Lehighton Area School District’s business administrator and treasurer are authorized to pay school district bills between the December and January board meetings after a 7-2 vote Monday night.

According to Superintendent Jonathan Cleaver, the motion was on the agenda due to the extended gap between meetings over the holiday season.

Lehighton meets on Dec. 3 and is then not scheduled to be in session again until Jan. 28, 2019.

Board members David Bradley and Joy Beers voted against the motion, with Bradley contending the school board was “abdicating its responsibility.”

“This board has a responsibility to review all bills, holidays or not,” Bradley said. “There is no problem with emailing a list of all bills needed to be reviewed and having a meeting during this period to be able to get those things paid. Giving any individual the right to do our job is wrong.”

Later in the meeting, Bradley made a motion to add a second board meeting in December, which failed 5-4. Wayne Wentz, Larry Stern, Andrew Yenser, Rita Spinelli and Stephen Holland voted against the second meeting, while Bradley, Beers, Gail Maholick and Richard Beltz were in support.

Spinelli questioned Bradley’s challenge, saying she thought he trusted business manager Brian Feick.

“We are putting this district and its stakeholders at risk by not having a check and a balance in our system,” Bradley said. “It makes no financial or legal sense.”

Though Feick has the authorization to pay the bills over the period, the board would still need to ratify them at the Jan. 28 meeting.

Another motion, which passed 5-4, allows Cleaver to approve school journeys, use of facilities requests and professional course requests during the same Dec. 3-Jan. 28 period.

“This is a process we have done in the past,” Cleaver said. “We have course requests by our staff coming in quite frequently. In some cases, if a course they are approved to take gets canceled, they need to sign up for another course and have that approval before the next board meeting. We also have facility use requests come in all the time.”