MPC trustees go round and round over how to handle complaints made against each other.

What could have been a short discussion about creating ad hoc committees turned into an over two-hour argument for the Monterey Peninsula Community College District Board of Trustees on Wednesday, April 24.

It was par for the course for the dysfunctional board that has seen consistent arguing and rudeness between trustees, even through a failed attempt to heal the fissures between trustees with a mediator during a meeting on March 14.

The failure was magnified on Wednesday, with three complaints by trustees against other trustees noted on the agenda. It was not revealed which trustees were the complainants and which were the complainees, although at one point Trustee Debbie Anthony revealed that she had been told by MPC President/Superintendent Marshall T. Fulbright ahead of the meeting that one of the complaints was about her.

The chair of the board, Rosalyn Green, had appointed trustees Loren Steck and Libby Downey to one ad hoc committee to investigate one complaint about two board members, and trustees Yuri Anderson and Anthony to the other committee to investigate two complaints. Green was following Board Policy 2715, concerning board behavior, which dictates how investigations into complaints are carried out.

Attempting to guide the board through the discussion and get consent from trustees to serve on the committees was Sarah Kaatz, from the firm that the district contracts with for legal counsel, Lozano Smith. Her attempts quickly ran aground.

Anthony almost immediately began to argue and interrupt the proceedings, upset that they weren’t being told who the complainants and complainees were and giving them a chance to settle things on their own.

Steck interrupted Kaatz next, asking if the board should even set up the committees. Later he said that “if we go down this road, we’re just going to be asking for escalation and there’s going to be complaint after complaint after complaint by all kinds of board members…that’s a bad direction to take.”

Anderson countered that argument, making the case that as a board they had to follow their policy.

“I don’t disagree with your comments, Trustee Steck, that this is a distraction and might cause other complaints to arise. And this board has been called out on more than one occasion by the campus community for not adhering to our own board policies,” Anderson said. She agreed what was happening was a distraction from the work of the board, but, “I think we have to do this.”

Anderson also pointed out that the one negative finding of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges for MPC was that the trustees do not follow Board Policy 2715, which states the trustees are to “work together in a spirit of harmony and cooperation, treating other board members with respect and courtesy.”

Steck, Downey and Anthony attempted to stop the proceedings altogether. Anthony and Downey suggested changing the policy over how complaints are handled. Fulbright reminded the board they can’t change a policy “on a whim” in a meeting, they have to follow a multi-step process.

“I'm concerned that we're having conversations literally about how to change and not follow an existing policy,” Fulbright said. “That was our only area for recommendation from our accreditor was the board following its own policy.”

Downey doubled down. “It has been said tonight that we haven’t always followed our policies, so why do we have to do it tonight, if we haven’t been doing it?” she asked.

And round and round they went.

Kaatz tried on more than one occasion to explain that if the trustees simply formed the ad hoc committees, those committees could do what they wanted, including deciding not to follow up on a complaint.

Steck, Downey and Anthony wouldn't commit to accepting their appointments. Only Anderson accepted the appointment because she said it was her duty as a trustee.

Steck tried repeatedly to make a motion to end the discussion because, he said, he wanted "cooler heads to prevail" in hopes that the complainants simply withdrew their complaints.

In the end the board simply didn’t take any action and Green moved the board onto the final agenda items.

The complaints remain unresolved.