24:39), the procurement guide (0:32:44 to 0:53:13), budget timing (0:57:51) and the capital plan (1:07:24). The transcript renders the name "Broderick". |
| Tammy Cody | Central office assistant | Named in the opening attendance (0:00:10); short interjections only. |
Order of business (reconstructed)
No agenda was found. The item list is reconstructed from the chair's transitions on the recording; the chair's lettering ("Let's go back to, D") suggests a written agenda existed.
| Taken up | Item | Disposition |
|---|
| 0:00:01 | Call to order and attendance | Attendance read by the chair (0:00:10). |
| 0:00:23 | Old business: end of fiscal year 2026 | Year-end filing (0:00:51), held checks and the $868,000 assessment (0:05:03), the business administrator search (0:08:46), revenues and tuition (0:17:45), grants (0:19:03). Discussion only. |
| 0:20:06 | Forensic audit | Status update; no action. |
| 0:21:00 | New business: business office update | Staffing described (0:21:18 to 0:32:31). |
| 0:32:37 | Corrective actions | Procurement guide reviewed; bank-account and manifest policies to follow (0:56:38). No vote; the guide is to go through the Policy Subcommittee. |
| 0:57:51 | Budget process and calendar | Calendar promised for the August 19 board meeting (0:59:16). |
| 1:02:31 | SREA negotiations | Team membership to go to the board (1:05:35). |
| 1:07:13 | Item D: capital improvement planning | Subcommittee meeting to be scheduled (1:07:35). |
| 1:09:54 | Future items | Recording ends during this item. |
Discussion timeline
Times are taken from the dialogue transcript (Dialogue/Claremont School Board Finance - 81226.CSV). Timestamps link to the same moment in the Cablecast recording.
| Time | Topic | What was said | Flags |
|---|
| 0:00:10 | Attendance | Read by the chair: "Heather Whitney, Candace Crawford, doctor Tim Broderick and Tammy Cody." | |
| 0:00:51 | Year-end process with the state | Superintendent has spoken with the auditor and the Department of Education division director; "We're going to have to do something similar this year to what we did last year". A $4 million surplus is good "Given that you believe you started with about a $5 million deficit." (0:01:44). | OBS |
| 0:02:48 | Certifying an uncertain report | "normally if I filed a false 225 [DOE-25] report, I would be like, oh, you have to fire me now." Meeting with the department to be set by the department (0:03:43). | OBS |
| 0:04:09 | DOE-25 deadline | "So do 25 is due September 1st. And any district that asks can get a free days." Working window: the rest of August and September. | OBS |
| 0:05:03 | Held checks | "The old practice of holding checks did continue to occur during during 2025, 2026." The late July vendor checks "weren't held intentionally" in his account (0:05:28). | OBS |
| 0:05:49 | The $868,000 assessment | Crawford raises the $868,000; Broadrick: "The mid-year assessment from school here [SchoolCare] that nobody budgeted for." One third paid; the rest encumbered but unpaid (0:06:43). | OBS |
| 0:07:15 | Cash management | "cash management is really the area that ultimately the district slipped up on." He will "get a handle on our cash position and release these checks" (0:08:08). | OBS |
| 0:08:46 | Superintendent as business administrator | "the scary answer is mine. Because I'm the one right now." He involves the auditor in decisions (0:08:55); if the current candidate fails, "find someone with the raw materials and build our own" (0:09:53). | POS |
| 0:12:06 | Special education director | "I'm not really even trying to hire a full time special ed director for the coming year." He will report to the full board. | |
| 0:13:34 | Business administrator search | Claremont "Is seen as a professional risk." (0:14:01); one candidate still in conversation (0:14:52). | |
| 0:16:09 | City payments | The first city payment is "like a triple payment", then "$1 million something a month" (0:16:18); first full payroll is August 14 (0:16:22). | |
| 0:16:57 | Expenditures, revenues, tuition invoices | Revenue report raises questions; whether tuition invoices went out "for the last two years" is unknown (0:18:13). | OBS |
| 0:19:03 | Grant revenue | Whitney: "Is any of the grant money from the previous fiscal year recoverable as well?" 2024-25 grants first; anticipated grant revenue that was never claimed is how the district ended up short (0:19:37). | OBS |
| 0:20:06 | Forensic audit | The board's counsel for the engagement is unavailable and an associate has taken it up; the $10,000 deposit check: "They haven't cashed it." (0:20:30); "I just want to figure out what the status of the deal is." (0:20:40). | |
| 0:21:18 | Business office staff | "The director of finance position has been filled by an accountant with experience, Bob gonyea." The finance director keeps the books and does second-person review, for example of free and reduced lunch eligibility (0:22:00). Payables and payroll are combined in one clerk: "A position is cut from the business office." (0:30:11). | |
| 0:24:39 | Tuition agreements | "So far, I've only actually been able to get my hands on one of them, and it gave me more questions than answers". Unity's departure from the SAU raises the same question (0:26:36). | OBS |
| 0:28:01 | CTE tuition | "districts under New Hampshire law must pay not may shall pay, vocational training"; "The good news is 75% of that tuition gets reimbursed by the state." (0:28:45). | OBS |
| 0:30:59 | Capacity building | "I think here that capacity building has been missing for years." | |
| 0:32:44 | Corrective action 1: procurement guide | "It'll give us nine policy updates." and "It'll fix 75% of the problem." (0:33:15). Adapted from the guide he wrote for Alton and Barnstead (0:33:40). | POS |
| 0:36:10 | Purchase orders | "there is no purchasing without a purchase order." Policy will set a $20,000 threshold (0:36:54). | POS |
| 0:41:33 | Separation of duties | "What I won't allow, though, is the payables bookkeeper to approve the POS." and "I will not have my own account in the accounting system." (0:41:59). | POS |
| 0:42:50 | Quotes and RFPs | Three quotes over $5,000; "Above $20,000, you go to the business administrator and we issue an RFP period." (0:47:04). RFQs issued for educational services (0:47:25); no district credit card (0:46:30). | POS |
| 0:49:02 | Out-of-district contracts | Some out-of-district schools said "we don't issue contracts to school districts"; contracts will now require service logs with every invoice (0:50:32). | POS |
| 0:53:45 | Policies: bank accounts, manifests, education | Whitney: "one of them was opening of bank accounts. So I know that was a huge problem that we had." (0:54:12); "So we do have a manifest review policy now, but it never existed." (0:54:57). | |
| 0:57:51 | Budget calendar | Claremont follows SB 2; Whitney cites policy DB, "no later than the last meeting in August" (0:59:07); Broadrick will bring dates to the next board meeting (1:00:17). | |
| 1:02:31 | Negotiating team | Crawford: "the three of us are on the Syria [SREA] negotiations" (1:02:55); Whitney says only she was nominated in March and the whole board should choose (1:03:48, 1:05:29). | OBS |
| 1:05:52 | Cost items on the ballot | "the cost impact of a tentative agreement has to be listed as a separate warrant article"; the budget will show no salary increases (1:05:52). | OBS |
| 1:07:24 | Capital plan | Capital Improvement Subcommittee to be scheduled; "Here's a basic five year capital plan template" (1:08:33). | |
| 1:09:57 | SREA ground rules | "I've had some correspondence with the SRA about a ground rules meeting." The recording ends mid-sentence at 1:10:07. | |
Items flagged for review
These flags are a reviewer's aid, not findings of violation and not legal advice. Each one names the rule it rests on, as that rule read on August 12, 2026, or is labeled an observation where no verified rule applies. Counts: 0 HIGH, 1 MEDIUM, 5 OBSERVATION, 1 POSITIVE.
MEDIUM No agenda or minutes for this noticed subcommittee meeting have been located in any district share
The meeting was noticed in public: the August 5 board agenda lists "Finance Subcommittee: Chair Candace Crawford, Heather Whitney, Donald Lavalette ... Meets August 12, 1:00 p.m." (agenda text), and the chair read the date aloud at that board meeting (see the August 5, 2026 page). A subcommittee of the school board is itself a public body under RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d), and RSA 91-A:2, II requires minutes "open to public inspection not more than 5 business days after the meeting" (statute text); since August 22, 2025 they must also state the start and end time and who produced them. Five business days from August 12 was August 19.
Searched on 2026-10-03: the district's Claremont Finance Sub Committee folder (last modified December 1, 2025; no files returned), the website-linked Finance subcommittee folder (only Purpose Statement and an empty-seeming 2025-2026), the next board packet 4. 8.19.26 -- School Board Documents as MAP.md records it, the 9/2/26 packet inventory, the 2027 Meeting Minutes folder, and title searches for 8.12.26, 8.12.2026 and August 12. Drive API searches under-report on these folders (project method note), so the result is "not found", not "does not exist". Graded MEDIUM under the project's rule for a meeting that was noticed and only the minutes are missing; this is a public body's record nonetheless, and the recording is the only public account of what was said.
Sources: RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d) (a committee or subcommittee of a public body is itself a public body); RSA 91-A:2, II (notice; minutes within 5 business days, with movers, start and end time and the minutes' producer); August 5, 2026 agenda (notice of this meeting)
OBSERVATION The FY26 financial report is due September 1, and the superintendent described a 30-day grace the statute does not contain
Dr. Broadrick said the state agencies "need end of the year financial statements" (0:01:16) and that "do 25 is due September 1st. And any district that asks can get a free days." (0:04:09), then that the practical deadline was "by the end of September". He said he and the auditor would meet the Department of Education because "normally if I filed a false 225 [DOE-25] report, I would be like, oh, you have to fire me now" (0:02:48), the starting balance still being unknown. As reenacted by 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 272, RSA 198:4-d, III requires the financial report "on or before September 1 of each year" and a chair's certification "under the pains and penalties of perjury" that the information is "true, accurate and complete" (chaptered text). No extension for that report appears in any vintage of the section; the only extension language in the reenacted section, ¶VIII, applies to audit reports. The department may have an administrative practice the statute does not show; this page cannot confirm it. Seeking the department's guidance before certifying figures the district cannot yet verify is a reasonable step.
Sources: 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 272 (SB 586), approved July 2, 2026, eff. July 1, 2026, reenacting RSA 198:4-d, III (financial report "on or before September 1"; chair's certification)
OBSERVATION Held checks and a large unpaid assessment framed FY26 as a cash problem rather than a balance-sheet problem
"The old practice of holding checks did continue to occur during during 2025, 2026." (0:05:03). The superintendent said the late July checks the treasurer reported were not held deliberately but waited on training (0:05:28). Of the $868,000 mid-year assessment "that nobody budgeted for" (0:06:18), the district has paid one third; "We have not yet paid the other two thirds." although the full amount was encumbered (0:06:43); "It's not a balance sheet issue." (0:07:08) and "cash management is really the area that ultimately the district slipped up on." (0:07:15). He said he would establish the cash position before releasing checks (0:08:08). Under modified accrual (GASB 34, ¶79) an incurred obligation belongs in the fund statements whether or not the check is mailed, which is why a held check distorts cash rather than expenditures; and RSA 197:23-a ties payment to board orders and the treasurer's books. No rule is shown to be broken on this record; the FY26 audit will be the test.
Sources: GASB Statement 34, ¶79 (governmental funds: modified accrual); RSA 197:23-a (treasurer pays only on board orders; keeps a fair and correct account)
OBSERVATION Grant revenue anticipated in the year-end report but never claimed is described as a past practice
Dr. Broadrick: he must "figure out how much grant revenue from fiscal 26 that was anticipated" (0:18:36); in the past "the business administrator would say, oh, we're going to get $2 worth of grant funds for last year. They would submit their 25 report anticipating that revenue and." Crawford: "Never submit the reports." (0:19:37, 0:19:50). Grants for 2024-25 must be claimed first (0:19:08). Under GASB 33 a reimbursement grant is revenue only when allowable costs have been incurred and the other eligibility requirements met, and in a governmental fund only when available; revenue that is never claimed cannot be available. This is the superintendent's description of past practice, not a figure in a filed report, so it is an observation; the FY26 DOE-25 and audit would settle it.
Sources: GASB Statement 33, ¶20-21 and ¶30d (grant revenue recognized only when eligibility requirements, including allowable costs incurred, are met, and in governmental funds when available)
OBSERVATION Tuition agreements with sending districts could not be located, and recent tuition invoicing is uncertain
"There are tuition agreements or should be written tuition agreements between Claremont and some other school districts" (0:17:45); "So I am now working on figuring out if that's been done for the last two years" (0:18:13). Only one agreement had been found, and it named Claremont as the sending district's anchor while that district's website named another school (0:24:39, 0:25:22). Crawford asked whether Unity's withdrawal from the SAU voids the Unity agreement (0:26:36). The superintendent described tuition for regional CTE students as mandatory and "75% of that tuition gets reimbursed by the state" (0:28:45); that percentage is his characterization and was not verified for this page. No rule is shown to be broken; the record shows a revenue stream whose paperwork the district could not produce.
Sources: RSA ch. 194 (school districts; tuition contracts)
OBSERVATION Who sits on the teachers' negotiating team was disputed; Whitney asked the full board to decide
Crawford said "the three of us are on the Syria [SREA] negotiations" (1:02:55). Whitney: "I was nominated as the SRA representative. I'm the only as a representative that was nominated in March." (1:03:48) and "I think the whole board select who who the representatives are." (1:05:29); Crawford agreed to bring it to the board (1:05:35). The project's roster notes for the March 18, 2026 organizational meeting list Whitney alone for SREA negotiations. Dr. Broadrick explained that under New Hampshire practice the cost of a tentative agreement "has to be listed as a separate warrant article" (1:05:52), consistent with RSA 273-A's rule that only cost items go to the legislative body. Recorded as an observation: the board, not a subcommittee, makes the appointment.
Sources: RSA ch. 273-A (public-employee bargaining; only cost items go to the legislative body)
POSITIVE A written procurement guide with separation of duties was put before the committee as the first audit corrective action
The superintendent presented his procurement guide, written "in 2019 for a district that had just suffered embezzling" (0:36:10): "there is no purchasing without a purchase order"; three quotes "if you're spending more than 5000" (0:42:50); "Above $20,000, you go to the business administrator and we issue an RFP period." (0:47:04); every employee signs that they have read it (0:35:21). On separation of duties: "What I won't allow, though, is the payables bookkeeper to approve the POS." (0:41:33) and "I will not have my own account in the accounting system." (0:41:59). He said he had issued RFQs for educational services (0:47:25) and now requires out-of-district placements to sign contracts in which "Every invoice must be accompanied by service logs" (0:50:32). Federal rules require documented procurement procedures and effective internal control (2 CFR 200.318, 200.303); the guide is still being adapted, and the superintendent is himself covering the business administrator's role for now (0:08:46), which the committee should weigh against the separation he describes.
Sources: 2 CFR 200.318 (federal procurement standards: documented procedures); 2 CFR 200.303 (effective internal control over federal awards)
Appendix: source files
Official and public sources
Project files
Working files this page was built from. The dialogue file is linked; the others are not published with the page.
Dialogue/Claremont School Board Finance - 81226.CSV (554 attributed rows; the basis of this page)Input/Videos/Claremont School Board Finance - 81226.mp4Input/Transcripts/Claremont School Board Finance - 81226.jsonInput/SupportingDocuments/MAP.md, section 311
Laws and rules cited on this page
- RSA 91-A:1-a, VI(d): subcommittees are public bodies
- RSA 91-A:2, II: minutes within five business days; contents (2025, 112:1, eff. Aug. 22, 2025, for start and end time and producer)
- 2026 N.H. Laws ch. 272 (SB 586), approved July 2, 2026, eff. July 1, 2026: RSA 198:4-d, III and VIII
- RSA 197:23-a: treasurer's duties
- RSA ch. 194: school districts and tuition contracts
- RSA ch. 273-A: collective bargaining
- GASB Statement 33 and GASB Statement 34: grant revenue recognition; modified accrual
- 2 CFR 200.318 and 2 CFR 200.303: procurement procedures; internal control