The Edison Board of Education voted in support of placing a bond measure on the ballot for voter approval in September that is, for all intents and purposes, identical to the one residents rejected this past April. The vote took place during the board’s July 21 meeting and was passed unanimously.
The bond referendum, a $52 million measure, would pay for expansions to three of the township’s elementary schools – Woodbrook, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison – and build a whole new one near Thomas Jefferson Middle School. Overall, the construction would add capacity for 1,186 new elementary school students.
Placing the bond referendum on the ballot this September will require a special election, according to board member William Van Pelt, which he said will cost somewhere in the area of $50,000.
During the meeting, board member Aimee Szilagyi noted that she and her fellow candidates had been against the bond during the election last April, but through working with fellow board member William Van Pelt in crafting and clarifying the other phases in the school construction plan, she was ready to support it.
Board members have said that the project would be tax neutral because it was predicated on bringing special-education students – for whom the district currently pays other districts to have educated in their schools – back to Edison. The savings from not having to pay tuition and busing costs, it was reasoned, would offset the debt incurred by the bond. It was argued that the bond was direly needed to accommodate all the students coming into the district. This did not convince the voters in April, however, who rejected the measure 3,983 to 3,644.
When discussing the matter during the board’s caucus meeting on July 16, a new bill signed into law by Gov. Jon Corzine, which appropriates billions of dollars for school construction, came into heavy focus. The governor’s initiative will give about $3.9 billion to districts for construction of new schools, but most of this aid, $2.9 billion, is going to what until recently were called Abbott districts, schools in the poorest areas of New Jersey. Of the remaining $1 billion, about $50 million will go toward technical and vocational schools, leaving $950 million for the roughly 500 remaining school districts in the state.
During its Wednesday meeting, the board engaged in heavy debate over how the governor’s new school construction funding plan might affect the referendum they eventually voted to put on the ballot in September. Bob Garrison Jr., of Garrison Architects, the firm that is helping coordinate the bond referendum, said the various criteria that will determine which projects get a piece of this $950 million have yet to be determined, and so if the district wants to take advantage of this aid, Edison would need to hold off on placing the bond question on the ballot in September.
Garrison said that if they wanted to wait and see how the state aid question works out, the earliest they could have a referendum would be January. This was because the district would need to change the plan around to fit the criteria coming from the state, which might prioritize school constructions projects focusing on, for example, health and wellness or student safety. He noted that construction to address overcrowding in schools, the principal motivation behind the proposed bond measure, was not likely to be high on the state’s list of priorities, however.
Choosing to go the state aid route, however, represents a risk, said Garrison, because there’s no guarantee that the district would actually get any of this money.
“We could be sitting here a year from now and they could tell us, ‘Sorry, there’s no money for unhoused students projects,’ ” said Garrison.
This was contrasted with the fact that should the bond be approved by the voters in September, the district is promised $11 million in debt service from the state on the project, significantly reducing the costs.
“We have two choices … take the four items and put them on a referendum in September … or wait and hope,” said board President David Dickinson.
Board member William Van Pelt said it was better to stick with the original plan of getting the bond referendum out by September, noting that the current proposal isn’t affected by the new law. He noted that multiple phases of school construction had always been planned, and that the district could take advantage of the new state aid in the second round of construction.
“We’re hoping by phase two there will still be some money around,” said Van Pelt.
Still, the question is ultimately up to the voters. Van Pelt said the district can promote the bond measure to the public by making them more aware of the purported tax neutrality of the measure, and that while costs won’t necessarily go down as a result of the construction, they won’t necessarily go up, either. He said it is extremely important to impress upon residents just how important it is to address overcrowding in the schools.
“If they vote it down in September, I have no idea what we’ll all do then,” Van Pelt said.
Staff writer Kathy Chang contributed
to this story.