Liberal WB School Board Candidate Asked to Withdraw From Race

Bart Williams, conservative school board member candidate for the West Bend School District, called out Mark Maley for his conflict of interest in today's West Bend News. (See article below.)

Maley, himself, has been a POLITICAL PIMPLE for those who insist on reasonable taxation and social/fiscal conservative representation on this school board.

In the past, liberal Maley has:

Appeared to "bully" conservative school board members at previous meetings.

Said that the community/school district has been "hosed by conservatives" in the past.

Framed his family members and ideals (comment 22) as: "PS - 2 of my daughters are gay, and I contribute to a friend of theirs organization in Madison too.Both are terrific human beings

So I’m pro death penalty,Pro choice ,pro lesbian ,pro daughter, pro school district,pro sermon on the mount and I can read a balance sheet better than anyone I know.."

According to his own words HERE under "comment 13" (also printed below), Maley believes:

MALEY: meals with taxpayers $- a wise man saids someplace on this board -“Grow up”

INTERPRETATION: It's okay to eat out on the taxpayer dime.

MALEY: -being a school board member is taking on a 20 hour per week job at 10cents an hour. If sandwiches for the group allows them to spend an additional 5 hours in meeting that might save the taxpayers 10 Million $ over a number of years-Lets call the paper and stop that this instant.
Muckracking involves real- honest to god muck

INTERPRETATION: "Not only is eating out on the taxpayer dime perfectly acceptable, keep the meals coming! " I will admit, I've always thought it would (in a perfect world) be very nice if a citizen's "care" group would form and supply easy dinners as a courtesy for the school board members. Let's face it, the city council brown-bags it, so the reality is -if the money isn't there, we just can't/don't do it.

MALEY: But for the record- I’ll be happy to sponsor any more feeding frenzies on taxpayer time. The check is in the mail

INTERPRETATION: " I will be paying for further dinner extravaganzas." Just curious, did Mark ever follow through with this?

MALEY: -we have more kids coming than we can handle- period.
denying it doesn"t make it untrue.

COMMENT: Mark is out of touch with the district's statistics. We have more opting out than opting in. We do not have more coming in than "we can handle," we just need to be good stewards of what we have. This has not happened in the past, leading to facility disrepair, an over-emphasis on "Gifted and Talented," a warped administration-to-teacher ratio, and other bad moves.

MALEY: The referendum passed because thinking folks usually can eventually tell the difference

INTERPRETATION: Maley obviously is stating that people who were against the referendum are "stupid" or "non-thinking" and "unintelligent."

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Today's article...

A West Bend School Board candidate is calling for a fellow campaigner to withdraw from the race.

Bart Williams, one of five candidates seeking three positions on the West Bend School Board in April, has raised concerns that one of his opponents — Mark Maley — would have a conflict of interest if elected to the board.

“Mark Maley is a district employee and has been for 13 years,” Williams said. “Being a district employee and now trying to be on the very board that is supposed to oversee district employees is inherently incompatible with school board service.”

Maley, who is the West Bend High School girls basketball coach, earns a salary of $5,000 a year.

“How that puts me in conflict with anyone at the high school or middle schools is beyond me,” Maley said.

Maley said he consulted with the school district’s attorney before entering the race.

“She said that I would need to be recused from the actual physical staff salary negotiations and the one school issue,” Maley said.

That issue is the conversion of the twin high schools into one school.

......

Maley proposed an alternative.

“Let the community decide if being off of the direct negotiation and one school vote disqualifies me from being an active board member,” Maley said.

KUDOS to Williams for a courageous move to ask Maley to do the right thing.

Shame on Maley for putting his own personal interests in the way of the very school district he claims to support. It seems Maley wants to be his own boss, at taxpayer expense.