This morning Cheryl Nardino, the Verona Board of Education’s business administrator, sat down to work on this stack of paperwork. It’s one of seven similarly sized folders that she will need to fill out just for the so-called Regular Operating District (ROD) grant as part of the referendum that Verona voters overwhelmingly approved Tuesday night.
In addition to gathering all the facts and figures for the initial filing, Nardino will need to resubmit aspects of the paperwork every time Verona reaches a milestone in the projects. Still, it’s well worth the effort: The $2,796,855 ROD grant cut the cost of the referendum to taxpayers to $13,845,000 from an initial $16,641,855.
According to Nardino, there were 541 ROD grants awarded to New Jersey school districts this year. The paperwork on those grants must be reviewed by a team of only 10 examiners. And no, none of this seems to be computerized.
