>Parent donations help fund new field lights
Thursday, July 22, 2010
BY JASON BRAFF
The Ridgewood News
STAFF WRITER
The Board of Education (BOE) is going to get by with a little help from its friends.
About a dozen local parent-based sports organizations have committed to help fund a lease-purchase agreement for field lights at Ridgewood High School’s (RHS) Stadium Field and Stevens Field.
The groups have pledged to the BOE a payment of $106,000, which would cover the first year of the lease-purchase agreement, and would subsequently pay no less than 40 percent of the full payment for each of the four remaining years of the lease.
The BOE voted to accept a bid costing about $500,000 to install both sets of lights at a meeting on Monday night.
“In the development of the bond referendum, the idea of lights being put in the fields was discussed and was a part of the planning, but it was made clear that without assistance we would not be able to afford this,” Fishbein said at the meeting.
The private groups will donate about $40,000 a year to the board in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 to help offset the annual cost of $105,000. The total project will cost $498,500, according to Assistant Superintendent for Business Angelo DeSimone. The $65,000 a year that the board will be responsible for will come out of its budget for those four years. According to DeSimone, however, the board hopes to subsidize those costs through another fundraising effort from private groups that offered to help raise money for naming rights on the new turf fields.
“We’re going to be looking at other ways to raise money to defray the costs of the lease payment,” DeSimone said in an interview after the meeting. “But right now the board is committed obviously to the full financial obligation. The right answer as we sit here today is that we’ll have to put the next payment in the school budget.”
In December, voters passed a $38 million bond referendum, which will cost the average taxpayer about $300 a year for the next 25 years, by less than 100 votes; the money will help fund major renovations and additions across the district. Fishbein said the bond referendum bids accepted for the first rounds of referendum projects have come in favorable to the district, and district officials hope the savings may be able to help subsidize the final years of the lights payment if it has not been already paid for through donations.
full article : https://www.northjersey.com/news/99037239_Parent_donations_help_fund_new_field_lights_in_Ridgewood.html
