Key West The Newspaper

Demise of the Audit & Finance Committee

Gentlemen:

Be generous; be merciful. Put the Audit and Finance Committee out of its misery. Send its members off gently into the good night.

You never much cared for the AFC. It was veritably forced upon you in the wake of the Acevedo scandal and you have never looked to it as a significant asset. There were members of the AFC that you so disliked that you deposed them, witness Stuart Kessler and myself. There were members of the AFC who so disliked you that they resigned in protest/disgust, witness Jerry Bolduc and Bill Andersen. The AFC was not exactly a nest of happy campers.

As I understand it, you are having great difficulty finding replacements for those you have fired, those who have resigned and those who have just quietly faded away. The last three AFC meetings have been canceled, including yesterday’s, which was called off at the last minute. I believe that the AFC can, on occasion, muster a quorum of three, but that is about it. The AFC has no continuing agenda, it is moribund, dead in the water.

Of course, why would the AFC want to meet and why would anyone want to join it when no one, especially its parent organization, the School Board, cares what it does or does not do? This last year has witnessed the biggest financial scandal, the HOB daycare fiasco, in the District since the days of Monique and Randy Acevedo. Yet neither you nor Superintendent Porter bothered to “read in” the AFC and you have not requested their assistance. If the HOB daycare financial disaster, over $20,000 missing, does not warrant involvement by the AFC, what would?

I believe that whatever value the AFC had to the Monroe County School District and School Board has long passed. Be honest with the AFC and the public and let them go.

Larry Murray

Demise of the Audit & Finance Committee Part II, Dead In The Water

Gentlemen:

Since I sent to you earlier today my original missive on the demise of the Audit and Finance Committee, I have received a very important correction. Apparently, membership on the Committee has dwindled to two, Chairman Dan Dombrowski and Wayne Markham. The third member, Roger McVeigh, has been term limited out. The net result is that with only two active members, the AFC lacks the necessary participation, three, for a quorum.

Obviously, the work of the AFC is not very important to you as you have simply let three seats go vacant, in some instances for a number of months. The humane thing would be to put the AFC out of its misery by terminating it rather than leaving it twisting in the wind indefinitely.

Larry Murray

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