Tonight (2020-05-05) was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education (BoE).
By pattern, tonight should have been the Budget Public Hearing and Meet the Candidates. As we are too busy panicking to conduct business as usual, it was a special (emergency?) meeting instead. Primary topic was the sinkhole in the High School parking lot. Other major topic was the upcoming election/budget vote.
While demolishing the parking lot at the High School, as a prelude to rebuilding it, one of the construction vehicles almost fell into a sinkhole. Appears to be where fuel tanks were once placed, which raises potential environmental concerns.
The plan as explained is to dig stuff out for testing, and then fill as appropriate. There was some concern about the dollar amount, but the engineer presenting seemed reasonable confident it would fit within the allotted contingency budget.
All that being said, it looked like any muddy worksite to me. But, in the interests of full disclosure, I’ll freely admit landscaping, geology, and such are well outside of my expertise.
The other item of significance was the upcoming budget vote. The budget Public Hearing that should have been tonight, looks to have been rescheduled for June 2nd. In addition, as with so many things these days, it will be online. Will be interesting to see how that goes.
The actual election itself will be by absentee ballot only. Sounds like the last day to get them in is June 9th, but there was a degree of uncertainty on that detail. In fact, there were a number of points that gave this whole process the feel that it had just been thrown together.
Not that I am accusing anyone of wrong doing, but as explained, I could see this leading to both rampant fraud and considerable disenfranchisement. Again, will be interesting to see how this turns out.
Personally, I think they should have had the election as normal. Stuck to the budget hearing tonight, and the election in two weeks. Instead we have this mess. And reading between the lines, the governor thinks we’ll still be locked inside come June. Otherwise we would be able to go to the school to vote.
All that being said, in the interests of full disclosure, I should be on the ballot as a potential Board of Education member. Thus I obviously have an interest in how this plays out.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the May 5, 2020 meeting of the Honeoye Falls-Lima Board of Education.
As has become the norm for this group, Agenda’s and similar information can be found at HFL’s BoardDocs page. While a recording of the meeting will likely be available soon.