Letter: Trustees lack right perspective

In an Oct. 7 story, reporter Ryan McCarthy quoted Yuba College Trustees President Alan Flory as saying that “no employees would lose their jobs if a 3 percent across-the-board pay cut was instituted.”

Flory then goes on to say that he would propose just such a measure at the trustees’ next meeting on Oct.14.

This Oct. 14 meeting, of course, was the one held at the Clear Lake campus (so as to be as physically far away from Yuba and Woodland staff as possible), wherein the trustees rubber-stamped their layoff of 58 classified staffers.

Yet, Lake County News reporter Elizabeth Larson quotes Trustee Brent Hastey at the Oct. 14 meeting as claiming that the district “is proposing a 3-percent across-the-board cut to save all jobs, but he’s hearing that employees are unwilling to consider it,” followed by a snarky comment about the trustees being unauthorized to print money.

I beg your pardon? He’s “hearing” that employees are unwilling to consider it?

Really?

Question: between Oct. 7, when the 3-percent proposal first surfaces, and Oct. 14, when Hastey implies it has been rejected out-of-hand by employees, when did administrators find the time to actually propose this cut?

Are there meeting minutes to document the proposal? E-mail records – anything? – to document the refusal? Or is this “proposed” cut just made-up crap?

We employees don’t appreciate being dragged into these fabrications.

The trustees should occasionally venture out of their ivory towers and inquire into the reality of the facts being fed to them.

Rosemary McKeever

Butte Valley