BY WALTER ELLIOTT
MONTCLAIR – Those who are looking for the results of Montclair’s two Dec. 9 school tax public questions will not find them here – or anywhere else.
Nor will the results of the some 1,700 Vote By Mail Ballots which Essex County Clerk Christopher Durkin’s Elections Division office received by Noon Dec. 2, will be released. That was when Durkin and election workers were told that Tuesday of New Jersey Superior Court Judge Robert H. Garnder, from his nearby Newark bench, granted an injunction against the special election.
The public question referenda, should it return at all, will be in March at the earliest and with rewritten public interpretation statements on the new ballots.
Montclair Superintendent of Schools Ruth B. Turner, outgoing Board of Education President Mfreke “Monk” Inyang and relevant public district officials are scheduled to weigh their options at the scheduled Dec. 10 MBOE meeting at Montclair High School’s George Inness Annex Atrium past press time.
The only public resolution that Montclair Public Schools and its board have made is that, in an emergency Dec. 4 meeting, they will not appeal Judge Gardner’s ruling. That decision was announced by Board Attorney Lester Taylor III – perhaps best known as a former East Orange Mayor – at the end of that Thursday’s two hour executive session.
State law requires a public school district to notify a county clerk of a special election at least 60 days in advance. The next special election date for Montclair, Jan. 28, became a non-starter when the Nov. 28 notification deadline passed. The school board had voted for the Dec. 9 election date at their Oct. 7 meeting.
That next window, for a March 10 public referendum, is to be voted by the school board at their Dec. 17 meeting.
Judge Gardner – after listening to attorneys representing Montclair Public Schools and petitioning township resident Carl J. Kraus – ruled that the two questions’ interpretive statements were “convoluted” and were potentially confusing to voters.
Kraus filed his complaint and injunction request in Superior Court Nov. 21. He asserted that the district was asking voters to “allow” the raising of $20.6 million in property taxes instead of “authorize” as an example of confusing interpretative text.
Signs urging “Yes/Yes” or “No/No” referendum votes were sprouting on front lawns when David Herron, asserting similar unclear texts, filed his similar suit Nov. 24. Kraus and Herron told a reporter that they have never met, let alone knowing that the other had filed suit.
Gardner’s ruling has rendered Herron’s suit and resident Evan Cutler’s Nov. 24 Change.org petition to postpone the Dec. 9 vote moot. Cutler, who wanted more time for voters to consider the two questions before casting, posted “Victory!” on a Dec. 2 update.
Montclair Public Schools are to meanwhile receive a bill from the Essex County Board of Elections for the aborted Dec. 9 election, by Dec. 5 authorization of Acting New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin. (Platkin happens to be a Montclair resident.)
The five-figure bill is said to include $40,000 for the printing of ballots and $23,000 for would-be Dec. 9 poll workers. Other line items, including the preparation labor of voting machines that never left the county’s garage, are to be announced.
All of the above actions still leaves the question of how MPS will fill a $20.6 million deficit in the current and last year’s school budgets unanswered for now.
Turner and School Business Administrator Dana Sullivan, who were both hired last summer, discovered unpaid bills and creditors’ invoices for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school budgets. They presented the respective $13.6 and $7.6 million deficits to the board and the public in September. Previous BOE members had approved the said budgets by Memorial Day 2024 and 25.
Public school districts – like municipal, county, state governments, authorities and agencies – are required to pass balanced budgets by New Jersey law.
Districts who find their budgets in the red are faced with several options to rebalance their budgets. One option is to ask the New Jersey Department of Education for help – as in the 2014 case in Belleville and last May in Nutley.
The common arrangement is NJDOE to advance the money with a couple of repayment plans. One plan is for the school district or constituent municipality or municipalities to issue bonds to repay the state over the following 10 years.
The standard operating loan and repayment plan usually includes appointing a state monitor to the affected district for the interim. That monitor has veto power on budgets, employment and related financial decisions. The district’s budgets would also be examined, and “corrective actions” offered, by the Office of State Auditor.
Turner, in November, said that NJDOE would deduct part of its annual state aid to MPS until the debt is repaid. That technique was what the state offered in case raising the $19.6 million public question through township property tax increases failed at the Dec. 9 polls. (That would also apply should a March or future public question fails.)
That NJDOE ‘guarantee” came after the school board authorized the Dec. 9 voter referendum – and after serving 60-day Reduction in Force layoff notices to 113 district employees and the transfer of another 50 employees as a contingency. Letters detailing the layoffs and transfers among the 11 MPS schools were in the mail to parents and employees as of press time.
The first public question for $13.6 million was or is calling for a one-time $1,117 tax increase, based on the average household’s $640,000 assessment. Question Two would be a “recurring” tax increase of $674 for the current school year’s $7.6 million gap. One or both increases would start appearing on June 1 or Sept. 1’s quarterly tax bills.
Moving the public question referendums to March or later, however, may compress timetables and schedules for bill increases, layoffs, transfers and other board-approved economies.
Two restorative justice teachers, who are slated for being bumped into new positions Jan. 2, told the board in the otherwise executive-oriented Dec. 4 emergency meeting that their RIF notices did not follow state law. The notices did not state their seniority rankings nor their new responsibilities or whether they would get their old jobs back in the future.
A delegation of Montclair High School students stepped to the public speaker podium to advocate for a community financial oversight advisory board made up of parents and students.
The board has placed 23 clubs at MHS and at the Buzz Aldrin and Glenfield middle schools on the chopping block Oct. 27.
The district, in response to an Aug. 21 question, said “No, we cannot” tap into the $187.7 million construction bond issue fund passed in 2022 to make up the deficit.
First, 32 percent of that fund has been spent on projects as of Aug. 21. Second, there has been a public question passed designating those funds for construction – so a proposed transfer can not be legally done.
