Nov 13, 2013: The Sea Cliff – North Shore Property Owners Committee has filed a legal petition with the New York State Commissioner of Education against the North Shore Central School District citing violations of State Law with regards to an upcoming bond referendum.

The North Shore School District is seeking to pass a 19.6 million dollar bond issue for the purposes of infrastructure improvements. The SCPOC contends that many of the improvement are unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer funds. SCPOC further contends that the district is using these illegal tactics to railroad the bonds passage at the ballot box. Furthermore, the district hired construction consultants that are paid to advise the district on the nature and method of renovation. The consultants are paid in proportion to the amount of expenditure of the projects, hence they would have a vested interest in inflating the costs.

The SCPOC alleges that the school district printed and circulated “marketing advertisements” or “Flyers” that are designed to “exhort the electorate to cast their ballots in support of a particular position advocated by the Board”.. of Education. The advertisements advocate a partisan position of the School District in advocating a YES vote for the subject Bond Referendum on December 3, 2013;, and secondly, the printing and distribution of these advertising flyers violates the constitutional prohibition against using public (tax payer) funds to advance and promote a partisan position.

The SCPOC seeks to bar the school district from further distribution of illegal flyers to the electorate.

UPDATE: The school district’s response to our petition they now claim they withdrew the contested flyer to avoid litigation. What they fail to say is that until they were forced to respond to our litigation, they never said anything about withdrawing the flyer.This is district double-talk in their attempt to avoid liability for the illegal tactics used to pass budgets and bond referendums.