Prospect of K-L Tennis & Field Vote Pushed into New Year

A possible referendum on adding tennis courts at the John Jay campus and in replacing the nearby turf field has been pushed to 2014 while a plan for dealing with stormwater for the field is worked on.

School board President Charles Day, who gave the update at Thursday's meeting in with a statement, explained that it was discovered the district had no documentation of a stormwater pollution prevention plan (SWPPP) having been made when the field was originally installed in 2003. This discovery came after the district received a letter on Sept. 25 from New York City's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) - it has an oversight role because the campus falls within the watershed of a city reservoir - that asked about a SWPPP. The DEP sent the letter because the school district notified it and under agencies in August as part of the environmental review for the proposal.

In the statement, Day raised the prospect of the process happening later and with a vote not occurring until next spring at the same time as a referendum on the 2014-15 school budget. However, it is also possible that a referendum could be held as early as January, Day acknowledged when asked by Patch.

In either case, the school board would need to vote on whether to have the public referendum.

Robert Labriola, who is with the John Jay Boosters Club and has been instrumental in the group's fundraising efforts to build the six tennis courts, told Patch he learned from the district that a vote in the later half of January was possible, which prompted the follow up question for Day.

The school district's legal counsel is now looking into whether or not the review processes for the courts and the field can be separated, which would allow for the former to be independent of the SWPPP issue for the later.

Labriola is concerned about the prospect of waiting until spring to hold a referendum because he feels it would be a problem for a deadline that would result in donors being refunded their money if work is not complete by Dec. 31, 2014. In this scenario, Labriola explained, either permission could be sought from the donors for more time or there could be an effort to raise the portion of the project's cost that was meant to be included in the referendum.

The boosters have raised around $400,000 for the project, although funding for site preparation work and drainage has been considered for inclusion in a referendum. An estimate for that cost given in August was $235,000. However, the estimated cost has since dropped, according to Labriola.