Chatham Resident: Misinformed Voters Make Bad Decisions

The following Letter to the Editor was submitted to Chatham Patch by Helena Axelrod, a Chatham resident.

Dear Editor,

Informed voters make informed decisions. Misinformed voters often make bad decisions. These bad decisions come not because the misinformed voter doesn’t understand the material put before him/her; rather, it happens because the voter has been misled and not been given the entire truth. Sadly, that is what is happening in the School District of the Chathams with their Referendum on April 21st. The Referendum asks voters to approve a loan for capital improvements whose interest and principal will paid by the taxpayers of the Chathams for the next 20 years.

The School District’s Board of Education (BOE) has just released an information brochure, which can be seen at the following link: http://www.chatham-nj.org/page/13886 . This brochure is very misleading and obscures rather than explains how this money will be spent. Those who have not been following the presentations by the Board of Education and our Superintendent will not understand what this Referendum really proposes.

In short, the Referendum proposes constructing a new theater (sometimes called a performing arts center and sometimes called an auditorium) in the center oval in front of the Chatham Middle School to replace the current Middle School auditorium. This proposal is totally obscured in the brochure. The theater is estimated to cost $10.8 million dollars and is done in conjunction with the conversion of the current Middle School auditorium for $ 3.4 million dollars. These are costs presented by the Board of Education at the Jan. 28, 2015 meeting, and can be seen by going to http://www.chatham-nj.org/Page/13723.

More than half of the Referendum costs are going for this single project, driven primarily by the building of the new theater. This is not at all obvious in the brochure. The Project Scope in the brochure says only that this project is to “Address the two outdated auditorium facilities”. While the Referendum does propose renovation of the High School auditorium, the Middle School auditorium is not simply being renovated. It is being replaced by a new building and the current auditorium space will be dedicated to office space for the Superintendent’s Office and members of the Board of Education as well as several specialized, technology class rooms.

The building of the new theater has been the most contentious part of the referendum. A substantial group of Chatham citizens questions the need for a new theater and the extravagant spending of millions of dollars to get it built. However, the brochure does its best to obscure that a new building is being proposed. There is also no mention of where it will be located nor that it is related to the other renovations at the Middle School. It is quite distressing to me that this information is not clearly provided to the voter in this “Referendum Plan” brochure for the single most expensive part of the Referendum. How can a voter be informed and make the right decision with this type of information from the Board of Education?

Respectfully yours,

Helena Axelrod

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More on Patch:

• Chatham Resident: Proposing Framework For Three-Question Format For Upcoming Referendum
• Township Resident: Taxpayers Will Shoulder Cost of New School Theater for 20 Years
• Chatham Parent: Why I Support the Referendum and Board of Education
• Resident: Is a $14 Million Chatham Middle School Theater Reasonable?
• Chatham Parent: Let the Voters Decide How the $22 Million Referendum Should Be Spent
• Chatham Resident: $14 Million Middle School Theater Is Unjustifiable Waste of Taxpayer Money