Meeting Minutes June 19, 2021

These meetings minutes are kind of important.

These minutes provide a great deal of insight into our Board, their honesty… their integrity.. the “trustworthiness” of out “trust”ees.

First, this is a typical meeting in that it was not open to the rest of us. No notice, etc. They called it a special meeting, but gave no reason as to why it was special.

• Crystal talked to the commissioner’s office regarding the problem we had had getting the Stabnow property annexed in and they are going to work on correcting the property description.

The commissioners office? <SMH> hmmmm.

• Liability Insurance –The trustees have been looking into getting liability insurance for the Road District and did some research on providers and cost. The cost for the year would be $475 from South Dakota Public Assurance Alliance. A motion to approve was initiated by Steve Charnes and seconded by Crystal Farrokhi. All members approved the motion.

Yup… spending more money without consent or discussion.

• Roadwork Update – Miller Construction is going to start the end of June (update: July 12th) and will start by doing shoulder work and cleaning out the culverts. An email will be sent prior to starting so everyone knows when it is starting. Gravel deliveries and removing wash boards will be when the weather permits.

Other than the continuation of scheduling work and spending money in a closed meeting, what we see here is the Board does notify members when work is starting. This was generally the case until they decided to tear up OUR road, with no reason or notice. That is coming up in May of 2024. Hang tight.

• Snowplow Outsourcing – We have looked for vendors to remove snow in the winter and the only person that will do it for us is Miller Construction. They charge $80/hour plus additional costs for limestone chips and fines on the steeper grades to aid in griping and melting. He will monitor the conditions and will plow as needed. A motion to approve was initiated by Crystal Farrokhi and seconded by Steve Charnes. All members approved the motion.

He will monitor the conditions and will plow as needed. We are leaving the decision of when to plow to the guy who makes an income on plowing. What could possibly go wrong? I have some behind-the-scenes emails between the trustees, not meant for public consumption. They are a bit enlightening with this particular excerpt.

And then we get into bylaw changes. This becomes important in March of 2024.

Let’s start with some very basic ethics and accepted practices. Bylaws are laws created for the Board to follow. Technically, the Board is supposed to answer to us. When we see videos on YouTube of boards getting in trouble, it us almost always because the board stopped answering to the members and instead took the position that the members answer to the board.

Allowing a board to change the rules the members created for the board to follow is.. well.. just stupid. But let’s keep going here.

Updated Section 4.5 {Record of Meetings} to ensure compliance with SDCL 31-12A-20. Previous Bylaws spoke to only record keeping of the Annual Meeting.

What this tells me is that somebody is aware there are rules they have to follow. As I have several files of Dale Ruzicka, where he has downloaded and highlighted and underlined and made notes on many laws. Laws they continued to thwart. I’ll have a few posts on these files.

In the meantime:

Updated the section on annual elections, to clarify balloting may be done electronically prior to the Annual Meeting, or by paper ballot at the Annual meeting. Also specified that a currently installed Trustee {running for re-election}, may not be involved in the collection and tallying of submitted ballots.

So, this gave me a chuckle. The section above is changing a bylaw to ensure compliance with a law. This section is a change of bylaws to ensure the continued breaking of one- electronic voting for trustees. Yup, that’s against the law. And then they specify that a current trustee running for the office again, can’t be involved in the count. Yeah, that’s already against the law.

Added the section on the “Powers of the Trustees”. This was advised by SAO, so the residents are aware of the authority being delegated to the Trustees.

Powers of trustees was already listed in the Road District codified laws. Personally, I think it was included here to shut up some of us who questioned the powers of the trustees. 🙂 “…advised by SAO..” ‘State’s Attorney Office?’ ‘State Auditor’s Office?’ This is something Dale likes to do. Use words or phrases that could mean anything so that you have to ask him and he gets attention and thinks he looks smart. I don’t know who this SAO is, but I do have my doubts that they made any such suggestion without being already set up to do so. If they did so at all.

Again, my gut says this is just the Board’s way of cutting off further questioning before it gets started.

Modified the “Account Withdrawal” section to allow email approval of the secondary signer on disbursements. The email approval must be attached to the withdrawal doc by the Treasurer.

Here we see that the board found a workaround for an absent trustee. As I anticipated after Dale was ‘elected’ (with the use of illegal emailed votes that Crystal counted), and Steve Charnes was out of the area, there was only one trustee here. And so she needed me to sign checks.

I have another post on this, but just to say again, this was avoidable by simply electing somebody who actually was a resident… was present… knew what we needed. However, the takeaway here is that they simply rewrote the bylaws to make that easier. They no longer needed two trustees present to sign checks.

Added a “Conflict of Interest” section, specifying compliance to SDCL 31-12A-24.

Again, restating a law. In this case, it begs the question as to how this came up. Well, let’s look at the law they mention, almost in passing: No trustee or employee of a road district may be directly or indirectly interested in any contract, work, or business of the district, or the sale of any article, the expense, price, or cost of which is paid by the district, nor in the purchase of any real, personal, or other property belonging to the district, or which shall be sold for taxes or assessments, or by virtue of legal process at the suit of the district. No trustee may be a joint or co-owner of land in the road district with an employee of the same road district. This section does not apply to any trustee or employee of a district consisting of less than twenty-five residents for a winter road maintenance contract or work.

Hmm… curious how or why this particular law was on their minds. Just a heads up to regular folks.. just because a politician writes a law, doesn’t mean it will pertain to them.

And that was it. No other bylaw changes.

No changes to say… hmmm… the method for ousting a trustee.