Tag: Monroe

Historical uncertaintiesand the Monroe high school

Ah the vicissitudes of historical debate.

The efforts by Monroe — the Township Council and the school board — to push forward with plans for a new high school on a 35-acre section of Thompson Park have turned what otherwise might be an esoteric historical question into a massive controversy with huge implications for public policy and Monroe taxpayers.

The question: Where exactly was Bethel Indian Town (also known as the Bethel Mission) actually located?

The answer appears to depend on which historian you speak with.

Monroe Township Historian John Katerba places the encampment, at which Presbyterian missionary David Brainerd converted the Delaware Indians to Christianity (or, at least, tried to), at or near the Jamesburg Municipal Building near the corner of Forgate Drive and Perrineville Road — at the southwestern corner of Thompson Park. He said the

Monroe Township Historical Society researched the Bethel site in the 1970s and concluded it was located near the Jamesburg Municipal Building. He said the research was based on “evidence or things that people had witnessed or documented,” including early 1800s documentation from Alexander Redman, who bought the property at that time.

Richard Walling, a historical consultant from Somerville, has a different location in mind — “at the headwaters of the Wigwam Brook, which was located in what is now Thompson Park.”

He said he has 19th-century geological survey maps and a 1953 Middlesex County engineering map that put the brook’s headwaters in the location where the high school is to be built.

And then there is the survey by Richard Grubb and Associates, a Cranbury archeological firm. It shows no evidence of a settlement on the high school site.

(Township Business Administrator Wayne) Hamilton said the results show no sign of the 40 cabins, two schools and church said to make up the 18th-century mission, which many believe was located on the Thompson Park parcel.

“There is absolutely no evidence of that kind of settlement being on the 35 acres,” he said. “This is based on hard, scientific evidence.”

Mr. Hamilton said the survey did turn up some artifacts but added that “with any property in New Jersey, it’s not unusual to find artifacts.”

Richard Grubb said Thursday that the company is “recommending that we did not find Bethel.”

From my perspective, there just doesn’t seem to be enough evidence to hault the high school project. Let’s get the building up.

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So much for a new direction

Now that the smoke has cleared on this year’s Monroe school board race, it seems pretty clear that all the talk about a need for new leadership was just talk.

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s vote, the Press received several letters critical of sitting school board members — in particular, President Kathy Kolupanowich and board members Amy Speizer and Lew Kaufmann. Ms. Speizer and Mr. Kaufman were running for re-election.

But voters apparently disagreed. The only change on the board was the defeat of longtime incumbent Carol Haring, who while supporting the plan to place the new high school in Thompson Park had been critical of the board’s unwillingness to explore a backup plan.

And it wasn’t even close. Ms. Speizer and Mr. Kaufman were runaway winners, while Ira Tessler — running on a slate with the two incumbents — won the third seat.

Finishing at the bottom? The two most critical candidates, Ms. Bjornsen and Ms. Haring.

I’ll let the reader consider the meaning in all of this.

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Do board members forfeittheir free-speech rights?

Paul Mulshine and I, to put it bluntly, come from different universes.

I’m an unreconstructed leftist, a liberal, a progressive — whatever you want to call it. He’s an old-line New Jersey, small-government, libertarian conservative whose logic I find maddening (I’m sure that, were he reading my columns, he’d say the same about me).

And then he writes a column like the one in today’s paper, which takes the state’s School Ethics Commission to task for clamping down on the free speech rights of school board members.

The column caught my eye because of two complaints filed by Monroe resident Jennifer Dressel against a pair of Monroe school board members alleging, in part, that they misrepresented themselves before the public.

As we’ll be writing in tomorrow’s paper, Ms. Dressel is accusing school board President Kathy Kolupanowich and board member Amy Speizer of speaking “separately at parent group meetings without school board approval, while leaving the impression that they represented the board. The complaint also alleges that Ms. Kolupanowich write a letter that implied she was speaking on behalf of the board without board approval and that Ms. Speizer should have
recused herself from matters dealing the board attorney.”

I don’t want to address the specifics of the complaints. It is the process that concerns me, the way in which the ethics rules can be used to quiet board members — whether they be critical of the board or board members defending board actions against critics.

Mulshine describes a Morris County case recently decided by the commission:

The incident began when Harmon, who is a pharmaceutical executive and lives in Long Valley, cast the sole dissenting vote against the school budget last year. His reasoning was that the budget was up 11 percent over the prior year and that this would lead to an increase in property taxes for the hard-working people of the township.

Voting against a budget isn’t illegal — yet. But then Harmon made the mistake of sending a letter to the editor of the local newspaper explaining why he thought voters should oppose the budget.

“The ethics code is just so squishy,” Harmon told me. “Any bozo with a beef can file a complaint against you.”

The bozo in question was a former school board member named Ruth Lisa McCurdy. She also wouldn’t return my call. I suspect these people think speech itself is illegal. In any event, McCurdy filed a complaint under a provision of the school board ethics code that says a member may not “take any private action that may compro mise the board.” She also disagreed with the budget figures in Harmon’s letter.

The commission dismissed the complaint but left intact an advisory opinion that allow board members to write letters as private citizens but to “not hold (themselves) out as a board member.”

Abbott Koloff, writing in the Morristown Daily Record, calls it a “challenge to democracy.”

The point is that school board members are always school board members. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous and to assume that everything that comes out of their mouths, whether it be an opinion on a controversial high school plan, state legislation or the Mets’ pitching staff.

And, in the case of letters to the editor, school board members have no control over how they are identified — our politcy is to always identify board members as board members.

The intent of the rule may have been good — to prevent board member comments from being mistaken as the opinions of the board — but it is overly broad and makes it more likely that board members will just keep quiet. That’s not good for voters, for public policy or democratcy.

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It’s the district’s responsibility

The Monroe school board wants to explore its options before deciding how to pay for a new high school — yes, pay for a new high school already approved by voters.

The problem is that the $82.9 million approved by voters in 2003 is about $36 million less than the building is now estimated to cost. Part of the cost hike is due to a slower-than-anticipated process surrounding a complicated land swap between Middlesex County and the township that needs state Green Acres approval — a delay that has pushed back the start of construction.

As we said in an earlier editorial, there is plenty of blame to go around on this and it is incumbent upon the board to get the project moving.

The increased price tag, however, has added another wrinkle to a controversial project (there is some opposition to the land swap locally and among the state’s environmental community). Were the state to give final approval tomorrow, the district would still need to figure out how to pay the balance of the project — or whether it might have to scale back its plans.

The board has asked its Finance Committee to look into the matter and may turn to the township for help.

That raises some concerns. The township already has done as much as it can — the land swap made a lot of sense and helped save the district on property acquisition. To ask the township to get further involved would be an abdication of responsibility on the part of the board: A township contribution to the project would not necessarily safe taxpayers money, but would allow the district to reduce the amount for which it seeks approval from the voters. This would be disingenuous — a bureaucratic game of three-card monte.

It also would be a financial mistake: The board can charge Jamesburg for a portion of the interest on the high school project, because Jamesburg accounts for about a fifth of the student body; the township cannot. That would lessen Jamesburg’s potential contribution (I don’t wish to imply that the district should soak Jamesburg, but that the borough should pay its fair share).
In the end, I think there is only one legitimate option: Scale back the design for the new school, cutting its potential pricetag, and ask voters to fund that figure. It is the only fair thing to do.

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