Residents of four towns seek
voice in high school vote case
By dave benjamin
Staff Writer
Residents of the four smallest sending communities in the Freehold Regional High School District want their voices heard in federal court.
To achieve that goal, the four citizens — Lynn Leisure of Colts Neck, Deborah Lynch of Freehold Borough, Jayne Carr of Englishtown and Colin Miller of Farmingdale — have filed a legal action.
Representing the four residents, attorney Ron Reich of Freehold Borough has filed a petition for intervention in the case of Marlboro Township vs. the Freehold Regional High School District.
In its legal action, attorneys representing Marlboro are seeking to reapportion the voting points system used by the FRHSD Board of Education. The voting system proposed by Marlboro’s legal team would — based on population figures reported in the 2000 census — grant additional voting power to the district’s four largest sending communities (Freehold Township, Howell, Manalapan and Marlboro) and take voting points from the four smaller municipalities.
Initial arguments before U.S. District Court Judge Garrett E. Brown are scheduled to be heard in Trenton on Nov. 18.
Miller, one of the four residents seeking to be heard, recently stepped down from his position as Farmingdale’s representative on the FRHSD school board.
Reich said he is intervening on behalf of four citizens whose representatives on the regional school board stand to lose voting power if the court accepts the reapportionment plan proposed by Marlboro’s attorneys.
"I don’t think the residents of the four towns (Colts Neck, Englishtown, Farmingdale and Freehold Borough) are individually represented and their views will not be individually heard based upon the people who are currently there," said Reich. "Meaning the regional board of education."
The attorney said Brown has directed Marlboro to notify each of the affected municipalities, but that still leaves out the citizens. He said he is hoping the court will let the parties he represents intervene.
According to the petition, the intervenors have an interest, as taxpayers, relating to the subject of the litigation on the issue of the apportionment of the vote among the representative towns. The petition claims that the disposition of the action in the absence of the intervenors will impair their ability to protect that interest, and the present litigants do not adequately protect the interests of the intervenors.
Shortly after Marlboro filed its legal action, Michael Maddaluna, the Monmouth County superintendent of schools, notified FRHSD administrators that a change in the board’s voting point system was warranted based on the results of the 2000 census.
Maddaluna directed that in the board’s nine-point voting system, Marlboro’s vote should be raised from 1.4 to 1.5 points and Freehold Borough’s vote should be reduced from 0.9 to 0.8 points. The change ordered by Maddaluna is to take effect on Nov. 15.
That directive drew a sharp rebuke from Bernice Hammer, who is Freehold Borough’s representative on the board.
In an Oct. 31 letter to Maddaluna, Hammer wrote, "On behalf of the Borough of Freehold … I must protest your unilateral and arbitrary decision to diminish our weighted vote from 0.9 to 0.8 (points). You (Maddaluna) have, without regard of a judicial opinion as to the legality and constitutionality of (Marlboro’s) position, chosen to supersede the power of the court and reapportion the votes. You have thereby reduced the voting power of the citizens of Freehold Borough in favor of Marlboro without justification."