Sayreville school district sues borough for scrapping bus parking project
SAYREVILLE – The Board of Education is done playing nice with the borough.
The school district has filed a lawsuit against the borough in Superior Court over the proposed district transportation complex, alleging breach of contract.
The school district is asking the court to order the borough to meet its obligations under an agreement with the school district, including "exhibiting good faith and fair dealing."
The district is seeking a court declaration that it has "been harmed" by the borough's breach of its promises and that the district is entitled to enforce the terms of the agreement.
The lawsuit is also asking the court to order the borough to reimburse the district for legal costs, increased construction costs caused by the delay and "any other relief the court determines appropriate and necessary."
A court hearing is scheduled for Jan. 18.
"We will have no comment on pending litigation," Borough Administrator Glenn Skarzyanski said Monday.
The lawsuit is the latest twist in the controversy between the school district and the borough over the transportation center.
In March 2022, the school district and borough signed a memorandum of understanding agreement to construct a joint transportation center for school district vehicles and the borough's Department of Public Works.
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After plans for a transportation facility at Selover School were scrapped because of neighborhood opposition, the two sides agreed to a new site, owned by the borough, on the north side of Cheesequake Road between the ballfields and the DuPont factory.
The district and the borough agreed to a long-term land-swap lease, in which the district would obtain a renewable 50-year lease with a 25-year renewal option on the borough’s property in exchange for the borough getting a lease on the portion of the district’s property at the Selover site where was athletic fields are located.
After the agreement was signed, the district moved forward with its plans to construct the transportation complex, "expending significant sums of scarce taxpayer funds to do so," according to the lawsuit.
In the lawsuit, the district claims the borough was "a complicit partner" and participated in the district's planning and construction efforts.
In October, the school board awarded a $5.6 million bid for construction to James R. Ientile, Inc., of Marlboro, with the money from the district’s capital reserve fund.
And then the trouble began.
The district began working with the board to formalize the memorandum of understanding so that the contract could be finalized once the leases were signed.
But around Oct. 24, the borough told the district it had reservations about signing the lease after concerns were raised by residents at a Borough Council meeting.
Those concerns included increased traffic, environmental impacts and the use of the land. Previously, DuPont had operated a chemical manufacturing plant on the property since 1904 but had completed environmental remediation.
The school district said it had all necessary approvals to start construction of the transportation complex.
The district then asked the borough to approve the leases, adding the "refusal to execute the formal lease documents without further explanation would be considered a repudiation and breach of the contract by the borough" as well as "a breach of its implicit duty of good faith and fair dealing."
When the bids expired on Nov. 20 and no leases had been signed, the school board was required to seek new bids.
The lawsuit followed.
In the lawsuit, the district says it "explicitly and directly relied on the representations, offers and inducements made by the Borough at every step of the process."
The district added it would have already built and been using a transportation complex at the Selover site were it not for the borough’s inducement to forego that project in lieu of construction on the Cheesequake Road property.
In 2017, the school district switched from a private contractor for student transportation to in-house service. That switch sparked the need for a transportation center when buses started to take up parking spots at the high school.
The district is responsible to provide transportation for 5,316 students. The district owns and operates 49 full-size buses and 17 minibuses, as well as other vehicles.
email: cmakin@gannettnj.com
Cheryl Makin is an award-winning features and education reporter for MyCentralJersey.com, part of the USA Today Network. Contact: Cmakin@gannettnj.com or @CherylMakin. To get unlimited access, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Sayreville NJ school district sues borough over bus parking
