After much back and forth, Garfield will hold school elections in April

GARFIELD — It’s final: The city will hold its school board elections in April, after the state Supreme Court’s decision to deny the district’s emergent appeal request.

Lawsuits and resolutions went back and forth on whether the city should have April or November school elections after the mayor and City Council voted to move the date back to April last month.

That move was met with resistance from the Board of Education, which tried at a recent meeting to move it back to November. The school board was stopped from doing so by a lawsuit filed by the council. A judge granted the injunction, and no school board vote took place.

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The Board of Education received an emergent hearing and voted to move the school election back to November just hours after a judge’s ruling supported the City Council’s action to move it from November to April.

State Superior Court Judge Peter Geiger’s ruling in support of the council was handed down earlier this month. The judgment declared that the school board election for 2025 must take place on April 15 and that “any resolution adopted by the Garfield Board of Education purporting to move the 2025 school election to November 2025 is null, void, and of no effect.”

The board immediately filed an appeal and was granted a hearing on Feb. 19 — after the county clerk’s deadline to move the election.

The Supreme Court ruled that the matter “is not emergent or otherwise does not warrant adjudication on short notice.”

Mayor Everett Garnto, a former Board of Education president, said the decision to move the election to April coincides with the school budget timeline.

“The proximity to the budget vote coupled with a standalone April election will work to ensure that the city’s taxpayers will be heard and that school board members will be held accountable for their votes,” Garnto said. “The courts’ rulings over the last month siding with the City Council have delivered a victory to Garfield’s taxpayers, teachers and students,” he said.

The decision finalized the April election date and left candidates with five days to collect the 25 signatures needed to run for a board seat.

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Residents had until 4 p.m. on Feb. 24 to file to become candidates.

“It’s only disappointing because of the reason why it was changed,” Schools Superintendent Richard Tomko said. “The reason was absolutely politized.”

Last year, the school district had a $116 million budget with $78 million from state aid. The $34 million tax levy increased by more than 4%.

The resolution passed by the council said the change would present the budget as a voter referendum in April, but last year Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law that took the public vote away for an April election, unless the school district was raising taxes above the 2% cap.

Under the new law, taxpayers won’t have an opportunity to vote on a budget unless it’s increased over $700,000, Tomko said. Even then, the district was able to form a substantial “bank cap” by not increasing the budget to the full 2% from past years. The district could increase the budget to $5.9 million with a bank cap before the public would have a chance to vote on it, he said.

All school elections in New Jersey were held in the spring until 2012, when a new state law allowed districts to switch to November.

The City Council first voted in 2020 to move the election to November. In 2019, the last time city residents voted on a school budget, they rejected it. It was the third year in a row that the levy was voted down by residents. That year, the mayor and council reviewed the budget and trimmed it by $65,000.

In November’s general election, 56.76% of eligible city voters cast a ballot.

Of New Jersey’s almost 600 school districts, 13 have elections in April. In Bergen County, Cliffside Park, Fairview and Lodi hold spring elections. Lodi shifted its vote back to April last year.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Garfield NJ will hold school board elections in April

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