Cape May County Votes Tuesday: Commissioners, Councils and School Boards — and in Stone Harbor, a $1.5 Million Question About an Elementary School Roof
The state's southernmost county closes its campaign season with county and municipal races up and down the ballot, and one precisely priced ballot question: $1,500,000 to replace part of the Stone Harbor Elementary School roof, with the state carrying 40 percent of the debt service.
Cape May County heads to the polls Tuesday for the 2026 General Election with the full stack of a New Jersey ballot in front of it: federal races at the top, contests for the Cape May County Board of Commissioners and for local municipal councils in the middle, and several school board races across the county below them, Coast News Today reported in its Election Eve county preview. Polls are open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. county-wide, as they are across the state.
One Cape May ballot carries a question with a price tag. In Stone Harbor, voters will decide a bond proposal to replace a portion of the roof at Stone Harbor Elementary School, including related improvements: the question authorizes the borough's Board of Education to appropriate $1,500,000 and to issue bonds in an amount not to exceed $1,500,000, according to the New Jersey School Boards Association's summary of the November ballot. The final eligible costs approved by the state Commissioner of Education are the same $1,500,000, and the state's debt service aid percentage is equal to 40 percent of the annual debt service on those costs — $600,000 in state funding proposed against the $1,500,000 bonding amount. Stone Harbor is one of 13 districts statewide proposing construction questions on Tuesday's ballot.
For Stone Harbor voters, Districts 1 and 2 vote at the Stone Harbor Recreation Center, 8100 Second Avenue, per the county's official polling-places notice, and sample ballots were delivered to households in the week before the election, so the exact wording of the roof question — 'Do you approve this Bond Proposal Question?' — is already in voters' hands. By Tuesday night the county will have its commissioners, its councils and its school boards, and Stone Harbor will know whether its elementary school gets a new section of roof on borrowed money with Trenton carrying two-fifths of the carrying cost.
