Why was Mitchell so adamant that the contract be approved at the March meeting?
Even though District Counsel Craig Hess noted that voting on Glass’s contract extension violated the spirit of District policy (at 2:39 of Board Livestream) and 2 Board members noted that doing so could be perceived as lack of transparency, Mitchell was determined to vote on the extension at the meeting.
Mitchell even went so far as to claim that the 2 people who spoke at public comment on the fact that the contract wasn’t even available for review until sometime after early morning Thursday were proof that the public had the opportunity to comment on the extension. (Hey Ron – their comments were aimed at the fact that needed information wasn’t available!)
Multiple Board Members stated that their vote would be the same that month as it would be the following month if they waited.
Yet, Ron Mitchell pushed through a vote, and every Board member dutifully followed along and voted for it.
Just one more blow to transparency in Jeffco!
But why such the rush, there was still well over a year remaining? And, why wasn’t the contract posted to the Board agenda site until the day of the vote? There supposedly weren’t any material changes in it from the original contract, so why couldn’t it have been posted earlier? Certainly, Glass had a copy prior to that time so that he could have it reviewed by his lawyer.
What was Mitchell afraid of? Was he afraid of the public comment he might get because there aren’t any performance based provisions in the contract? Did Jason Glass get another offer and threatened to leave the District if he didn’t get a contract extension that month? Was Mitchell worried about potential comments that might come out regarding some of the deception perpetrated by Glass regarding getting people to vote for 5B?
I guess we’ll never know.
However, we can infer from the actions of Mitchell that he was worried about something. And, he was willing to throw transparency and the spirit of the Board’s own policies to the wind to get the contract extension passed that night.
Shame, shame, shame on Mitchell and the Board!