Sunday Epistle to Board Member and Potted Plant in Good Standing as Elia's Board Girlfriend Candy Olson

Date:	Sun, 4 Nov 2007 12:08:43 -0800 (PST)
From:	"lee decesare" View Contact Details Add Mobile Alert
Subject:	school board monkey biz as usual
To:	jack.lamb@sdhc.k12.fl.us, carol.kurdell@sdhc.k12.fl.us, doretha.edgecomb@sdhc.k12.fl.us, susanvaldes@sdhc.k12.fl.us, jennier.falierao@sdhc.k12.fl.us, april.griffin@sdhc.k12.fl.us
CC:	MBrown@tampatribune.com, denisepalmer@tampatrib.com, lstein@sptimes.com, ptash@sptimes.com, tobin@sptimes.com, tgonzalez@tsg-law.com, fred@fredburns.com, jamesalusio@sdhc.k12.fl.us, lisa.caminchos@sdhc.k12.fl.us, pmanteiga@lagacetanewspaper.com, johnhill@sptimes.com

From Marilyn Brown column, Tampa Tribune: “Veteran board member Candy Olson said, ‘I think you have to balance how much time you want to spend with the potential competitive and potential savings are. I think we have a lot more important things to do.’"

Ms. Olson:

The above excerpt comes from Marilyn Brown's story on the bizarre bid process that allowed Ms. Luney to hire a buddy for the cushy wellness job on the taxpayer’s dime, for Ms. Elia to approve it post facto, for the board to rubberstamp it on Ms. Elia’s orders as usual--all despite the plethora of wellness factotums already on board. The public-affairs office says the job got no advertising.

I infer La Luney’s onomatopoeic surname coincides with her brain power. Her quotes were some of the looniest I have heard come out of the administrative playground. It seems she makes $130,000 tax dollars a year to engage in such fun-and-games larking at taxpayer expense and has been doing so for a long, smooth administrative career as a principal until Dr. Lennard recruited her—no advertising of the position, of course—to whatever she does now in the administrative funny farm of incompetent administrative dimwits.

I believe La Luney’s behavior models the “institutional memory” lore about which Ms. Edgecombe caterwauls without knowing what the term means. Such administrative skullduggery endorsed by the potted-plant board comprises the schools’ institutional memory as far as I can tell.

Pray at the next board meeting when the wellness mess comes up explain to the public what things are "a lot more important" than exploring a corrupt hiring system, the subsidizing of a dumb administrator for $130,000 a year, and, to top things off, an expensive-to-the-taxpayers featherbedding buddy job added to the pay roll in an area in which a plethora of personnel now exists.

I would also like to know what instructions Ms. Elia condescended to give you board potted plants on the wellness-hire vote in her zeig-heil debriefing that precedes each board meeting at which the superintendent hands down to board members their marching orders on how to vote on the podium and whether they can chew gum.

Did any board member rouse him- or herself from Stockholming coma to ask whether the district needs yet another wellness factotum or whether the job were advertised? Did any board member invoke the rights of taxpayers to more board scrutiny of such cockamamie proposals as is this wellness-consultant scam?

This whole mess-up would not have not gotten one question from the board had an alert reporter not done the board’s homework and put her research in the paper. Then, board members feared they looked bad, incumbency arose in their consciousness, and they issued muffled disclaimers or tardy indignation.

I also comment on your perpetual name-dropping of South Tampa.

One would think that area was the only section of the county you represent. When I looked at the board-member map, I was surprised to see you represent as well some of the poorest areas of the county. Why don't you ever mention them, and why don't you spend some of the time you consume on the podium in your frequent unconscious-train-of-thought-ramble-of-chit-chat-

on-the-Meaning-of-Life-and-other-odds-and-ends of important stuff that bore people out their minds to talk about the needs of the poor areas in your district?

Do you consider any show of concern for other than South Tampa MacMansion dwellers as slumming?

One supposes so. One infers you want to be on record—and frequent record at that-- as having only connection to or concern for people in your district likely to receive an invitation to join the pirates-and-rapists celebrants of Ye Mystique Krewe, who march down Bay Shore liquored-up in bespangled pirate droopy drawers that bag low and contain nothing. The Mystiques present the tackiest strutting of faux social superiority to ever come down the pike, with members' being but two generations away from sharecropping and pellagra.

Lee Drury De Cesare

15316 Gulf Boulevard 802

Madeira Beach, FL 33708.