After three terms on the Secaucus Board of Education, Douglas MacCormack has declined to run for reelection, amid of flurry of speculation as to why.
Feb. 27 was the final date for filing petitions and though as many as 11 people expressed an interest, MacCormack was not one. Of the 11 people, only seven candidates actually submitted petitions to the school board.
During a telephone interview last week, MacCormack denied that the controversy over the board’s giving major pay raises to top school officials had anything to do with his decision, despite his being blamed for negotiating the raises.
“I’m not running at this time for personal and professional reasons,” he said. “I can not give110 percent of my time to Board of Education. Over the last nine years, I’ve prided myself as being hard and diligent worker. I’m currently in a position where I can’t guarantee I can get 100 percent of my time. While I probably could do it, I couldn’t go before the voters and ask them to return me to the position for three years when I’m not sure. When the day comes ask voters to elect me to a public office, I can assure them I can be dedicated to that office.”
MacCormack said he did not fear a reaction to the pay raises.
“In the past, I’ve never been afraid to run on my record,” he said. “I ran for re-election a year after voters rejected our $10.5 million bond [in 1995]. I don’t run away from anything. I will stand behind the salary adjustments.”
He said those adjustments – some of which amounted to $15,000 increases over three years – were necessary to make the positions competitive in the state, so that if any needed to be filled, the schools would get qualified candidates.
“The only mistake I made was phasing them in over three years,” he said. “I should have asked to have them done in the middle of the year and called them just what they are, salary adjustments.”
In defending his record, he said he helped get a $3 million refund from the state on the recently passed $6 million bond.
“Where as the raises meant pennies added to each house’s taxes, the refund meat dollars cut,” he said. “Over my nine years on the board, we did countless things to bring down costs. This included getting companies to donate things to the school district. We got our security system in the high school for nothing.”
In defending his record, MacCormack said he helped reduce the overall size of the administrative staff over the last nine years, making it one of the most streamlined of any school district’s in the state, he claimed.
Those who speculated on MacCormack’s reasons for not running again also had another popular theory: that he would run for Town Council. MacCormack neither confirmed nor denied this last week.
A crowded field of candidates
Of the 11 people who originally took out the necessary paper work for a possible run for the board, four did not file petitions. These included real estate agent Catherine Murray, Former 3 rd Ward Councilman Sal Manente (now living in the 1st Ward), and resident Ann Ross.
Of the seven candidates running for the school board, Michael Schlemm and Anthony Rinaldi are incumbents. Michael Harper, currently a commissioner on the Secaucus Housing Authority, is expected to run as part of a Democratic slate that will include Schlemm and Rinaldi.
Challengers include former board member Thomas Troyer, Library Board President Mauro DeGennaro, Cory Robinson, director of the ice rink, and resident Kathy McFarlane.
This year’s school board election will be held on April 17. People seeking to register to vote have until March 19 and can fill out the forms at the Town Clerk’s office on the second floor of Town Hall, located at County Avenue and Paterson Plank Road.
“We’ll be open until 9 p.m. that night,” said Town Clerk Michael Marra.