[Rooster71]

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I think that it is more likely that your contention is wrong and the that school board followed the proper procedure.

I live in the Atlanta, GA area. And yes, organizations need to run "ads" announcing legal notices, meetings, bank foreclosures, estate auctions, events, etc. Unfortunately for your situation, they are only required to run the ad in the newspaper that is designated at the "legal paper" for your county. Most of the time, the "legal paper" is not typically the city newspaper or the popular paper.

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This is the type of info I've been trying to find, what and where it has to be published. I have looked online and have not yet been able to find the info. First of all, after looking I have not yet seen any proof that the notice was ever published. It has been said that it was supposedly in a small newspaper, but it cannot be found in issues of their online edition. To give you a better idea of the type of paper we are talking about, it is just a few pages, has a circulation of no more than a few hundred subscribers and the typical headline goes something like "Jenny Smith Wins 8th Grade Spelling Bee."

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In Atlanta's case, the main paper is the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It's circulation is 460,000 during the week and 620,000 on Sunday. You won't find these type of notices in the AJC though. Instead, they must, by law, be published in the Fulton COunty Daily Report. Circulation = less than 16,000.

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Again, if I could somehow find this info for the state of Texas it would shed some light on the problem.

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Bottom line: if the school board followed proper produre (i.e. gave the proper notice to the public) you may be S.O.L.

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The key word in your statement is "if". And even if what they did was legal, it is one of those things that was not done in good faith. First, I don't see how board members could expect to get re-elected. And second, some of the members are business people (for example, real estate and insurance) who stand to lose alot of business due to the fact that many of the people who were not aware of the election are customers. If I had an insurance policy with a guy who held this type of sneaky election that will eventually result in another tax increase, I would certainly do business elsewhere in the future.

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One last thought: If you get pulled over for going 55 mph in a 35 mph zone, you will not win on a defense that you didn't see the signs where they were posted.

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This is not the same. I see what you are saying, but it's just not the same thing. In order for this scenario to be even remotely similar, you would have to say something like "if a secret election were held and it was decided to lower the speed limit from 55 mph to 35 mph and you get pulled over for going 55 mph but the signs were never posted", you would eventually win on a defense that there was no way to know what the speed limit was.

Or you could look at it as being similar to a situation where if our congress decided to have an unpublicized vote on doubling their salary and it was passed. Yea, it may be a legal situation, but certainly it was not right.

You may be correct by saying that the taxpayers may be SOL. However, I am certain that there will be enough of a backlash from angry taxpayers that secret elections won't happen in this district again. Also I think that some of the board members will lose business from members of the community, whereas they wouldn't had they done the right thing.