Board of Education member James Orazietti again tried to get the board to name the Shelton High School sports complex after former three-sport coach Joseph Benanto Wednesday night.
And again, the idea was shot down.
But this time, Orazietti had something up his sleeve.
Background
When Orazietti made a motion to name the sports complex after Benanto during the September board meeting, the rest of the board voted to table any discussion on the motion, essentially shooting down Orazietti’s idea.
At the time the issue seemed moot because the board had just approved a new policy that prohibits the honorary naming of facilities.
“We have a problem,” Board chairman Win Oppel said during the September meeting. “We just passed a recognition policy that doesn’t allow that. So that motion is out of order.”
But Wednesday, Orazietti brought up a technicality — in the form of an agenda typo — that rendered the new policy void, giving Orazierri another chance.
“They ruled me out of order (last meeting), so now I’m ruling them out of order,” Orazietti said during a recess at the meeting.
Benanto
Benanto coached football, basketball and baseball at Shelton High School for a total of 24 years — and coached at Yale University for 12 years.
In that time, Benanto secured almost 700 wins, and was named to the Connecticut High School Coaches Hall of Fame. This month he was inducted into the Fairfield County Sports Hall of Fame.
But locally, he hasn’t been formally recognized — a fact that Orazietti and a member of the public brought up at the September meeting.
“We’ve never honored Joe Benanto and it’s a sin,” said Donald Ramia. “He’s one of the best coaches in the state in the past 80 years.”
Benanto, reached on the phone Thursday evening, said he was not aware of Orazietti’s latest attempt to get recognition for him. But Benanto said he was humbled.
“I appreciate the fact that Jimmy thought enough about me to get the complex named after me,” Benanto said.
Benanto, who no longer coaches in Shelton, is about to retire from his position as a Shelton High School history teacher at the end of the year.
“When you put as much time into one city as I have, I would think sometimes exceptions would be made for certain people. It certainly would be a great honor,” Benanto said.
But naming facilities after people can get unwieldy, Oppel said.
“You can get carried away,” Oppel said.
So, a policy subcommittee of the board was assigned to review the process.
“The committee determined that rather than attach a name to a facility, they recommended the individuals be recognized in a standardized format on a plaque that would be placed on that building,” Oppel said.
Robert’s Rules Of Order
In the end, Orazietti’s motion was tabled again — to a meeting after the Nov. 3 election, when he might not even be a member of the board anymore.
But, his move had board members thumbing through pocket-sized copies of Robert’s Rules of Order for few minutes.
They found a section that thwarted Orazietti’s quest yet again.
Robert’s Rules of Order stipulate that while a motion is being discussed, another member of the board can move to table the first motion. The motion to table gets voted on first, eliminating any chance for the first motion to be voted on during that meeting.
That’s what the board of education did while Orazietti’s motion was on the floor.
