Voters in Buena Borough and Buena Vista Township have voiced a new confidence in their school district's financial management, after agreeing to pay $9.5 million for a new middle school and auxiliary facilities on Tuesday.

The bond question's approval came after taxpayers rejected the past four school district budgets.

Buena Vista Township residents voted 876-225 to approve question one, which asked about paying for the school. The township voted 832-260 to also approve question two, which asked about paying for an extra gym and auditorium. Buena Borough voted 487-163 in favor of question one, and 448-197 in favor of question two.

The 15-year bond will increase taxes by $55 its first year, $58 the second, and $10 about a decade later for someone whose house is appraised for $100,000, according to Buena Vista Mayor Chuck Chiarello.

During the past few months, local officials warned residents that the New Jersey Schools Construction Corp.'s $14.5 million payment toward the $24 million school would likely not be available in the future.

According to Doug Adams, the Board of Education's vice president, a new school would be needed regardless of the vote's outcome. He said the referendum was a matter of accepting the state's funds.

The approval will set off a chain reaction in the district.

By 2007, students at Cleary Middle School will move into the new school. Students at Donini Elementary School and Edgarton Memorial Elemen-tary School will move into the new parts of Cleary.

The conditions in the older parts of Cleary were becoming a concern, Adams said.

He said an iron beam fell from the hallway ceiling during class time, the gym ceiling in the basement is caving in, and many first floor rooms have moisture problems.

Ted Peters, a science teacher at Cleary who also graduated from the school in 1995, said he had no running water to his classroom, making it almost impossible to do lab experiments.

Peters was manning a polling booth at the Buena Borough municipal building. By 6:45 p.m. on Tuesday, 144 votes were cast there.

"I'm thinking about the future," said 30-year-old Claudio Collazo, who had a 4-month-old son. "I want him to have the best education facilities possible. And I'll pay the necessary taxes for them."

Between 5:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. in Buena Borough, five residents said they voted against the referendum. All five refused to give their name.

"Are you kidding," one woman in her 40s said when asked for her name. "I have kids in this district and so many people talk. But I voted against it because there's been too much mismanagement of school money in the past years."

Residents in the Buena Regional School District will vote today on whether they want to pay part of the cost for a new middle school.

The referendum comes at a time when taxpayers have been critical of the school board's finances and have voted down the past four school budgets.

Yet supporters of the referendum said this is likely the district's only chance to use $14.5 million from the state Schools Construction Corp., which would pay more than 60 percent of the school's $24 million price tag.

Voters will see two questions on the referendum that deal with floating a 15-year bond.

The first asks if taxpayers will pay about $8.1 million for the school. The second asks if voters want to pay $1.6 million for an auxiliary auditorium and gym, according to Doug Adams, the Board of Education's vice president.

If passed, the bonds will increase taxes about $55 for the first year, $58 for the second and $10 about a decade later. The figures are based on a home assessed for $100,000, Adams said.

It's likely that voters will either pay for part of the school now or have to pay almost all the costs in the near future, Adams said.

He said the state may eventually demand that students be removed from deteriorating conditions at Cleary Middle School, Donini Elementary School and Edgarton Memorial Elementary School.

There's moisture in first-floor rooms, a collapsed ceiling in the basement gym and the classrooms sometimes get unbearably hot for students, he said. Also, a metal beam fell in the hallway during a class period after its supports weakened.

If the referendum passes, students in 2007 will be moved from Cleary into a new middle school located on the Buena Regional High School campus. Cleary's new sections will then become an elementary school for the Donini and Edgarton students.

"This is the right time for this one-time opportunity," Buena Vista Township Mayor Chuck Chiarello said. "Right now there are low interest rates, the state is at its peak amount of funding and there's minimal impact on taxpayers."

But former school board member Tobin Nilsen said voters may be weary of how the district is spending money in the wake of taxpayers rejecting the past four budgets.

"I agree with the first question," said Nilsen, who is an attorney in the Minotola section of Buena Borough and has two children in the Buena school system. "But I wonder in the region's strained economic times whether the extra gym and auditorium are affordable for residents."

Buena Mayor Joseph Baruffi, who supports passing the referendum, said his first inclination was to wait. "But it doesn't seem like that's much of an option," he said, "with the SCC's funding diminishing so quickly."

Several officials predict voter turnout to be about 600 people for both municipalities, which isn't as high as November elections.

School board member Barbara Caselli said she had mixed feelings about if voters will pass the referendum.

"In the end, I'm confident it will pass," she said. "The difference here is that people have to go specifically for this question, where with elections and budgets, referendum questions are voted on with everything else."

Caselli said this may cause people adamantly for or against the bond to cast votes.

Polls will be open from noon to 9:00 p.m. at all local polling sites, Chiarello said.

As the state's school construction fund rapidly dries up, residents in 38 school districts around the state will go to the polls Tuesday to vote on a record $837 million in school construction and renovation projects.

Included among them are Buena Regional School District in Atlantic County, Lower Cape May Regional in Cape May County, and Lacey and Little Egg Harbor townships in Ocean County.

More than $230.6 million of those funds would be eligible for state aid under the $8.6 billion school-financing law approved in 2000. Only about $60 million remains in the fund.

The remaining projects would likely be funded through the old debt service process in which money is allocated by the Legislature in each annual budget. There are also proposals to add more money to the fund, but the Legislature has not yet acted on them.

School districts have preferred the new law, which guarantees at least 40 percent of eligible costs in state aid. Under the old debt service model, about 240 wealthier districts got virtually no state aid for construction and another 108 got less than 25 percent, according to the New Jersey School Boards Association.

The NJSBA has praised the law for having provided a major source of property-tax relief for New Jersey residents through increased state aid.

The local projects scheduled to go to voters Tuesday include: