For 20 out of its 24 hours, Monday Sept. 24 was a regular day.
I have to mention I’m as addicted to sports as my mother is to “Dancing with the Stars.” Ask either one of us, and we’ll tell you the other is beyond saving.
So I was thankful that the Clarion staff finished the first round of proofing pages for Issue #3 at a reasonable hour. That meant I could catch last minutes of the Seattle-Green Bay Monday night game on my way home, thanks to wireless tethering and public transportation.
It’s no surprise that I’m done with the thank-you’s. To make a long story short, Seattle wide receiver Golden Tate (great name) was incorrectly awarded a touchdown by replacement officials, snatching a 12-14 Packer defeat from the jaws of what should’ve been a 12-7 victory.
After the Internet recovered from a three-hour Twitter bomb strafe run, I thought about how much that terrible call reminded me of Citrus College’s predicament regarding superintendent/president Geraldine Perri’s raise.
Much like the National Football League’s decision to take a hard-line approach to negotiations with the referees union, the Citrus College Board of Trustees was determined to award Perri a raise. The actions of both would generate ripple effects that almost everybody could see coming—except for the parties making the decisions.
The board of trustees shouldn’t be surprised that Gil Aguirre is contemplating filing litigation against the college, just as the NFL can’t be surprised that using inferior ingredients resulted in an inferior product.
Nine out of 10 people spoke out against the raise July 17, yet it still went through in a 3-2 vote. Then trustee Patricia Rasmussen said that the matter had already been discussed in closed session when trustee Edward Ortell began to express reservations, prompting Aguirre to demand the raise be rescinded due what he saw as a violation of the law.
One month later, the board says they did no wrong, and it looks like the matter will be settled in court. If the board truly believes they followed proper procedure, they have every right to do so. But if they’re wrong, I would hope they would take a lesson from the NFL, and fix this mess before it gets worse.
