David Rice has written an excellent article regarding questionable benefits packages and payouts in the Ozark School District. Also a great exposure of the NGOs that have undue influence on school districts, robbing them of local control.
From the article:
"The School Board adopted the "PRIME CHOICE® Plan" offered by
Precision Retirement Group, which allows public employers to convert
certain forms of compensation like accumulated sick leave, vacation
time, and incentive payments into contributions to either a medical
trust called the "PRIME Plan" or special deferred compensation plans
like 401(a) or 403(b) accounts. Copies of the Prime Plan are at the end
of the article.
The materials promote these conversions as
allowing tax-free reimbursements for retiree health expenses in the
PRIME Plan trust, or opportunities to defer federal and state taxes in
the deferred compensation plans. They also advertise eliminating FICA
tax obligations for both the employer and employee.
While
portrayed as benefits for employees, such specialized retirement plans
allowing favorable tax treatments on back-end payouts have been
criticized by some as forms of excessive "golden parachutes" for
highly-compensated public officials and administrators."
Well worth reading, with links galore to get you up to speed on the issues.
At the February 27, 2024 Christian County Library Board of Trustees
meeting, citizens were once again faced with a board president who
appears to be setting up a narrative regarding public comments.
Quick Background
Since December 2022,
the library board has been taken to task by citizens who have
requested that books with inappropriate material be relocated out of
the children’s section of the library. This material runs the gamut
from early sexualization of children, indoctrination of children into
Marxist agendas through Social Emotional Learning, Diversity, Equity,
and Inclusion, and Critical Race Theory, and LGBTQ themes and gender
ideology. These are the same issues that parents of public school
children are facing in their school libraries and curricula.
The library board
and staff have resisted these requests. Following the far left agenda
of the American Library Association (ALA) and its member chapter the
Missouri Library Association (MLA), the local library has been nearly
unresponsive to the requests of taxpayers.
Citizens are not
giving up, and the library board is met every month with citizens
asking for recourse to protect children. It is now March 2024. Two
new trustees have been appointed and a third one will be appointed in
the coming months.
It is understandable
that the board majority and staff are weary of the citizens’
requests, when it is obvious they have no intention of protecting
children, but rather continue to provide unsuitable materials to any
child that happens upon them in the children’s section. It is no
longer a matter of unintentional exposure. These materials are being
provided in a purposeful manner to children under the guise of
“Freedom to Read".
Suppressing Free Speech at the Library
At last Tuesday's meeting, Board President Allyson Tuckness not only reiterated the standard rules
that suppress free speech and communication between citizens and
the board, but she added another new rule. Watch (prompted to the 42:45 minute mark):
So let’s get a list going:
Comments limited to 10 speakers, with three minutes each (meetings
typically end right at the one-hour mark, unless the board’s
business goes longer, as happened at the February meeting)
Will not respond to
public comments at the time they are made (has anyone ever had a
response afterward?)
The board may ask
clarifying questions, comment or take action at their discretion (but citizens cannot ask clarifying questions or comment on board comments)
Questions for staff
about library operations should be made during normal business hours (why is this a problem? Isn't the board involved in library operations?)
If a patron needs to
step outside for whatever reason, they are asked not to go beyond the
foyer outside for “safety reasons” (a narrative being pushed)
Building the Bad Citizen Narrative
For several months
now, the library has contracted to have a police officer on duty
during the board meetings. Ostensibly this is because of “heightened
emotions,” a term that Tuckness uses often when she speaks about citizen comments.
At the latest
meeting she mentioned a speaker at the December meeting, a young man
who spoke vehemently and passionately about being introduced to porn
at a young age, and its deleterious effects upon him. He begged the
board to remove such books from the children’s section of the
library.
Oddly, at another
meeting a month or so previously, a man in the audience had become
angry at the exposure of some of the materials a citizen had shared. The man slapped the materials out of a
woman’s hand and threw them at another citizen. He was escorted
from the meeting room.
But it is the young
Christian man who Tuckness mentions in the video above —with the
'heightened emotions'. This is the narrative of the Bad Citizen, the
Bad Christian that has been formed and is being pushed to the public
and perhaps other actors.
The board president asks citizens to respect the board. “We will
not tolerate raising of voices or yelling at us, at other audience
members, or Renee [the executive director]. I will give everyone a
chance, will ask them to calm down, will not take away their time,
but if it happens a second time you may be cut off.” Then she says,
“Try to control emotions and respect us the same way that we would
respect you.”
Is it the emotions
that bother some of the board members and staff, or is it the truth
being expressed in those emotions?
“Accordingly, a function of free speech under our system of
government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high
purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates
dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to
anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at
prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as
it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of speech,
though not absolute, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, supra,
pp. 315
U. S. 571-572, is nevertheless protected against censorship or
punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger
of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public
inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest.”
Board
President Tuckness does not respect the citizens who speak. She
asserts she has the right to determine the tone and volume of another
citizen’s speech. Just as the socialist/progressives seek to defame those who oppose their agenda, so Tuckness is framing Christians as overly emotional, while ignoring the actual physical accosting of others on the part of a citizen opposed to relocating objectionable materials away from children.
And worst of all, Tuckness refuses to address the urgent issue of children being exposed to sexually explicit and pervasively vulgar books, even early indoctrination into alternative sexualities--there are actually board books for toddlers pushing gender ideology in the children's section of the library.
If she can't take the heat, President Tuckness should resign. The people will continue to speak.
The Christian County Commission held a meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024 at the
Resource Management Building to consider a plan by Black
Mountain Energy Storage to purchase and develop a 34-acre parcel
for lithium battery storage.
Proposed Black Mountain Battery Storage Facility in
Ozark
(Click here
for public documents pertaining to the project)
$100 million project
Would be termed a public utility
Purchase agreement in place of 34.1 acre parcel
Development of 6-8 acres of the parcel
56 storage units, each approximately 8’ tall and 40’
wide
Able to store 75 MGW or 300 MWh of electricity (It
takes about 33 Mwh to power one home for a month)
Additional substation to be added
Nearest home is 525 feet away from current substation
New substation will be 600 feet away from housing
100 temporary construction jobs, not guaranteed local
Some tax benefit to the county, though not stated
No promise of local benefit on electricity costs
The meeting was
packed, standing room only.
Introduced to the
public at last week’s Christian County Commission meeting, Resource
Management Director Todd Wiesehan, gave a short update to his
presentation to answer questions he had received. Wiesehan said, “We
have gotten plenty of input,” and said there were some concerns
about siting, environmental control, safety, fire hazards, and
removal if the storage facility is decommissioned or abandoned.
What Wiesehan did
not say is that the community surrounding the proposed facility had
not been properly informed of the plans. Only seven letters went out
to the homes in the area to inform residents. Later, during the
public comment section, citizen Rose Bergman said she had personally
visited 50 households in the area to alert them to the proposed
storage facility. Additionally, the
county Planning and Development had been working with Black
Mountain Energy Storage for approximately a year prior to last week’s
presentation to the county commission.
A purchase agreement
was entered into since August 2023 that is open for three years.
Wiesehan went on to
say that the county has the authority to attach certain conditions to
satisfy concerns to the county order, if given approval. He said,
“The staff has assembled a draft list of conditions and
requirements that are intended to reasonably address the major
concerns which have been identified so far.”
He then went over
the types of concerns that had been voiced. He mentioned siting and
visual impacts, possible requirements to plant trees around the
facility to “buffer,” lighting requirements to aim down and in to
the site to minimize light pollution, site access (the developer
would bear all burden of that requirement during construction).
He mentioned water
management and retention as environmental concerns that would be
addressed, as well as erosion controls developed. The developer would
have to preserve existing wetlands (there are two ponds on the
parcel), and minimize tree removal.
Safety concerns
included a commissioning plan (fires and other mishaps can happen
when these facilities are newly commissioned), providing a
maintenance manual, documents explaining the design and maintenance,
testing, etc.
He also mentioned an
emergency operations plan that would necessarily include multiple
jurisdictions in the event of an emergency. Also a fire safety
compliance plan would be required. Not only would the facility need
to meet local codes, but also requirements that pertain to lithium
battery storage units, as well as specific training for local
responders. Security fencing would be required.
Wiesehan lastly
mentioned a decommissioning and removal plan as a requirement, with a
possible bond provided by the developer to cover the cost of such
eventualities.
The meeting was then
turned over to Black Mountain Energy Storage’s Carolyn O’Brien,
Director of Permitting and Entitlement, who admitted she was “not
used to talking to so many people.”
She said she hoped her presentation would alleviate concerns that
many people had expressed. The parent company to Black Mountain
Energy Storage (BMES) is Black
Mountain, a company founded in 2007. It is an Australian company.
BMES is based in Texas and was founded in 2021.
O’Brien admitted
that battery storage of lithium batteries is a new technology. “We
are on the forefront of the companies that have been created,” she
said. Even though three years is a short time, it is relatively a
long-time in the stand-alone battery storage industry, she said.
She next went on to
give a slide presentation of what the battery storage units look
like, their size (8’ by 40’), how they are not made to be opened,
and their batteries, racks, inverters, and fire suppression systems.
She mentioned the
containers were made to operate outside and in environments where a
lot of safety measurements are required. Fire protection for smoke
and heat, explosion prevention, and working very closely with fire
departments to ensure safe handling was also mentioned.
She also spoke about
redundancy designs, for instance if one smoke detector doesn’t
work there are backups to the system. She mentioned full-scale fire
testing that happens with lithium battery storage. She mentioned a
couple testing codes and requirements. She said that the units have
been tested thoroughly for whatever condition exists.
O’Brien said BMES
has a great team for prospecting and siting of these storage
facilities. She said she spoke with the manager of that team who
shared insights into why this particular location was chosen. White
River Valley Electric
Cooperative controls most of the power production in this area,
so when White River is at a certain level the reservoirs are either
released or not released, and that is what provides the power...and
that may not always be what is optimal for power transmission or
rates.”
She then mentioned that if our area was in a flood or drought
condition, there may or may not be a release from the dam. She also
said that weather conditions can determine whether there is a release
from the coal plant. “So, with a battery storage in this area, it
kind of smooths the curve. So basically it sort of flattens the
curve, um if you will, on the peaks and valleys you can get with the
energy production provided that is basically dependent on White River
in this area.”
What was not readily
shared, was that the company would not necessarily have or sell the
stored electricity to provide assistance, since the company would be
selling its electricity to many different grid customers. It is
dependent, of course, on the availability to purchase stored power
from the company that owns the battery storage facility.
Later, O’Brien
mentioned tax revenues. “The tax contribution, uh, we are an over
$100 million facility with a span of 20 years and...there is a tax
benefit to having [the battery storage facility.]”
Next, she mentioned
that the company plans on being a good neighbor. “That’s why
we’re here, we do want to be good neighbors. I know a lot of you
are concerned about that. We really want you all to feel like we’re
gonna come into the community and you’re gonna know what’s
happening and that you’re gonna be safe and, you know, you’re
gonna be able to enjoy the wildlife.”
She shared an
example of a battery storage facility near Austin, Texas to give the
audience an idea of what the facility would look like when completed.
She noted that the facility was very close to residential
subdivisions in the area, and said the company did provide fencing
and landscaping.
She said that on the Ozark project they are looking at 2028 for
commissioning, since the breakers on the facility have a 36-month
lead time. Additionally, there has not yet been any permitting on the
project, and O’Brien asserted there would be no impact on any
nearby wetlands.
Citizens were then
given time to comment and they had done their homework. At one point
the consensus in the room was nearly 100% against the project by
hands raised. There were citizens with decades of experience with
electrical power, software systems engineering, and real estate
appraisals among the crowd. Complaints and concerns were centered on
the following issues:
Numerous residents are in close proximity to the proposed facility
No nearby fire
station
Water contamination
from a catastrophic event
Citizens are not
seeing power fluctuations, as O’Brien cited happened in Texas,
which is on its own grid
Black Mountain
Energy has previously been fined for misstatements of facts,
according to a citizen
Black Mountain
Energy is a land acquisition company, a citizen said
Black Mountain
Energy Storage has 20 projects, four under construction, all
completed projects have been sold to other companies, including
foreign companies
No bonding agreement
yet available; incomplete paperwork available to public
Tendency of energy
companies to go bankrupt and leave counties/cities with costs to
decommission and remove (no money for bonding from bankrupt company)
Although O’Brien
said water suppression was not used to put out runaway thermal fires,
a citizen later cited a paper that said water suppression is still
the major component used to suppress the extremely hot temperatures
of lithium ion battery fires. The fires must burn themselves out, but
water as a cooling agent can prevent other units from catching fire
No answer on what
company is manufacturing the battery units
Springfield was
persuaded by the federal government to destroy their coal plant, and
electricity costs have risen
Public utilities are
hard to shut down
Rates of serious
fires, injuries, poisoning, and deaths associated with battery
storage facilities was cited by several citizens
The county planning
and zoning commission did not get a Department of Natural Resources
report, and relied exclusively on studies provided by BMES
The county planning
and zoning commission did not research the negative impacts of
battery storage facilities before presenting to the county
commission, or if they did, they did not present that to the
commissioners
No study of property
value impact
No special limits on
battery weights, possibly leading to infrastructure road damage
Operational range
temperatures: batteries begin degrading at 105°f
and become inoperable at 112-115°f. Conversely, at 14°f batteries
begin to degrade and become inoperable at -12°f
Battery
life span is often not the advertised 15 years, but anywhere from 5
to 10.5 years on the low end, with an average of 8.3-year span
The
advertised 55-decibel rating for sound per unit (temperature
control) is closer to 75
decibels, according to
one citizen. There are 56
units in the proposed
facility. A lawn mower is
83 decibels.
One
citizen claimed the company was operating in the red
One
citizen expressed concern that O’Brien could not or would not
answer numerous questions.
A
citizen said the current wind rating was not acceptable for tornado
activity
Another
citizen said all the risk would be on the county and none on the
company, since the county would have jurisdiction
Presiding Commissioner Lynn
Morris announced there would be more meetings to discuss the issue,
and that it may be months before a decision would be made on whether
to approve a county order for the facility.
This is a must-read article by David Rice. It details how the Friends of the Library in Christian County support the status quo, i.e., letting sexually explicit and pervasively vulgar books be accessible to children. The Marxist, godless and technocratic agenda of indoctrinating children and minors into gender ideology is at a peak right now.
The physical and emotional toll this ideology is taking upon our children will echo down the years as an era of insanity. No individual of good will can remain neutral.
Rice exposes how the Friends of the Library take books the community has donated, resells them, and then uses that money to support the status quo. The FOL president even has the audacity (perhaps ignorance) to write in opposition to HB2498, which provides for the election rather than appointment of library boards:
"This bill will also give the now-elected Board of Trustees the power to
approve or reject all library employees, programs, activities, and
volunteers."
He is advocating that un-elected employees, and not elected officials, be in charge of the library.
There are many ways in which publicly-funded entities limit and
suppress the right of the public to speak freely.
Art. I, Sec. 8 of
the Constitution of the State of Missouri states: “That no law
shall be passed impairing the freedom of speech, no matter by what
means communicated: that every person shall be free to say, write or
publish, or otherwise communicate whatever he will on any subject,
being responsible for all abuses of that liberty…”
Right behind that is
“Sec. 9, Rights of peaceable assembly and petition. – That the
people have the right peaceably to assemble for their common good,
and to apply to those invested with the powers of government for
redress
of grievances by petition or remonstrance.”
According to the
article, “Former Springfield City Attorney Howard Wright, who has
written about the subject on
his website [website is no longer active], said courts have found
that citizens must be given a "meaningful opportunity to
comment" when a public hearing is required. But as long as that
happens, "I think council has a lot of discretion to adopt rules
and procedures."
The article then
shares some of the rules and regulations local governing bodies have
applied to public speech at their meetings.
If you have attended
a public meeting lately, you may have run into some of the ways
boards limit and suppress speech. It is usually couched in terms of
timeliness, application to the current agenda, distractions and so forth, but what
actually occurs is an undue limit on the rights of citizens to
communicate to and with their elected and/or appointed boards in a
public setting.
The rules and guidelines seem geared toward troublemakers, but give precious little evidence that
citizens in general are not already acting in an orderly and polite
manner. Public forums can get boisterous, passionate, even
contentious at times, but citizens usually do a wonderful job of
policing themselves, and should not be made to suffer for a board of
thin-skinned individuals who want to control every action of the
audience and can brook no distraction of any kind.
Time limits on
public speech—giving citizens as little as three minutes to speak
on a topic—is one way in which free speech is suppressed. That is
not a “meaningful opportunity to comment.” Three minutes to
address a grievance or inquire of the board is often not enough time
to fully express an issue. Also, boards tend not to respond to the
issues addressed. They sit mute before the public, presumably hoping
the person and therefore the issue will disappear.
“The board encourages residents to utilize the process for placing
items on the agenda but will also specifically designate time for
district residents to provide public comments at regular meetings of
the board. The following rules will apply to the public comment
portion of the meeting:
The board will establish a time
limit for the public comment period.
No individual will be permitted
to speak more than once during this period.
The board will establish a uniform
time limit for each speaker.
Discussion will be limited to
items from the posted agenda.
All speakers must provide his or
her name and address prior to speaking.
If there is insufficient time for everyone to speak,
the board will encourage participants to submit their questions
in writing or utilize the process for putting an item on the
agenda.”
Regarding public
concerns and complaints, the District has this to say: “The district
encourages parents/guardians, students and other members of the
public to first discuss concerns with the appropriate district staff
prior to bringing the issue to the Board so that the issue may be
thoroughly investigated and addressed in a timely fashion. The
Board will not act on an issue without input from the appropriate
district staff and may require a parent/guardian, patron or student
to meet with or discuss an issue with district staff prior to hearing
a complaint or
making a decision on the matter.”
If citizens cannot
go to their elected officials without first going through what is
undoubtedly a filter, then who is truly representing the
people?
That very few individuals attend most public meetings may
have something to do with the extra burdens placed upon citizens. A
citizen should not feel as if their speech is of such low concern as
to merit a three-minute time limit for hearing an issue, or that the board “may require” a citizen to meet with
intermediaries (district staff) before addressing the board. (Note: the OSD time-limit policy is five minutes though they had been limiting individuals to three minutes as stated in the video below.)
The school board at
the Ozark School District has questionable requirements, even going
to so far as to suppress the speech of their own members through requiring points of order in order to address citizens and calling for the question before sufficient time to discuss the issue has occurred. Citizens have a right to hear the speech
of others, as well as to speak.
At an October 2023
board meeting discussion regarding addressing citizens in a public
meeting, it was decided that individual board members must first
address the board president for permission to speak with a citizen.
If you watch the whole discussion, it becomes clear that the board
intends to keep tight control of not only citizen participation, but
of the board itself. Watch the discussion (prompted at 12 minutes):
....
If you have attended an Ozark school board meeting, it becomes clear that the tight
control is not because there are routinely violent, or otherwise
inappropriate outbursts (although the News-Leader reported boardmembers accusing the public of such things.) If you watch the online
board meetings, it is clear the board as a whole is not comfortable
with any type of disagreement, even with other board members.
Attorneys, in particular those of the Missouri School Boards Association (MSBA)
have been involved. At about 34 minutes in, Patty Quessenberry, who
is running for re-election to the school board again after serving for 27
years and who is currently the president-elect of the MSBA, even
mentions that the board has conferred with an attorney about the
new policy they are discussing.
At 39 minutes in
Quessenberry actually asks how to proceed if one of the dreaded
outbursts happens but she hasn’t noticed
it happened. Board Member Christina Tonsing even mentions she has not
heard a lot of what the other board members claim are outbursts.
The discussion then goes on to what certain audience members said or
didn’t say, whether it was rude, and whether the board members had
actually heard what they thought they heard.
Board Member Guy
Callaway suggests that some of the citizen comments were misconstrued
by not only board members, but others in the room. Apparently, board members
are conferring with others present, many of whom are
school employees.
This is some nasty
uprising from citizens, eh?
In November's meeting, a citizen questioned the board about an incident that occurred in October, when a citizen was removed from the meeting in violation of the board's new policy. See his comments here (video prompted). You will see the board attempts to shut him down:
The ever present timer rings while he is still speaking. He was the only public speaker for the meeting, which is very common. No one responded to the citizen's comments. The board moves right on to the next agenda item. It is as if he didn't exist.
It isn't until Board Member Christina Tonsing brings up the issue some time later that it is addressed. If she had not brought it up through the Community Engagement Plan on the Agenda, it would not have been referred to at all.
At approximately 1:04:00 in the video, Board Member Tonsing requests the Community Engagement Plan be pulled from the Consent Agenda, so it can be discussed. The board seems reluctant but Tonsing is allowed to share her views on the plan and how it came about, and she makes a connection between that and the issue of public comments in her quest to have the item pulled from the agenda.
Also, please note that though the transcript repeatedly states it is Board Member Amber Bryant speaking, it is actually Tonsing. The item was pulled from the agenda and Tonsing asks the board for their responses. Crickets, except for Guy Callaway who felt that the board had done their duty to solicit community engagement, of which there was apparently very little. The motion is quickly approved to accept the consent agenda.
At the December 2023 board meeting, a very important subject comes up, that of due process for teachers. Board Member Tonsing begins to make a case for modifying the MSBA's proposed changes in district policy, as it may violate the "federal process" for teachers going through a suspension or termination process. (It is helpful to read the transcript of the video clip.) The proposed change reads:
"The fourth potential change/addition in policy - A
member of the community has requested the following be placed into
policy: Teacher and staff discipline - Any administrator, teacher, or
staff of the district who is disciplined has the right to fair
treatment. Therefore, any performance improvement plan presented to a
district employee must be presented to the board at the next meeting by
the superintendent. The superintendent will establish a timeline for the
improvement required and update the board monthly on the employee's
progress or lack thereof. Further, no Notice of Deficiency will be
presented to a district employee until that employee has been invited to
a board meeting to be heard and the board has approved the notice. At
the hearing, the superintendent must present the failures of the
Performance Improvement Plan in correcting the employee's shortcomings,
including a summary of follow-up on the PIP."
In a clip from the board meeting (see below), which was recorded by the Ozark Schools Support Team and is not available at the district's YouTube Channel (interesting, eh?), you will see Board Member Bryant quickly shut down discussion by 'calling the question,' which is typically used when debate and discussion has been extensive. In this case, the board immediately voted to accept only the changes that had been proposed by the MSBA, completely suppressing any discussion.
The public was given no chance to hear a response or discussion of the issue, even though Ozark School District has an elevated turnover rate of teachers, with some controversial personnel decisions in the recent past. The board shut down Tonsing and simply voted the changes as recommended by the MSBA.
In conclusion, there are a myriad of ways that public boards suppress free speech. They do the voting public a great disservice by attempting to control narratives and stop discussion of matters that are of interest to citizens. Indeed, by limiting the free exchange of ideas, on both the part of board members, as well as citizens who have a right to speak, these publicly-elected boards undermine their communities and the well-being of their constituents.
“Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest.” --Calvin Coolidge
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