Jersey City council votes to move school board elections to November next year

By Terrence T. McDonald/The Jersey Journal 
on November 30, 2012 at 11:00 AM

Jersey City’s school elections are moving from April to November next year, thanks to a nearly unanimous vote by the City Council Wednesday night.

Voters overwhelmingly approved a nonbinding referendum earlier this month approving the change, a ballot initiative the council had intended to use as a guide to determine whether the community was OK with the switch.

Ward E Councilman Steve Fulop championed the move, saying it will save taxpayers about $200,000 a year and increase voter turnout. Voters this November, who approved the change 73 percent to 27 percent, “spoke loud and clear,” Fulop said last night.

In Hudson County, Guttenberg, Hoboken and Kearny have moved their school elections to November.

The council approved the change 7-1, with Councilwoman at large Viola Richardson voting “no.” Richardson said she is concerned that voters didn’t know that once school elections are moved to November, school budgets that don’t have tax increases above the 2 percent tax-levy cap won’t have to be approved by voters.

“I think that perhaps people didn’t really understand, and I didn’t really understand what it would mean,” she said.

Fulop said it’s “presumptuous” to think that the 24,000 voters who cast their ballots in favor of the change didn’t know the consequences of the decision.

The Jersey City council’s decision essentially increases the length of the terms of four sitting school board members, Carol Lester, Gerald Lyons, Angel Valentin and Sterling Waterman, whose terms were set to expire next April.

Some 468 school districts in the state have moved their school elections to November, according to the New Jersey School Boards Association. Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill into law last year that permits school boards, voters or municipal councils to make the switch.

NJSBA spokesman Mike Yaple said schools boards that have OK’d the move were attracted by the idea of “budget stability.”

School districts with elections in November do not have to seek voter approval for budgets unless they come with an increase over 2 percent. In that instance, voters are faced with approving or voting down just the tax increase, according to Yaple.

This November, three school districts asked voters to approve tax increases. Two of those districts succeeded.