Governor Chris Christie has signed a measure that could move Verona school board elections to November from April and eliminate a public vote on the school budget.
As we noted earlier this month, Senate bill 3148 establishes a way for school districts, their towns and even voters themselves to move the annual school election to November and to do away with a public vote on their school budgets unless that budget needs to go above the state-mandated 2% cap on expenditures. The Board of Education now must determine what to do next, which is something of a challenge since no one in Trenton has seen fit to publish the law into the legislative record online. The BOE’s choices appear to be that it can pass a resolution, put it to vote, or let the Verona Town Council implement the change. However, school boards in affected towns have been advised that 15% of the voters in a town could sign a petition to have a public vote. That’s about 1,350 people for Verona, or slightly more than voted on the budget last April.
