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    Home » AG Cites Sedona School District, Refers Complaint to Criminal Division
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    AG Cites Sedona School District, Refers Complaint to Criminal Division

    July 5, 2015No Comments
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    By Tommy Acosta
    Associate Editor

    20150705_AG-SymbolSedona AZ (July 6, 2015) – The drama deepens in the Sedona Oak Creek Unified School District with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office launching a preliminary investigation into apparent violations of conflict of interest statutes by two present and one former school board member after citing the school board for three open meeting law violations.

    The potential criminal investigation is a result of a complaint filed with the AG’s office May 26, 2015 by a group calling itself Concerned Citizens of Sedona (CCS) alleging present school board members Bobbi Surber and Karen McClelland, and former board member Carol Huggins, used their influence as SOCUSD board members to award contracts that were in conflict of interest.

    Assistant Attorney General Christopher Munns notified SOCUSD attorney Ben Hufford on June 30, 2015 that the complaint was referred to the AG’s Criminal Division for review to determine if a criminal investigation or further action is warranted.

    photo_tommyacostaIn their 52-page complaint, the CCS group accused Ms. Surber, who was school board president at that time, of failing to adequately disclose her relationship with her former employer Shrader &  Martinez, the contractor that was eventually awarded the $5 to $7 million contract to build the district’s new office building.

    The complaint implies that Surber steered the school construction contract to Schrader & Martinez.  “We believe she (Ms. Surber) benefitted by doing so,” the group states in their complaint. “We also believe these activities were carried out with the knowledge and assistance of McClelland and Huggins.”  

    According to the CCS group, the violations occurred from June 2007 through June 2011 during the expenditure of the $73 million Sedona school bond that was passed in November 2007.

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    School board member  McClelland, responding to a request for a for a comment, dismissed the allegations.

    “I will respond only to state that this complaint is without merit,” she wrote in an email to Sedona.biz.

    This is a breaking news story.  There will be more reporting as it develops.

    Acting on a separate complaint, the AG’s office determined the school board unintentionally violated the open meeting laws on three occasions in June and July of last year when it went to into executive session and reportedly discussed items that were not properly agenized, according to Mr. Munns in a letter to the district dated June 25, 2015.

    Mr. Munns also noted the board went into executive session at its July meeting without giving proper reason to do so. Mr. Munns advised the board to undergo public training on open meeting laws and publically review the substance of the complaint that led to the AG’s findings. 

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    The Symbolism of Jan. 6

    By Tommy Acosta
    Don’t mess with symbols. Just ask author Dan Brown’s character Robert Landon. The worth of symbols cannot be measured. Symbols make the world-go-round. Symbols carry the weight of a thousand words and meanings. Symbols represent reality boiled down to the bone. Symbols evoke profound emotions and memories—at a very primal level of our being—often without our making rational or conscious connections. They fuel our imagination. Symbols enable us to access aspects of our existence that cannot be accessed in any other way. Symbols are used in all facets of human endeavor. One can only feel sorry for those who cannot comprehend the government’s response to the breech of the capital on January 6, with many, even pundits, claiming it was only a peaceful occupation. Regardless if one sees January 6 as a full-scale riot/insurrection or simply patriotic Americans demonstrating as is their right, the fact is the individuals involved went against a symbol, and this could not be allowed or go unpunished. Read more→
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