” Through various ways a select group of people took the BOE and Admin in their iron grip, running their own agenda over majority wish, the Budget vote has taken that privilege away and that’s why this frustration, One Vote’s target is taking away the Budget vote and additionally influencing the local politics of Ridgewood with the muddy national one. “
You could easily make the case that the opposite is true as well: a small group of people is rallying to keep the BOE elections in low turn-out months so that they can more easily hand-pick a candidate to rally their small group around. It’s easier to get 1,720 disaffected shut-ins to the polls for a BOE seat win in April than it is to try to compete in an election that has broad participation where you’d need far more support.
Responding to anonymous saying that the opposite is true
– Your statement is not supported by the fact that BOE election in November also gets polled much lesser and rather closer to teens % in voting.
Additionally – there is no group of people, a casual browsing on the SM pages of Ridgewood tells you that April supporter are independent minded and do not agree with each other on many issues.
The idea behind consolidation is that not everyone is involved where as those involved are participating in April voting, it’s easier to confuse the not so involved people by mixing national issues in November polls and also taking away the budget vote.
The group of consolidate elections publicly take the same stand on various issues and are really unhappy that power is being distributed rather than consolidated into them.
Ha! Best argument yet: Don’t move the election to November because even though more people vote, those voters are easier to confuse. Wow.
Aditya ? Thank you for all the facts.
RE: Ha! Best argument yet:
No, the best arguments were
1. No Budget Vote for BOE elections
2. Partisan elections in Nov vs Non Partisan in April
You chose to ignore them
It’s not clear how you know what “Ha!” has or has not ignored. I do agree with them that it’s incredibly condescending to say people that are more likely to vote in November instead of April are confused or uninformed. It’s entirely possible to make the case that your group wants a small minority of the town to directly vote on the school budget, no matter the cost, without being insulting.
A candidate was hand selected for boe, the group pushed out a highly intelligent man, for what. The budget passed, the boe elected official is not engaged and the town is even more divided. The group needs to stop bullying the town