For years, good government advocates throughout New Jersey have been arguing that BOEs should not have the ability to use local tax dollars on Public Relation firms to sell referendum votes or any Election related matters.
Laura Bishop boasts about helping districts pass high-cost
referendums. She is using the taxpayer’s own money to work against their financial interests if they do not fall on one side of a ballot vote. Voting is a personal issue, and nobody should
have to pay taxes for only one side of an issue to be represented.
This week a high-cost mailer was sent to every Lodi
household from the Lodi Board of Education with a picture of Nancy Cardone on
the cover.
I didn’t comment on the issue until I began receiving
many emails and texts from Lodi taxpayers asking me how much the mailer cost. It was a nice mailer, but many taxpayers questioned
its cost and purpose for the following reasons:
Why couldn’t a Lodi High School Club produce a good news
publication for the district website and sent home in school?
What is the Lodi Board of Education selling with this Public
Relations mailer? In New Jersey,
government run schools are a monopoly. Families
without the financial means for private school are trapped in failing public
schools. Some Lodi families have the
option for Charter schools, but room is limited.
How much was the total cost for the PR mailer and what was it selling? Is it a precursor to a referendum campaign? There must be total transparency for any public body to use local tax dollars on any Public Relations.
It is in Nancy Cardone’s interest to use public tax
dollars on a PR firm to talk about only positives when there are many
negatives. Laura Bishop will never use
our tax dollars to publish spending charts, budgets, test scores or Nancy
Cardone’s outrageous nepotism abuses.
