Petitions Available For Prospective Board Of Education Candidates

Anyone interested in filing a petition to run as a candidate for the Board of Education must contact Hana Kataw at the Passaic County Clerk’s Office between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

The clerk’s office is located at 401 Grand St. in Paterson. Kataw can be reached by phone at 973-225-3632, ext. 311.

The deadline for filing petitions is June 5 at 4 p.m.

Board trustees Kim Essen, Jane Hutchinson, and Donald Monteyne are up for re-election this year. Trustees serve three-year terms.

The board voted in January to and effectively eliminated a public vote on the district’s tax levy beginning this year. The measure will remain in effect until 2015.

Trustees defended the move when they approved it. They said they could develop a comprehensive financial plan for the next four years rather than go year to year like they have in the past.

“It puts us in a much stronger position where we can now project out,” Board President Donald Pavlak Jr. previously said. “The uncertainty of what the district would receive in state aid, and planning on a year-to-year basis, made it difficult to get a clear long-term picture of the district’s finances.”

The only way the public could have voted on the tax levy is if it exceeded a state-mandated 2-percent increase cap. The board , including a $127 million tax levy in March. The school portion of the average homeowner’s tax bill increased $127, a less-than 2 percent increase.

Incumbent Board President Donald Pavlak Jr., and trustees Robyn Kingston, and Laura Stinziano . It is Pavlak’s third term on the board. It is Kingston’s and Stinziano’s first.

Voters narrowly rejected the district’s 2011 $126.6 million tax levy last May. The defeat allowed the town council to recommend from the tax levy.