
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, resident Steve Kim recounts his recent OPRA experience with the Ridgewood Board of Education .
OPRA is used when the requestor wants to gain access to government records and wants to invoke the OPRA statute, which provides a statutory right of access to government records and holds a records custodian to a response deadline.
What does this mean? The requestor must choose to submit an OPRA request. Custodians do not decide when requestor must use OPRA and cannot force requestors to submit an OPRA request
Steve Kim…
“The case of denied BOE OPRA (Facility Committee)… Is this what happened? ?
1. Resident sent an OPRA request to the business manager Antoinette Kelly to get info on the facility committee meetings, in particular the minutes or notes of the meetings.
2. Kelly likely checked with the Superintendent Dan Fishbein and the Board President Jennie Wilson to see if ok to release.
3. Business manager then is given a directive to check with an outside counsel to see if the info can be withheld.
4. Kelly contacts the lawyer to ask if the info can be indeed withheld.
5. Lawyer gives his opinion.
6. Kelly emails the resident that no notes or minutes exist.
7. Later Kelly contradicts herself that notes exist but info asked is of privilege to the members of the Board.
Questions
1. Are there notes or are there not? If so, why did Kelly say there aren’t then later say there are?
2. Who gave Kelly the directive to check with the lawyer? Did she do this on her own initiative?
3. Why go to that extent to withhold information on facilities? Why are facilities meeting notes a secret?”
Something is certainly fishy here.
Of course according to Fishbein he wants to spend another $60 million or more on the Ridgewood school buildings. The story goes something like “they are old, with some hard realities to deal with.” Apparently a $112 million annual budget isn’t enough to maintain our school buildings, plant & infrastructure because so much of it goes to the teachers and their benefits, not to mention special needs education which Ridgewood has become a magnet for… can you say $60 million bond issuance?