MONROE — On Friday, March 3, Green County Circuit Court Judge Thomas J. Vale denied a temporary injunction that would have paused the School District of Monroe’s upcoming Meeting of the Electors set for March 8.
The meeting is a yes or no vote by district residents on if the district should purchase a 70-acre parcel of land on County DR just north of the city limits near the industrial park. The meeting is March 8 at 7 p.m. in the Monroe High School gymnasium. The public can begin registering at 5:45 p.m. The vote was originally supposed to be held in the Performing Arts Center, but was moved to the gym, which has a higher capacity.
Voters will need to state their name and address, which will be verified against a list of registered voters as of March 3. Following state law, the voter must be a U.S. citizen, 18-years-old, and live at the same residence in the Monroe School District for the past 28 days. Absentee land owners — those who own land in the district but reside out of the district — are ineligible to vote. For those not registered to vote, there is a process to verify voting eligibility.
According to Arianna Voegeli, the Green County Clerk who helped the district prepare for the vote, paper ballots will be collected in clear tubs and counted by a pair of tabulators. Once the count is done and double-checked, the board clerk and deputy clerk will count and verify once more.
Howarth et al vs. School District of Monroe et al
A group of local citizens is suing the district for what they feel was a misrepresentation of the $88M Nov. 2022 referendum that passed by more than 10% of voters.
Dale Howarth, Larry Koschkee, Merlyn Gordee, Jr., and another Monroe resident brought forth the lawsuit against the School District of Monroe and the school’s Board of Education.
Their lawyer, Anthony Coletti of Elkhorn, argued in court that the vote not only should not happen, but asked the court to throw out the referendum. Vale refused.
Counsel for the School District of Monroe were Sarah Zylstra, Tanner Jean-Louis and Douglas Witte of Boardman Clark out of Madison.
All lawyers for the plaintiffs and defense attended via video conference.
In a civil suit, the burden of proof belongs to the plaintiffs. According to enjuris.com, a site dedicated to helping the public better understand law and litigation, the plaintiff must prove their case by a “preponderance of the evidence”, meaning they must show that a particular fact or event was more likely than not to have occurred. In the instance of the Monroe schools referendum, that means that the 10% winning vote margin (about 620 total votes) would have swung into favor of “no”, either by more individuals that did not go to the polls show up and vote no, or there would have been at least a 310 vote swing of “yes” to “no” votes.
The matter was set over, and a status conference was scheduled the next court date for 1:30 p.m. on March 14.