
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, according to North Jersey media 570 Village of Ridgewood residents signed a petition to eliminate the Ridgewood School Budget Vote. A proposed ballot question would ask voters to approve moving school board elections, held annually in April, and Village Council elections, held bi-annually in May, to the November general election date. Thereby eliminated the annual school budget vote and public oversight over the massive $115 million dollar School budget .
A group called One Village, One Vote led by the usual suspects on Monday submitted 570 petitions for the ballot question to municipal clerks and notified Bergen County, triggering a process that will play out during the coming months.
High density developers are behind this.
this One Village One Vote thing, which many of us had no information about but if Voigt is supporting it then it will be dead in the water.
AMEN. This is the stupidest plan I have heard in a long time . Just vote NO
I’m voting NO. Anything Karen Winograd is for, I am against.
Maybe rather than focusing on individual people you don’t care for (especially as I’m guessing most of you don’t know me well), go to https://onevillageonevote.com/ and look at the issues and facts:
– Save $50-100k/year
– Much larger down ballot turnout in November
– School safety considerations
– Ability to maintain non-partisan elections as almost all other NJ communities have done
– No automatic separate yes/no vote on the school budget, but ability to vote on BOE members to represent you in budget discussions (and who answer to the voters at their next election), and yes/no vote is triggered if significant tax increase
Also, the group has been transparent about who they are (https://onevillageonevote.com/who-is-one-village-one-vote/). There are no developers behind this.
Happy to answer any other questions or have a public discourse about it; no need to use anonymous comments, neighbors.
Yes and NO VOTE ON THE RIDGEWOOD SCHOOL BUDGET which you omit, obfuscate etc….
James, you may have misread my comment. That point is addressed in the last bullet that I included, without omission or obfuscation. I’ve also included the other considerations related to that point, which is in fact omitted whenever this point is incorrectly simplified or labelled. You may decide for yourself that this is a deal-breaker, and reasonable folks can disagree on that front, as we do; we feel that the other benefits listed outweigh this.
Matt….Best thing to do is get signatures , put it on a referendum and let the voters decide. That’s about as fair as it gets.
In plain English. No direct vote on the budget by voters. The school board members represent the voting public for budget purposes. Which sounds reasonable and be codified on the November ballot.
lol yes give up right to vote like a bunch of dopes !
Matthew – I, and I think many people fully support having one election rather than two…but not being able to directly vote on the School Budget is a non-starter. Figure out a way to have both and I suspect your petition will ultimately succeed.
Dirty politics
Hypocrites we be