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For the past two weeks, public officials and concerned citizens in the town of Pleasantville, NJ have been dealing with the fall out of an FBI bribery and corruption investigation that resulted so far in the arrest of the Pleasantville BOE President, James Pressley, and BOE member Rafael Velez.
The town's Mayor, Ralph Peterson, has said that the BOE has repeatedly over time shown that it can not govern itself.
At last week's BOE meeting, the two BOE members arrested in the FBI sting refused to resign from the board.
One resident of Pleasantville believes that the city council should appoint BOE members. To that effect, he has presented the Pleasantville School District business administrator with a petition signed by at least 600 residents requesting that the BOE be appointed.
However, another Pleasantville resident has countered that appointing BOE members simply replaces one bad system with another. The Pleasantville BOE elections have been manipulated by the use of absentee ballots by a local political organization to elect candidates it favors. But having city council appoint members may also result in political appointments.
What's your thoughts on this issue?
