The Township of Montclair is facing a lawsuit filed by the Montclair Board of Education over the renovation of the baseball field at Woodman Field.
The complaint, filed December 21, 2023, comes after the Township placed a stop work order at the baseball field in November and notified the district that adjustments to the location of the new baseball field would require them to bring an application to the Zoning Board for review.
In the lawsuit, the district argues that “The Board’s architects engaged with the Township’s Planning & Community Development Department multiple times in 2022 and 2023 with respect to any needed review of the November 2022 referendum project (of which Woodman Field is a part), and at no time prior to November 6, 2023 did anyone ever raise any zoning concerns with respect to what are, in essence, field and site improvements at Woodman Field.”
The district also states they awarded contracts to vendors for Woodman Field improvements, all based on the understanding that no zoning or planning approvals were required for the project.
On January 2, the lawsuit was discussed during the Montclair Council’s executive session. As per New Jersey Court records, no response has been submitted to the lawsuit filed on January 9, 2024; the Township has a 35-day period to do so.
The baseball field is one of the projects outlined in the bond referendum approved in 2022, with a designated allocation of $7,940,000 specifically for its renovation. The baseball field had a target completion date of mid-March.
On November 20, a group of Montclair families addressed a letter to Montclair town officials and the Board of Education, advocating that renovations to move forward and asking the district to take prompt action to ensure the safety of all playing fields in Montclair. Students and parents have also spoke at Board of Education meetings, citing athletes who have sustained injuries due to the unsafe conditions at the field.
Neighbors living opposite the field have also been vocal, expressing their concerns as well as their disappointment in the process.
“You were told by the Board of Education that this was a baseball field renovation. This is massive construction equipment,” Erin Bullen addressed the council on Jan 2 at the council meeting. “There’s dust in our homes and I can smell it in my house,” she said, holding up a picture of the current state of the field.
Communication breakdown
“I think the Board of Education has been incorrect all along in the way they have approached this,” said Jory Miller, a lawyer and resident at Champlain Terrace told Montclair Local. “They have not cooperated with the town, they have not cooperated with the residents and instead of working things out reasonably, they sued the township,” he added. “They’re on the same team as the town!”
“We’ve been excluded every time we’ve tried to have a meeting. We were supposed to have a meeting on January 3 but it was moved to January 18,” said Nancy Innace at the Jan. 2 council meeting. “It continues to happen and no OPRA requests have been answered. Everything we’ve tried to do has gone on deaf ears.”
The meeting scheduled with residents for Jan. 18 was also cancelled.
Residents have not been the only ones finding it difficult to reach Dr. Jonathan Ponds.
Montclair’s acting town manager Michael Lapolla addressed the public on Jan. 2 regarding the issue, saying he reached out to Ponds on Oct. 4 but was told a few days later that “Mr. Ponds was a very busy man” and that he might have time for him by Thanksgiving.
“I received an e-invite today for tomorrow without confirming my availability to finally talk to the superintendent,” Lapolla said on Jan. 2, adding that it had been three months since he received a response from the district.
“When the public comes up and the council says they want collaboration, that’s a two way street,” he adds. “We’ve been there and offered and I know the Department of Planning has offered for months and months and we don’t get answered at all. We have done whatever we can to try and get them to sit down and they choose not to,” Lapolla said.
Ponds said he couldn’t comment about matters regarding the litigation but told the Local that he and Lapolla had a conversation.
“I am aware of the statement by the Township Manager, and I spoke to him about it,” Ponds said.
Permit confusion
Janice Talley, director of Planning and Community Development, confirmed that the district did not have any approvals or permits from the Township for the work at Woodman Field and that a notice of violation was issued by the Code Enforcement Department to the district.
When the Local asked the district about the violation, Ponds said: “It is my understanding we have the proper permits to move soil.”
The Local requested to view the permits but the district has not responded. An OPRA request was filed to the Building Office/Construction, and the Community Services Department. The response was that no records were available.
An OPRA request was also filed to the BoE on Dec. 21 to obtain the soil permits mentioned, but there has been no response yet.
According to Talley, the district did not receive site plan approval from the Township.
“Montclair Code §280-1 states that regarding removal of vegetation or displacement of soil in an area with over 5,000 square feet of soil, it requires site plan approval,” she said in an email to the Local.
And the beat goes on. Incredible!
It gets better!
Our land use boards – seeing the handwriting on the wall and the flurry of court filings – are collaborating (with some inspiring urgency) on a revised municipal indemnification ordinance to give them the same protections the the originally passed ordinance provides our municipal government officials. They are hoping to send it to the Council by early next month.
This should coincide with the parents’ and BoE member’s renewed request for for $3MM of PILOT funds from the Township. Yes, the Township they are suing. And, yup, there is a tad bit of overlap with those requestors and those going nuts over the excessive expenditures on defense lawyers.
The school district has hired McManimon, Scotland to represent them. They used to be our bond attorneys, among other things.
Oh, and concurrently, the BoE wants us to sign a 5-year agreement to fund a School Resource Officer. Last time I checked that cost was $150K/year.
Same ol’ BoE. One day, but not soon, the BoE will actually stick their heads up in the air and look around. Maybe even take some selfies.
Frank, glad you noted the irony of the BOE suing while advocates are also asking for money, while the annual teacher purge appears to have been avoided (which appeared to be the impetus for the initial request, but has morphed into the ‘a percentage of pilots’ topic). And two years of no raising taxes related to the referendum! It’s like a weird backdoor tax cut and increase at the same time (unless folks push for the major public safety cuts).
(And before randos call out I live next door, yes, yes I do, ya got me).
Yes, the same ones that want to cut the Police Department headcount have no qualms asking the Town to subsidize with a P&F union pension for a School Resource Officer the district could hire for less from the private sector. You get used to the hypocrisy and piousness.
It is sad watching a divorce neither spouse is willing to finalize. I think they have just grown used to the bickering and the blame game. They each find ways to maintain the entanglements – both unsure how they can best serve the kids separately.
The school people asked for the divorce. They could do better directly managing the district. They played nice to get the $188MM bond referendum. The funny part is that 3 of 4 projects first in the pipeline are now not going well. Not well at all. A whole bunch need to get finalized in the next 45 days or some will miss the Summer construction period.
I don’t care so much if they waste a lot of the money if it stops the constant yakity-yak. Just waste it quietly, unobtrusively and we will push the day of reckoning out to 2030.
They sit around patting themselves on the back most meetings. The meetings are over in an hour because barely anyone shows up to question them. One day folks might wake up and realize that the BA and Ponds have no idea what they are doing. Good to see one person on that BOE questioning them, but he’s outnumbered. The town has not paid attention and they re-elected those that blindly pass through anything Ponds and the BA put in front of them. But hey, they are in and out in an hour and townsfolk are none the wiser….still can’t believe they trusted that kind of bond money with these people.
Our town deserves all public funds to be spent in a sustainable manner. It’s our environmental and climate future. Felling enormous shade trees and covering the land in petrochemicals filled with PFAs and microplastics is not in line with our State’s climate resiliency needs.
I feel so disheartened that our educational leaders are not leaning on, nor welcoming, our township’s stormwater, land, and zoning experts. As a resident acutely aware of the challenges climate change is bringing to our infrastructure, I cannot comprehend why the expert of advice of folks who are up to speed on the new NJDEP Stormwater regulations and who protect our town’s masterplan would be avoided. The school and those who accept their bids are ignoring the State’s own climate resiliency goals in the choices they are making for the ALSC. Sadly, they are also buying into false claims by companies that peddle petrochemical playing surfaces. Surfaces that professional athletes refer to as “junk” and that the Mount Sinai Children’s Environmental Health Center has recommended they not install because there are “uncertainties surrounding the safety of these products and the potential for dangerous heat and chemical exposures.”
Artificial turf lobbies are strong. They donate regularly to politicians and they lobby booster clubs to believe the false claims about their products. Well meaning parents want their kids to be safe but are being misguided by turf vendors and companies. Just look how many lawsuits already exist in NJ against Field Turf. Vendors, refer to their fields as all weather. Please look what happens to fields when it rains too much, when it floods, when it’s too hot, and in some areas, when it freezes. How are these fields going to be kept a safe temperature when it’s 80 degrees? They rate 20-40 degrees hotter. Look at Sustainable Jersey’s heat island map: you will now see Essex Field there courtesy of all the impervious synthetic turf surface and trees felled at the ALSC.
These fields cannot be recycled and they need to be replaced regularly. Microplastics from these end up in our water, in our animals, in our own bodies.
Instead, we could be training grounds people to maintain the natural grass fields we are blessed with. Like communities in Springfield MA and elsewhere. There are new kinds of grasses, and plenty of case studies to look at. The issue of the cost of maintenance hasn’t been adequately explored – if at all. Indeed I am left wondering what line item in the budget accounts for the maintenance the synthetic turf is allocated to. Is it bundled in with the capital expense? Are we paying interest on something that should actually be in an operating budget?
Children deserve safe and healthy playing fields. Synthetic turf is neither. Thank goodness Hillside will actually be natural grass per the Bond referendum project list. The parents who wrote the letter that is linked in this article perhaps are not aware that Hillside will NOT be synthetic turf. We did not vote for a synthetic field for Hillside in the referendum. For that matter, the actual bond referendum question on the ballot actually made no mention of the project specifics.
Regarding PFAs in the synthetic turf: I am not satisfied with the vendor’s claims. I am not OK with us accepting the vendors claims when we know what a community in Portsmouth, NH is facing after assurances that their synthetic turf was PFAs free. An independent test is needed here for the safety of the community and our water. It’s not too much to ask.
Re: the permits and zoning board: all I can say is what a waste of public funds. Residents are paying for both sides of this legal fight when the only asks are what MKA itself already went through when they re-did their baseball field. It’s a process all should welcome so we don’t end up with a playground like the Watchung one that has no shade, and a 40 foot net/fence that appears already broken and much taller than any of the MKA ones, and a playing surface that even when brand new, is disappointing like the one at Watchung.
We owe all our kids a better, more collaborative, more transparent process for their environmental health and safety. We all want healthy and safe communities where both our irreplaceable environment and our children’s safety is valued. The two are inextricably linked – especially in a neighborhood that is already environmentally overburdened per NJDEP.
This is not ok and the lengthy email about the environmental dangers associated with different playing surfaces does not make it ok. Neither do discussions of how anyone feels about the shape of the field or the extent of neighborhood involvement in the run up to the construction . The idea that as taxpayers we will be paying for both sets of lawyers is the point here and this is unacceptable. This is the political equivalent of children with money for lawyers! Work out a way to have an unpaid neutral resolve the issue. Or get in a room and don’t come out until its been worked out and you have a solution that does not involve ripping off local residents for money (legal fees) that should be going to teachers or tax reduction or pick your favorite. And if you can’t do that then agree that if this is litigated the side that loses will have to identify and fire whoever made the decisions that necessitated the lawsuit. That will end the case quickly. Someone will be unhappy if they don’t get their way but making the rest if us pay for this fight is just wrong.
@ pelberg,
You clearly don’t get it. The taxpayers? Seriously, I don’t take them seriously anymore. We spend Federal, State & local tax dollars like drunken sailors. I’m not going to feel badly for the taxpayers when we have all this entrainment.
But the part you seem to have missed is that both bodies are now elected by the very same group. We elected one group that sues and we elected the other group that is throwing a monkey wrench into our poor little children’s plans for the Spring.
This is great! I couldn’t be happier. Don’t be such a spoilsport.
Wow, “Sustainable Montclair!” You come prepared. I stopped reading after the sixty-seventh paragraph but good for you. I think I’d be on your side, Sustainable, if I really thought the world was coming to an end and this entire episode was a nasty aberration. It’s just that I can’t keep up with who hates whom in this town and who is ruining what ecosystem or who wants what rich kids to suffer or hates the other side more. I’m not suggesting the stakes are low, but painting everything like Love Canal numbs me to my core.
It’s times like this that I begin to miss Yacobellis. Anyone remember when his departure was supposed to make things easier?
Glad to see the BOE is upgrading the facilities for the children for a change.
I guess you just recently moved here. 2011 seems like just yesterday when we were carrying school debt of $100MM…funding school facilities upgrades. A chunk went to building the Bullock school. It’s just off Elm St. Check it out.
Our 2011 school debt in today’s dollars would be $136MM. The $240MM of school debt today is an impressive level of spending. We didn’t have the high quality of parenting then as we have now, but it’s not like we ignored the children .