Council Postpones Decision on Clifton Elementary School Funds

The town council has decided to postpone the decision on whether to use $25,000 in Clifton town funds to help pay a portion of legal fees incurred by a group that worked to keep Clifton Elementary School open.

The figure would represent about 14 percent of the legal fees due to Patton Boggs, LLC, the firm hired by Friends of Community Schools, the non-for-profit organization that supported keeping the school open. , a candidate for school board, is listed as an officer of the group along with six others in the organization’s tax filings.

Town officials said at Tuesday's town council meeting that they would wait to vote on the proposal until after the Nov. 8 elections.

“You have a political candidate running for school board and I don’t it’s in our best interest to vote on this because of the look that we are supporting a political candidate,” said town councilman Wayne Nickum at the meeting. “We are a non-partisan organization. It puts us in a potentially politically embarrassing situation.”

Two lawsuits were filed in an effort to keep the school open. The money would represent 13.6 percent of the Town of Clifton’s annual revenues of about $183,500.

The town council first entertained the proposal at the which brought out dozens of residents to speak both in favor and against the proposal.

“In this context we aren’t really talking about the town, we are talking about the community,” resident Steve Effros said at the October meeting. “It doesn’t behoove us to now say that it’s town versus out of town.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, however, resident Pat Layden said that the council should make a decision.

“Here we are the first week of November that you individually and collectively have the knowledge to make a decision on this tonight,” Layden said. “I would say you know more then we know about it. it puzzles me why you want to do that.”

The town council decided at Tuesday’s meeting to postpone the decision in either a separate meeting to be held sometime in November or at their December 6 meeting.