Hush Hush: Bond Vote Shows Deep Divide, Raises Questions about Private Meetings
Transylvania County Commissioners voted to move ahead on a long-delayed $68 million renovation of schools, but just barely and only after months closed discussions.
BREVARD — The Transylvania County Commission voted on Monday to approve contracts that will allow the School Board to proceed with a $68 million renovation project more than three-and-a-half years after it was approved by voters.
At least that’s one thing it did.
The motion also included several paragraphs of legal language that left Board members and Transylvania County Schools Superintendent Jeff McDaris scratching their heads about its full meaning. They are hoping the Board’s lawyer can help them figure it out, they said.
“That was a complicated evening. I don’t know what else to say,” McDaris said afterwards.
But the vote was clear in other ways, revealing, first, stark differences of opinion among commissioners on the issue: The motion passed by a 3-2 vote and only after two previous motions had failed.
The meeting also confirmed what Commissioner David Guice first mentioned last week, that the Commission has talked about this matter extensively — and maybe inappropriately, an open government expert said — behind closed doors.
“Basically, what you’re seeing in the public session is the kind of dialogue and conversations that we’ve had in private sessions,” Guice added Monday.
“I’ve been all over on this (issue) as we've discussed it for the last four months,” said Vice Chairman Jake Dalton. “Some of our discussions have gone into the 11th hour.”
Actually, it’s been a little longer than four months. The Board approved amended contracts for the project’s contractor, Vannoy Construction, and its architect, Clark Nexsen, in January and and in a joint meeting with commissioners at the end of that month urged them to approve these changes as soon as possible.
Doing so was needed to allow the Board to move forward on dramatically reduced plans for renovations of Brevard High School and Rosman High and Middle schools — labeled as “Option 1” at Monday’s meeting — that were revised after bids on the original plan came in about $18 million higher than the $68 million approved by voters.
The higher cost of the work was blamed on shortages of supplies and labor caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Commission approved these contracts Monday, but only after yet another closed session, as well as the first two failed motions and the addition of language that seeks to amend its long-standing memorandum of understanding about the project between the county and Schools.
One section of an agreement signed between the two bodies in 2019 gave the Board “sole and exclusive” authority to negotiate and execute contracts with companies such as the project’s architectural firm.
The Commission added a clause stating this can only happen “after said contracts have been reviewed and approved by the County or such designee as is appointed by the County.”
The approved motion also stated that the Board affirm the spending for Option 1 is “in the best interest of the students of Transylvania County and (the funding is) sufficient to provide for a system of free public schools in Transylvania County.”
Some other impacts in the motions seem clear, including that no additional money will be available to complete the project as now imagined, and that all design documents will be promptly uploaded into a file accessible to the county.
Guice said he assumed any changes to the agreement would have to be approved by the Board. Commission Chair Jason Chappell said that assumption was “correct.”
Both Board Vice Chair Ron Kiviniemi and member Kimsey Jackson said they could not say whether they would go along with the county-approved amendments until they got the interpretation from the Board’s attorney.
Kiviniemi did say, though, that he thinks asking the Board to affirm the sufficiency of funding is an attempt to “gloss over” what he says has been the county’s historic and chronic underspending on the Schools’ capital needs.
At first glance, McDaris said, the motion contained “some parts . . . that would be illogical to agree with.” But he also said he would “reserve judgment until I hear back from the attorney.”
NewsBeat emailed several questions to County Manager Jaime Laughter seeking clarification of the language in the motion, which she referred to County Attorney Bill Bulfer.
He did not respond to those questions or a request for reports from consultants who the county previously said it planned to hire to address concerns about Clark Nexsen’s fees.
He did, however, write that the “rationale for closed sessions was set forth in the agenda for each board meeting.”
These agenda notices said the sessions were closed to preserve attorney-client privilege, which is indeed one of the justifications for restricting public access to discussions allowed by North Carolina law, said Kym Meyer, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center and the immediate past president of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition.
What matters are covered by such privilege is a matter of legal debate, she said,
”a whole body of law.”
But “the county attorney should be in the room and very carefully segregating out any larger public discussion,” she said, and the state open-meeting statute does not allow attorney-client confidentiality to be used to assess commissioners’ support for various positions.
“Just because you have an attorney in the room, if you are having different conversations among yourselves, that is not necessarily going to qualify as attorney-client privilege,” she said.
The differences among commissioners’ opinions on the bond issue were clear enough in the public session Monday.
Chappell started the conversation with a motion to move forward with Option 1, with some qualifiers that were also included in the final motion: the Board must acknowledge that the available amount for the renovation will not exceed the current total, that this amount may not cover even the scaled-back renovations now proposed, and that Board can delay the project in the hopes of an improving economic climate.
Commissioners Teresa McCall and Larry Chapman, who along with Dalton voted against this first motion, said they favored doing just that. And Chapman repeated statements he has made in previous meetings, that the improvements planned at Brevard High, especially, don’t address the most urgent needs.
McCall then moved to approve Option 1 if the Board agreed to let the county take over maintenance of the schools, which she said the district has long neglected.
That motion also failed 3-2, with Chapman casting the other “yes” vote.
Chappell and Guice agreed that the county did not have enough information about this proposal, including how much money it would cost, to move forward.
“I might be supportive of making that change if we had all the information before us but i don’t think we have that now,” Guice said.
Editor’s note: I’m taking a short trip to see old friends and will be taking a few days off next week, but going forward I plan an extensive look at juvenile mental health in the county and the resources available to address this issue. If you have any perspective, either as a young person, parent or healthcare provider, please reach out to me at the email below. Thank you!
Thanks again for a great article, Dan. That certainly was a confusing evening to try to sort out. Thank you for reporting on all sides of this issue.