"I'm a taxpayer"

grandstanding: to play or act so as to impress onlookers

Nobody loves grandstanding as much as Trustee Fuentes. At Monday's special meeting, despite the meeting's purpose--responding to the Accreditors' recommendations to the colleges (trustees must cease micromanaging, etc.)--Mr. Fuentes pursued a very different purpose: pandering to his right-wing constituency by expressing a plaintive hope to hear the lonely voice of the poor "taxpayer."

But Mr. Fuentes' dig at employees turned into something else. In the audio clip below, you will hear many members of the audience--faculty and classified--respond to Fuentes' red-meat tossage by proclaiming, "I'm a taxpayer."


Fuentes pressed on. The board had come to the meeting with its draft of how it conceives the duties and responsibilities of the trustees (in a revised draft of Board Policy 101: Authority and Powers of the Board of Trustees). For some reason, Mr. Fuentes sought to modify that draft further, for, he said, it is "too neutral." He suggested the following insertion:


Evidently, the president of IVC's classified senate could take no more of Mr. Fuentes' employee-bashing grandstanding. She told him in no uncertain terms that she has worked for the district for twenty years, advising some 30,000 students, and, she said, he needs to trust that she has always acted on behalf of "taxpayers."