By SUZANNE MARINO
Staff Writer
MARGATE – Voters here won’t decide who the city commissioners will be for the next four years until May, but it is already shaping up to be an interesting election.
The voters may have a referendum question to consider regarding the Margate school board on the ballot in May. Margate is a Type I school district. The members of the Board of Education are appointed by the mayor and are not directly elected by the voters.
Margate resident John Sewell is a regular at the Margate Commission meetings, and he has been vocal in his opposition to school board appointments.
He has asked repeatedly for a formal recommendation from the commissioners to have the state reconsider the status of the district and change to a Type II school district in which school board members are elected at the time of the budget vote in April.
Mayor Vaughn Reale said he was not in favor of moving away from an all-appointed board to an elected board.
“We have a diverse group of residents that make up the school board. They bring a lot of different expertise to the table. I am not sure we would have the same kind of person if it were an elected board of education.”
Rimm echoed the mayor’s sentiments and said he would not support changing the city charter to go to an elected board. “Honestly, we would probably not see the same type of members with an elected board. The members of the Board of Education are good people who really always have the best interest of the children of Margate in their hearts,” said Rimm.
When Sewell was unable to get approval from the commissioners to change over to a Type II, he and resident Doug Donato decided to get the ball rolling on their own by circulating a petition.
A petition needs to have the valid signatures of 30 percent of the registered voters who voted in the last general election in order to be considered, according to a memo from city solicitor Mary Siracusa. In Margate the magic number was 426 registered voters; according to Sewell, the petition submitted had 428 signatures.
Donato, who spent most of Election Day at the Eugene A. Tighe Middle School, said he collected most of the necessary signatures on Election Day from residents at the city’s polling locations.
The petition reads: “We, the undersigned registered voters of the City of Margate City, do hereby petition that a question be placed on the May 2007 Municipal Election ballot as follows: ‘Should the Margate City Board of Education be changed from an appointed Board of Education (Type I District) to an elected Board of Education (Type II District) and have its annual budget and other spending submitted to the legal voters of the municipality?’”
The completed petition was submitted to Commissioner Sigmund Rimm Nov. 9. TOP
