Key takeaways from the April 30, Rutherford Board of Education meeting
- Ms. Jane Egan, President & CEO of Meadowlands Area YMCA, presented an offer to the Board of Education. Ms. Egan proposed that in exchange for a 20-25 year long term commitment, the YMCA would effectively assume all expenses and responsibility for the operation and maintenance of the pool, including needed capital improvements to the facility, such as pool lining, new boiler, new HVAC and more. This investment would be in excess of $1 million. Running two pools would allow for many additional new programs to be offered to Rutherford residents including a year-round Swim Club, US Master Swim program for adults and the YMCA of the USA 2nd Grade Swim Lesson Initiative which will provide complimentary lessons to every 2nd grader in Rutherford.
- Mr. McLean, BOE President, responded that the BOE would require the YMCA to cover all increased costs incurred in order to save the pool, i.e. the cost of a building addition, and that the cost to do this was now $5.9 million. Superintendent Hurley responded that after the April 12 meeting he thought they should look at another alternative and respond to the recent negative feedback received regarding the destruction of the pool. He stated that he met with the architect on April 13 and discussed a two-story building at RHS and that he had a response back within 5 days. This response is Option 4 which was presented as a $6 million cost increase over Option 2. Although Option 4 was presented by Mr. McLean & Superintendent Hurley as a viable option in their announcement and response to Ms. Egan, all information on the new Facilities website states that this new option was deemed non-viable because it did not include a location for the kitchen. Details on this option are posted here on the new Facilities website.
- Mr. McLean provided an explanation of how every policy and action the Board members approve must be based on what is in the best interest of the students and not the community at large, without placing an unreasonable tax burden on the community. He further went on to state that the pool is not core to the schools' curriculum.
- A request from a member of the public petitioning the Board to retain a new architect for the purpose of obtaining a second opinion to seek an alternate viable option was not introduced as a motion by the Board. In declining to support this, Ms. Librera noted that she didn't think spending (additional) district dollars on additional architectural services would get us any closer to a resolution of these very difficult issues. It is worth mentioning here that the original estimate for the entire project was approximately $49.4 million. This was later revised upwards to approximately $53 million when it was discovered that some aspects of the project had been overlooked. Hiring another firm to reexamine the plans would cost just a tiny fraction of that increase.
- Video replay of the meeting is available here.
Thank You to all the supporters of the SaveOurPool campaign who attended this meeting and especially to those who spoke at this and at prior meetings.
The next Board of Education Regular Meeting on May 14 at 7:30pm in the RHS cafeteria will likely be the last chance to change the referendum proposals as the Board is expected to vote in June to approve the plans for the referendum. Please reply to this email if you plan to attend this meeting. If you are unable to attend, members of the public can also send letters or emails to the Board asking for your letter to be read into the record by the BOE Secretary.
Thank you,
Rutherford Citizens To Save Our Pool