||| FROM KEVIN RANKER |||
With more than 30 years experience overseeing governmental organizations, similarly sized to San Juan County, Kari McVeigh possesses exactly the sort of professional background that qualifies her for the San Juan County Council.
She has directly managed $100 Million budgets and overseen staff of nearly 1,000. She was superintendent of San Juan and Shaw School Districts where she brought sustainable budgeting as well as something else that is critical for our county government… a total commitment to the dedicated public employees who make the organization work.
With decades of community service, years of it right here in the San Juan Islands, a deep commitment to the environment and an ability to listen and lead thoughtfully, it is perfectly clear that Kari will be an exceptional County Council Member.
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Think Twice
Before voting, everyone should be aware of some facts and a pattern of behavior inherent in Kari McVeigh, as evidenced by the following lawsuit and news article related to two back-to-back employment departures from two different school districts.
First, the legal decision cited below is from an appeal of a lawsuit that was filed against the BEVERLY HILLS UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT where Kari McVeigh was employed as superintendent and turned a blind eye to the actions of Christianson, as planning Director of the school system. Christensen’s compensation went from 113,000 a year to millions of dollars after she managed to convince the district that she could perform the same duties acting as an independent contractor through her wholly owned LLC. Payments to Christensen‘s LLC, Strategic LLC became out of control to the tune of millions of dollars, particularly after Christensen convinced McVeigh and the school board to pass a $300 million dollar bond. when the district tried to terminate her, she sued and won even more money from the school district.
The trial court awarded Strategic $4,310,660 in prejudgment interest pursuant to Civil Code section 3287, subdivision (b), and $2.3 million contractual attorney fees. The total judgment is $20,321,169.
It was overturned on appeal after McVeigh “retired,” essentially walking away from the problem in 2008, and leaving the district with the deficit, the fallout, and stress of an appeal for 10 years, as the appeal wasn’t decided until 2018.
This, voters, is from a legal record, not a news article. The upsetting aspect of this legal record and action is that there was little or no supervision on McVeigh’s watch. That is not the type of oversight, control, and husbanding of resources that we want for our county.
Anyone in a fiduciary role be it as superintendent of a school district or County Council must not have even the appearance of impropriety. This lack of oversight, whether complicit or not is unacceptable in the position of County Council.
Going forward, after leaving BEVERLY HILLS UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT in 2008, she became employed as superintendent of the NEW HAVEN UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT in December 2008, where she remained contentiously until 2014.
Following is an excerpt from an article posted in the Mercury News on June 5, 2013:
“By CHRIS DE BENEDETTI | Bay Area News Group, Mercury News
PUBLISHED: June 5, 2013 at 4:15 a.m.
UNION CITY — New Haven Unified’s superintendent of schools has announced she is leaving the district, saying her differences with the school board over recent management choices fueled her decision.
Kari McVeigh, the district’s superintendent since December 2008, will step down on Nov.
30, using about six weeks of vacation until she formally retires on Jan. 14, 2014.
“I am proud of the progress that our district has made in the past four-and-a-half years,” she said in a statement released Wednesday.
“But it has become painfully obvious to me that the board and I have irreconcilable differences about the board’s insistence on injecting itself into management decisions.”
In this case, it seems she couldn’t abide by mandates set by the School Board (her bosses), choosing instead to leave, citing “irreconcilable differences.”
Do we really want this type of financial and personnel maneuvering in our San Juan County Council?
Sources:
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-court-of-appeal/1895679.html
https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/06/05/new-haven-superintendent-kari-mcveigh-leaving-school-district-citing-differences-with-board/