The fight over a potential consolidation election between the Mingus Union High School District and Cottonwood-Oak Creek School District has continued as pro-consolidation advocates sparred with the MUHSD Governing Board through legal filings in the past two weeks.
In August, a lawsuit filed by Mingus and others in the community led to a settlement where the parties agreed to a 2019 consolidation election that could not be challenged by the plaintiff. The Committee For Better Upper Verde Valley Schools, advocating for school district consolidation, have asked Yavapai Superior Court Judge David Mackey to allow for a postponement of the election to 2020, which the Mingus board has argued violates the original settlement agreement that mandated the vote take place in 2019.
On July 1, lawyers from Munger Chadwick, on behalf of the committee, filed a reply with the court arguing that Mingus’ arguments against a postponed election should be ignored, stating that “the election date was not material to the judgment.”
“It appears that Mingus simply is taking advantage of what it perceives as another opportunity to prevent the citizens of the Verde Valley from having a say on consolidation — which, as the court is aware, was the central goal of the Oct. 5, 2018, stipulated judgment,” the reply reads.
In addition to arguing against Mingus’ attempts to hold by the original settlement’s date for a consolidation, the committee’s reply claims that Mingus’ previous court filing was invalid due to open meeting law violations.
The decision to ask their lawyers to file a brief in response to committee’s request for an extension was made in executive session at a Mingus board meeting on June 11.
The committee’s lawyers claimed that decision was invalid because the instructions that the board gave to their attorney were discussed purely in executive session, without giving the general public any understanding of what was discussed, and because a former school board member, James Ledbetter, was invited into part of the executive session that led to the instructions for the attorney.
“Possibly Mingus is extra-sensitive to an open meeting law conversation due to having remedial action imposed in one other OML violation, and currently two other OML complaints pending with the AG office,” committee member Bob DeGeer wrote in an email.
The committee did not file an open meeting law complaint against Mingus with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.
On July 8, the Mingus Board filed a legal brief in response to the committee’s reply, describing the claim of an open meeting law violation as “nonsense” and “baseless.” The legal filing points to the Arizona open meeting law, which allows instructions to an attorney to be made in executive session.
When asked about what he was doing in the Mingus executive session, Ledbetter said that he was discussing the lawsuit with the board as a witness, having been on the board at the time of the lawsuit when several current members had not, and was not involved in the decision-making process.
“I just conveyed to them the elements of the settlement, and after I left I don’t know what they directed,” Ledbetter said.
Mingus board president Lori Drake backed up Ledbetter’s version of events.
“He actually left after that,” Drake said. “All he talked about was just the case and the settlement terms, and that’s all. He was there to give us the information because he was the person — we had two past members who were there in the chambers with the judge to discuss settlement terms.”
The Cottonwood Journal Extra discussed open meeting law terms with Cottonwood City Attorney Steve Horton, who deals with open meeting law compliance for the Cottonwood City Council, trying to find out how normal the actions that Mingus is accused of having done would be in open meeting law.
Horton — who is not in any way involved with this case — said that the behavior of the Mingus board seemed to be in line with normal actions of a public board under open meeting law.
“The open meeting law says that the only people who may be in an executive session are those whose presence is reasonably necessary to accomplish the purposes of the executive session,” Horton said. “That’s as broad as all outdoors. It really is up to the discretion of the convening body whose presence is reasonably necessary.”
