School board referendum: If voters say yes, what comes next?

By SUZANNE MARINO
Staff Writer
MARGATE – The May 8 City Commission election is a little more than a month away, but for the voters there are many questions left to be answered.
Mayor Vaughn Reale held his civics lesson March 28 in the Performing Arts Center to give residents a working idea of how the commission form of government operates. Among the questions posed from the audience to a panel of presenters that included Atlantic County Superintendent Dan Loggi centered on the referendum vote and the possible change from a Type I to a Type II school district.
When Loggi was asked what the procedure is if voters approve the switch to a Type II district, he deferred to Margate city solicitor Mary Siracusa for the specifics, and even she said she would need to do some research before she could outline the complete process.
Siracusa was able to address the issue at the weekly Margate City Commission meeting Thursday, March 29. According to the solicitor, once the votes are tallied, if Margate voters have chosen to move to an elected Board of Education, there will need to be some swift action to comply with the will of the voters and state law.
“An elected school board must have nine members,” the solicitor said. The current appointed school board has only seven members.
“An election must be held not less than 60 and not more than 70 days after the general election to elect the members of the school board,” said Siracusa. So somewhere around mid-July it would be time for voters to head back into the booth to choose who will sit on the board. All board members must be voted in, even if their appointment to the current Board of Education is unexpired. Subsequent elections will coincide with the statewide school elections.
The exact cost of a school board election in Margate is not readily available because the city has never held one, but city administrator Tom Hiltner estimated the cost to be less than $10,000. A similar figure was given by the Citizens for Margate City Committee as an estimate for the cost of producing ballots, securing voting machines and paying poll workers for an additional election.
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