Trustee Bob Benevento will keep his interim president designation for at least another two weeks since the Morgan Hill Unified School District’s governing body tabled its reorganization vote Aug. 16 for a second straight meeting.
This time, Trustee Rick Badillo was absent from Tuesday’s regularly scheduled school board meeting, where the reorganization item was on the agenda. The remaining six trustees agreed not to vote on the new board president and vice president until they had all seven members present.
Previously, at the Aug. 2 meeting, Benevento left the item off the agenda knowing that Trustee Donna Ruebusch would not be present since she was out of the country.
However, Badillo did not give any prior notification before Tuesday night’s meeting about being unable to attend. None of his colleagues could get in touch with him to determine the reason for his absence.
“We have a slight dilemma,” said Benevento, addressing the board to open the Aug. 16 meeting. “We again only have six members. Trustee Badillo is not here and we have not heard from him.”
When contacted by the Times, Badillo said he had a “family commitment” that he could not get out of in time for meeting.
The interim president then asked for the rest of the board’s input on how to proceed and they agreed that tabling the reorganization vote until they have seven trustees in the room was the right thing to do.
“In fairness to all board members, I think we have to wait until we have a complete seven members to have the vote,” Interim Vice President Ron Woolf said.
Trustee Gino Borgioli said the board had set a “poor precedent” at the Aug. 2 meeting when they failed to take the vote in Ruebusch’s absence despite having a quorum since that’s all that is necessary. But since they did so before, they had to remain consistent in their actions.
Trustee David Gerard agreed that the “same courtesy that was extended to Donna should be extended to Rick.”
The next board meeting is scheduled for Sept. 6.
