New district designation could cost Orange $2.5 million

ORANGE, NJ — A special question on the ballot on Tuesday, Nov. 8, asked the Orange electorate to vote on changing its Board of Education members from those appointed by the mayor to one elected directly by voters. Although fewer than 5,000 of the city’s 15,000 registered voters cast ballots, this special question was passed, changing Orange from a Type 1 to a Type 2 board, which will have nine members rather than seven.

The polls will be open for a special election to select the two new board members on Tuesday, March 14, from 1 to 8 p.m.; originally, the polls were set to be open all day, from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., but the the current board, comprised of members appointed by Mayor Dwayne Warren, has voted to change the timing, reasoning that the shorter time period will save $4,000 of the $45,000 it would cost to keep the polls open all day.

In response, according to West Ward Councilman Harold J. Johnson, the Orange City Council voted 6-1 on Tuesday, Jan. 17, to approve Resolution No. 23-2017 to give $4,000 to the BOE to keep the polls open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Councilwoman Tency Eason voted against the measure. Eason could not be reached for comment about her vote by press time this week. The council’s move to give the BOE the funds was met with consternation by some residents.

“They don’t have a budget yet; where the heck are these guys getting the money to give to the board?” former City Council President William Lewis wondered Thursday, Jan. 19.

The consequences of this special question went further though. At South Ward Councilwoman Jamie Summers-Johnson’s second Community Meeting at Heywood Avenue Elementary School on Thursday, Jan. 19, Chris Hartwyk, the city business administrator, said the switch from an appointed to an elected board means the school district will have to forfeit $2.5 million. The funds, which the city had previously bonded for, were earmarked for capital improvement projects, including fixing the pool in the old YWCA on Main Street, now a recreation center.

“Unfortunately, what we’ve discovered after we passed the bond ordinance and since the election in November is that, because the referendum was passed approving the change of the board from a Type 1 district to a Type 2 district, the city is no longer allowed to issue debt on behalf of the school board and, therefore, (because of) the bond ordinance that the city passed in November, we’re no longer able to fund the projects that the school board had asked us to fund,” Hartwyk said.

“We discovered the issue when we, the city, were filling out our annual debt statement. We contacted our auditor, as well as our bond counsel, met with officials from the Division of Local Government Services and the Department of Education and, in fact, were told that the city had to remove the debt from our annual debt statement as an effect of the referendum that was passed in November. That’s just another one of the challenges that we’ve been dealing with this week.”

Attempts have been made to rectify this situation. On Monday, Jan. 23, the Orange Board of Education held a special meeting at the school district’s headquarters and unanimously voted to approve Resolution No. G17-007 to hire attorney Stephen Edelstein of the Schwartz, Simon, Edelstein & Celso Law Firm and to serve as special attorney to the board to file an injunction to prevent the switch from an appointed board to an elected board.

On Monday, Jan. 23, Orange Board of Education President Cristian Mateo said, “I agree with everything the public said but, at the same time, we have the responsibility to actually look at the situation from another standpoint; we’re able to look at the financial record; we’re able to see what’s really going on, something that the public most of the time is not aware of. We just found out on Thursday that the bond was not going to go anywhere. We didn’t know this information.

“We thought that, since the bond was actually passed prior to the election, it wasn’t going to affect the actual bonding. We found out from the (business administrator), who basically stated that, since we changed from a Type 1 to a Type 2 and the bond hasn’t been issued, it was going to be taken out of the actual city budget.”

“We need that money,” Mateo continued. “Right now, almost all the boilers at the schools are broken; we need to make repairs. Right now, we are actually patching parking lots, playgrounds — there are a lot of health and safety issues that are going on in the schools that we needed the money, in order to address these issues.”

“I know there is a lot of information that has not been put out to the public but, in order for us to do that, we need to as a board get together and discuss this information,” Mateo said. “I know transparency is a big issue here, but it comes from both sides. I know for a fact that whoever put this question on the ballot did not know what was going on and how this was going to affect the schools and all the plans that we had already put in place. I know that for a fact. There was no prior consultation to the board as to this question being put on the ballot or to the citizens as to the effect that was going to take place if it did pass.”

“All of this was over $4,000 a week ago and now I’m a little taken aback by all this but still it seems like the main issue is transparency; transparency and due diligence,” Orange resident Tyrone Tarver said Monday, Jan. 23, at the BOE meeting. “I don’t think due diligence was done by the council. I don’t think due diligence was done by this board, and that’s why we’re in this predicament we are now. If we’re going to lose any money you need to make it clear exactly what we’re going to lose and then maybe work with the parents and the public on how we can resupplement those funds.”

Tarver said he believes the predicament can be solved by transparency, but Lewis disagreed.

“This is really simple: You’re right, there is a problem here and you’re looking in the wrong direction,” Lewis said Monday, Jan. 23. “There was no needs assessment made and nothing presented made to the public so they could make a decision one way or the other. You’re trying to do it now, after the fact. You’re not responsible and neither is the council. The responsibility lies with the people who wanted to change the school board from a Type 1 to a Type 2. They did not do the job. There’s a big hole in there and now you’re trying to patch it together. You can’t do it for legal implications.”

  Chris Hartwyk, Cristina Mateo, Harold Johnson, Mayor Dwayne Warren, Orange Board of Education, Orange City Council, Tency Eason, William Lewis