Toms River School Board Election Enters Final Days

TOMS RIVER, NJ — School funding, property taxes and concerns about getting students back in school in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic are the main issues facing the Toms River Regional School District as voters cast their ballots in the 2020 election.

But those issues have been eclipsed by a vitriolic campaign that has included blistering video attacks on social media and in glossy mailers over faked news websites and television ads. It has led to bare-knuckle social media fights, both among supporters of the various candidates and the candidates themselves.

There are nine candidates, aligned into three slates, seeking the three, three-year unpaid volunteer seats on the school board.

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The three slates are:

• Toms River 1st, comprised of Lisa Contessa, Ken Londregan and Ashley Palmiere. Contessa sought a seat on the school board in 2019 but was defeated. Londregan is making his first bid for the school board, after a failed bid in the Toms River Township Council Republican primary in 2019 as a part of Daniel Rodrick's mayor-council slate (Rodrick was third in the primary, and his council slate finished at the bottom of the council primary race). Palmiere is a newcomer to the political scene.
• Children First, comprised of Rachel Remelgado, Michele Williams and Daynne Glover. Remelgado, a newcomer, has been active in the school district's fight over the S2 funding cuts, including giving testimony in Trenton about the impact of those cuts. Glover also is a newcomer. Williams, the lone incumbent running, ran for Township Council last year on the Democratic slate with mayoral candidate Jonathan Petro.
• Moving TR Forward, comprised of Bridget Maillard, Robert Onofrietti, and Christopher Raimann. Maillard, a newcomer, has been active in the school district's fight over the S2 funding cuts as well, creating a petition that garnered nearly 17,000 signatures. Onofrietti served on the board from 2014 to 2017, but lost election bids in 2017 and 2018. Raimann served on the board from 2015 to 2018, but his re-election bid failed.

You can read their profiles here:

• Toms River School Board Election 2020: Lisa Contessa
• Toms River School Board Election 2020: Ken Londregan
• Toms River School Board Election 2020: Ashley Palmiere
• Toms River School Board Election 2020: Daynne Glover
• Toms River School Board Election 2020: Rachel Remelgado
• Toms River School Board Election 2020: Michele Williams
• Toms River School Board Election 2020: Bridget Maillard
• Toms River School Board Election 2020: Robert Onofrietti Jr.
• Toms River School Board Election 2020: Christopher Raimann

State funding and the impact on property taxes continue to be a vexing problem for the district. Under S2, the district has had its funding cut — the impact is estimated at more than $70 million cumulatively — on the state Department of Education's premise that the Toms River schools are receiving more aid than they should be. S2 also requires the Toms River school district to increase the property tax levy by 2 percent each year, on the premise that its taxpayers are not paying their fair share of the property tax burden.

The district has been forced to use surplus to fill budget holes created by the cuts. That surplus is limited to begin with; state law says public schools cannot have a surplus exceeding 2 percent of their budget.

The S2 cuts are anticipated to be more than $7 million for the 2021-2022 school year, district officials have said.

The Moving TR Forward team says it believes the district is spending money recklessly and wants to see an audit, along with cuts in administrative spending, and wants the district to stop threatening to cut sports, clubs and other co-curricular activities.

The Toms River 1st team also wants to see spending cuts and a stabilization of taxes. They also want to see changes to the 1960s law that requires public school districts to pay for transportation of students to private schools. That law has become a point of contention as the district pays either a stipend or for busing for children attending schools in Lakewood.

The Children First team wants to continue to fight S2, and supports the lawsuit against the state Department of Education that aims to halt the cuts.

District officials said claims about the increases in administrative costs are incorrect. The state Department of Education defines how administrative costs are calculated. In 2014, the state told districts that the cost of student accident insurance would be included in administrative costs. For Toms River, that budget is $450,000, a substantial increase, business administrator William Doering said. Without that cost being moved to the administrative category, the increas in administrative costs fro June 2014 to June 2020 is 15.6 percent, an average of 3.1 percent per year.

From June 2015 to June 2020, administrative costs increased 10 percent, an average of 2 percent per year.

All three slates also want to see the students returned to fully in-person instruction, after the schools opened with fully virtual learning in September. The district's elementary students are on a hybrid schedule with two days a week in person and three days virtual. Middle and high school students are slated to shift to hybrid schedules on Nov. 9. Staffing issues that arose as medical and child care accommodations were sought prompted the district to open virtually. The more than 400 staff seeking accommodations have been reduced to fewer than 100.

The policy matters, however, have gotten lost in the swarm of personal attacks and social media fights.

The Moving TR Forward team have accused the Toms River 1st and Children First slates of being funded by special interests and political action committees.

They have accused Williams, the former principal of St. Joseph's Grade School, of failing to report that she is a defendant in a bullying lawsuit filed against her and St. Joseph's school. The lawsuit alleges a child was subjected to racially motivated bullying and nothing was done to stop it, while Williams was principal. Williams, in an email to Patch, said she could not comment on the lawsuit because it is pending litigation.

Williams said the Children First team has very little funding and none from political action committees.

Contessa said the Toms River 1st slate has not been "endorsed by any political organizations nor have we received any significant help from any PACs." She said the Toms River 1st slate is focused on its messages, and not involved in the negative campaigning.

A review of filings by all three campaigns with the state Election Law Enforcement Commission shows the Children First slate filed documents saying it did not plan to spend more than $14,000 on the campaign for the three candidates.

The state Election Law Enforcement Commission does not require detailed disclosure reports from candidates unless they spend more than $14,000 on a campaign. They must report any single donations that are more than $300, and the contributors must be identified.

Children First reported receiving $11,949.16 in contributions as of Oct. 13, including a $500 donation from Alan Levy, a North Jersey attorney who is related to Remelgado. None of the other contributors were identified, which means their donations were less than $300.

Toms River 1st reported receiving $17,385 through Oct. 3. Its detailed contribution form included $1,000 from the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Union; $900 from the Kelaher, Van Dyke & Moriarity law firm; $850 from Justin Lamb, a Lavallette police officer and attorney who ran with Londregan in the GOP council primary; $900 from Remington and Vernick Engineers, and $1,000 from the Southern Ocean Conservative Republican PAC.

The Southern Ocean County Conservative Republican PAC sprung up in 2019 after Frank Holman was elected head of the Ocean County Republican Party, edging Frank Sadeghi by 25 votes. Sadeghi had been the finance chairman under disgraced Ocean County Republican Club chairman George Gilmore, who was forced to resign the post following his conviction on federal tax-related charges. Sadeghi was Gilmore's choice to succeed him, and Holman has accused Gilmore of trying to disrupt the party by creating the PAC, the New Jersey Globe reported.

The Moving TR Forward slate has received the endorsement of the Toms River Education Association, an endorsement that some of its members have vocally opposed on social media.

The Moving TR Forward slate reported receiving $5,100 in donations as of Oct. 5, including a $2,100 in-kind donation from Michael Wright, owner of Michael Wright Construction, who donated radio commercial spots on WOBM to the slate. Raimann said Wright is a personal friend of his family. Onofrietti said the slate does not plan to spend more than $14,000 on its campaign, and said criticisms in the community about the campaign running ads on television, which were seen on Fox News and during New York Yankees' games, were unfounded.

"We have had to be very frugal with the money that we have and saw an opportuity to reach more people for less money," Onofrietti said, saying glossy mailers sent to voters' homes were more expensive.

According to a spokesman at Advertising Analytics, which tracks advertising spending across the country, Moving TR Forward spent "at least $6,000" on the television ads that appeared starting Sept. 17 and were reserved through Oct. 25.

The Moving TR Forward slate has been targeted by the website Central Jersey News, which is designed to look like a legitimate news site but has no bylines on articles and does not provide contact information for the publisher. That site posted personal financial documents on Maillard and Onofrietti. It also posted the settlement of the state School Ethics Commission complaint that filed against Raimann by former board president Russ Corby in 2018.

The complaint was settled after Raimann lost his bid for re-election, but the notice published by the School Ethics Commission shows it had moved to send several of the allegations, which included that he violated the confidentiality of school board operations, to the Office of Administrative Law for a hearing.

Raimann, in an email to Patch, called the ethics complaint an attempt by Corby to discredit him motivated by personal agendas, after Raimann voted against Superintendent David Healy's contract. "I am a family man with strong roots in this community. I take pride in my job, helping those in need, and candidly doing the right thing. I have never done anything unethical."

Corby said all of the accusations in the ethics complaint were documented, and that the complaint was not dismissed, it was settled. "The ethics commission said there was probable cause and sent it to an administrative law judge," Corby said. He said copies of the settlement agreement and the ruling by an administrative law judge rejecting Raimann request for a dismissal on the contention that the complaint was moot once his re-election bid failed were legitimate documents.

Central Jersey News has published no stories about either of the other Toms River school board slates. It has, however, published stories attacking a candidate in the Middletown Township Board of Education race, and has been supporting the incumbent mayor in Howell.

The campaign has been so heated that it has spilled over to a flood of Open Public Records Act requests and even led to Onofrietti's father calling in to one of the school board's public listening sessions about what the community wants in the next superintendent. Healy is retiring effective Jan. 1.

In the phone call to the Oct. 23 public session, Robert Onofrietti Sr. urged people to prevent his son from getting elected to the school board, and expressed frustration that his name had been dragged into the campaign.

In a phone interview that night, Onofrietti Sr. told Patch he had been told that his name was listed as the person responsible for the Moving TR Forward campaign's Facebook page. He said he does not use the computer and is not on social media.

"I did not give him permission to use my name," Onofrietti Sr. said. "I’m tired of being responsible for him and his actions."

He said there are ongoing family issues and that he had not spoken to his son in a year until after he made the phone call to the Oct. 23 listening session. "I told him 'don’t run for the board until you straighten yourself out,' " Onofrietti Sr. said.

In a public Facebook post on Oct. 24, Onofrietti Jr. accused the candidates of the other campaigns of "paying off old men to say things about their families" and engaging in character assassination.

Onofrietti Sr. said he was angry that his name was used on the campaign's Facebook page, and frustrated at being dragged into the election campaign.

"He’s using my name inappropriately," Onofrietti Sr. said. "I’m sorry for it but I had no choice."

The page was updated and Onofrietti Sr.'s name removed over the weekend.

Both the Toms River 1st and the Children First campaigns have denied being behind the Central Jersey News website. Onofrietti Sr. did not say who alerted him about the Facebook page.

Moving TR Forward contends it has been subjected to "hate and bullying by former board members and a few uneducated people."

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