It seems that as soon as she was elected to the HCSD Board of Education, Tiffany Martin Hamilton needed to resign from the Board of Assessment Review, since she now represented a tax levying entity, reducing the BAR to only two members: Phil Forman and Rachel Kappel. The HCSD election took place on May 15, and Grievance Day is set for May 22, leaving no time in between to appoint and train a replacement for Hamilton on the BAR. Of course, with two candidates and two vacant seats on the BOE, it could have been predicted that Hamilton would be elected before Grievance Day, but apparently it never occurred to anyone.
So the question is can Grievance Day go forward with only two members of the BAR, or can it be postponed until a new member of the BAR is appointed and trained? The date of Grievance Day is set by the state, but so is the number of people required to serve on the Board of Assessment Review.
My congratulations to Tiffany -- for doing the right thing! This will be the first year in many years that the BAR has not had a huge conflict of interest -- Tom Swope and Kevin Walker were poster children for conflict of interest and the ensuing corrupt results. It should have been an embarassment; instead, the two provided a convenient foil for embarassed citizens to look the other way while evil was cooking. Given the seediness of the BAR these last half-dozen years, we should celebrate the fact that there are only two members!
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