How this review was done, what could not be tested, and why. Prepared 2026-09-18.
schedules/ and the working papers.[DOC] = stated in a cited original document. [CALC] = researcher's arithmetic on cited figures. [INT] = interpretation, flagged. [LEAD] = inherited and unverified. [GAP] = not found in available online records.schedules/contracts-register.csv; working/n-procurement-screening.md) and screened for concentration, repeat awards, threshold clustering, change orders, bidder counts, and non-fair-and-open compliance — with no findings of favoritism or wrongdoing. Vendor-payment registers FY24–FY27 and PO journals FY25–FY27 were received Oct 15, 2026 as PDFs of system reports (D-16, 695 pp; D-17, 236 pp), so the "no vendor-payment data obtainable" limitation is lifted. The columnar PDF text does not foot to a reliable grand total and PO/check numbers are not reliably separable in extraction, so no duplicate-payment, invoice/contract/receipt-matching, or PO-validity screen was run; per-vendor block examples that foot internally are tabulated in schedules/vendor-examples.csv. No proposal, evaluation-sheet, executed-contract, or bid-tabulation data was obtainable. The ELEC donor cross-check (2023–2025) is complete — 60 entity records, 56 itemized donors, no exact vendor/principal matches. Expanded record requests (bundle h, plus vendor-payment exports in bundle k) are in records-requests.md (drafts only; nothing submitted). No fraud rate is estimated; no exception is claimed.full-report.md §4.1). The FY2026 audit (expected ~Oct 2026, the first independent check on implementation) was not available; implementation remains unverified, and the dollar amount of unemployment interest/penalties is not stated anywhere. New evidence (NJ927 confirmations, charter payment records, B-09 contras/refunds) is integrated in full-report.md §4.1.schedules/benefits-decomposition.csv); enrollment-by-tier decomposition still missing. Drivers of the increases are partially explained (adoption resolution $984,178 health-care adjustment; district-stated adequacy explanation) but not fully decomposed.full-report.md §6.3). Every figure in schedules/municipal-5yr-trends.csv was therefore re-extracted from each year's own adopted budget as the primary source, with adjacent comparative columns used only as cross-checks; each line carries a provenance note. The mislabeled columns explain the recurring Sheet 3/Sheet 30 confusion and the pass-2 errors (2022/2023 and 2024/2025 swapped; the +3.41% growth "correction" was itself wrong). The 2022 and 2024 adopted budgets were located (DocumentCenter > Finance: View/4342, View/5381). Remaining: clean sheet-by-sheet re-reads of the 2021 workbook (extracted pre-transposition; Sheet 3's $15,531,325.06 is most likely the 2020 comparative) and the 2023 appropriation sheets (2023 detail lines assigned by elimination, high confidence).Where evidence was thin, conclusions are thin. Interpretations are identified separately from facts. Confidence levels (high / medium / low / open) are given per claim in the report and the working papers. Unanswered questions are kept separate from original-document facts and from researcher interpretations.
Sources. Town council agendas and resolutions (boonton.org AgendaCenter), the Jan 1, 2026 reorganization agenda (oaths, committees, liaisons, 2026 professional-service awards, appointments), the 2026 salary ordinance, the town police staff directory, the Planning Board page, NJDOE ACFR rosters of officials and the UFB contract listings, BOE minutes, Morris County Clerk official election results (2023, 2024, 2025), library newsletters, and news reports flagged as secondary. The roster is schedules/people-roster.csv; the authority map, compensation table, dual-role screen, and legal frameworks are people-and-oversight.md.
Standards applied.
addresses, personal phones/emails, private family details, or non-public information were collected or stored.
surnames across public records are recorded as name-match leads, never as findings.
affiliation is not evidence of favoritism by itself. Each connection states the documented fact, its source, its relevance to a financial decision, alternative explanations, and whether it is verified, a lead, or unverifiable.
retrievable records (ELEC's JavaScript-only viewer; fds.nj.gov's interactive search; unpublished board minutes) is a transparency/verification gap, not a clearance.
actual pay. Only ranges and one contract-year UFB listing were verified; no actual paid compensation for any individual was verified.
(one seat per ward on the ballot each year) after cross-checking three years of Morris County Clerk official results; the mayor serves a 4-year term. The school board remains 3-year staggered (Type II).
Legal frameworks used (rules only, no findings). Local Government Ethics Law FDS requirements (N.J.S.A. 40A:9-22.6; who files; clerk as custodian; April 30 deadline; public-record status; $100–$500 penalties); School Ethics Act recusal and code of ethics for board members (N.J.S.A. 18A:12-24(c), 18A:12-24.1); mandatory district nepotism policy (N.J.A.C. 6A:23A-6.2; NJSBA model 0142.1 — the Town of Boonton district's published policy was not located); municipal LGEL general conduct/recusal standards (N.J.S.A. 40A:9-22.5 — no freestanding municipal anti-nepotism clause; N.J.S.A. 52:13D-21.2 is State-only).
Mostly retrieved (updated 2026-09-18). ELEC candidate/committee reports: 2023–2025 cycles complete (60 entity records via live browser; no pay-to-play finding; Boswell Engineering lead open — see monitoring-plan.md W-18b; filed report PDFs not opened — optional follow-up). FDS filings: filer rosters 2023–2025 retrieved plus 6 fully-read 2025 statements; remainder pending. the BOE January 2026 reorganization minutes and Nov 2025 election results; the administrator-transition records; current Lincoln Park representative; the full library trustee roster; a town nepotism/personnel ordinance; whether the town has a local ethics board. All are open items, not negative findings.
No contact was made with any person, office, or vendor. All records requests are drafts; none was submitted.
Scope of the redo. The Oct 15, 2026 school OPRA production (122 PDFs plus a tracking file) and the Sep 23, 2026 library production (4 PDFs) were converted to markdown derivatives (123 school MDs plus 4 library MDs, plus an extraction manifest) and read in full. PDFs remain the authoritative originals; MDs are derivatives. Every quantified claim in the redo cites its source PDF plus page or schedule. All new schedules were checked for footing (sums and cross-ties) before publication; a schedule whose figures do not tie was not added.
PDF-based vendor/PO method. D-16 (Vendor History by PO / Account / Check) and D-17 (PO journals) were received as columnar PDF printouts, not native data exports. Method: per-vendor block figures were taken from single D-16 blocks that foot internally (Orders equals Checks plus Balance); D-17 report totals were taken from the printed Report totals and checked (Payments plus Open equals Amount). Limits: D-16 has no printed grand total, and a text parse does not produce a stable total, so no vendor grand totals are stated. D-17 totals include payroll POs and contra/negative PO entries, so they are not vendor-payment totals and are not comparable to the budget. PO counts are not stated from 6-digit numbers, because PO numbers and check numbers share the format and are not reliably separable in the extracted text. A duplicate-payment or PO-validity screen was NOT run, because the columnar PDF text does not foot to a reliable grand total and PO/check numbers are not reliably separable in extraction. Do not claim a screen was run.
J-19 garble. The C-14 J-19 excerpt (Exhibit J-19, Schedule of Required Maintenance, Last Ten Fiscal Years, Unaudited) is garbled in extraction, including the 2025 column, and a naive column mapping does not foot. No J-19 figures are quoted. Figures are not quotable until the PDF is read visually or re-extracted.
B-09 correction. The file titled "JHS deposits" is a Contras / Refunds by Account report, not deposit-timing records. The prior characterization is corrected. The file is used only as the population of activity contras/refunds transactions, not as a measure of deposit delay. Deposit timing is still not shown by this file.
Sensitive-data re-check. Before website regeneration and repo push, all newly quoted or tabulated content was scanned for SSNs, account/routing numbers, student names, private addresses, dates of birth, and license/passport numbers. Findings: the Gardberg employment contract contains a private home address (value not reproduced anywhere); the Sept 9, 2024 minutes contain one student date of birth and one student state ID in a home-instruction item, keyed to a single initial (values not reproduced anywhere); D-16 contains per-student initials in some out-of-district placement descriptions (initials not quoted); NJ927 confirmations show asterisk-masked bank details (masked values not quoted); the Delta invoice contains an online signup token (not quoted). No SSNs were observed in the newly verified content. No full student names were observed. No full bank/routing/account numbers were observed. The earlier scan that found the 122 PDFs publishable missed the Gardberg address and the student DOB/state ID; it is no longer sufficient on its own. Handling, resolved (W-41): both files are published in redacted form on the records page and labeled as redacted (Gardberg contract with the home address removed; Sept 9, 2024 minutes with the student date of birth and state IDs removed). The as-received originals are retained untouched in the evidence store. Redaction used true text removal, verified by extraction: the values are absent from the redacted text and bytes, page counts unchanged, all other content intact. The values are NOT reproduced anywhere in the audit, website, schedules, or PR.
UNEXTRACTED files. Eleven PDFs are image-only scans with no text layer and are UNEXTRACTED: seven school files (A-02 and A-04 Board Secretary reports June 2026, A-04 Treasurer reports June 2026, B-05 CAP, C-15 Lincoln Park signed 2025-2030 agreement, C-15 1999 agreement, E-23 principal contracts) and four library files. No contents are stated for them beyond receipt plus that contents await OCR. No CAP owner/deadline substance, agreement terms, or principal contract terms are claimed from them beyond what is already in the audit docs.
Figures deliberately NOT used, and why. SRF totals across sources (do not reconcile without further records). Charter $610 difference (unreconciled, not a finding). Roofing $89,025.11 minutes-vs-PO difference (unreconciled). Waste Management $646.84 minutes-vs-PO difference (unreconciled). Debt service $200 difference: D-16 Depository Trust $1,425,300 vs budget/A-03 $1,425,500; interest/principal split also differs (D-16 Interest $430,300 / Principal $995,000 vs A-03 Interest $390,500 / Principal $1,035,000, a $40,000 shift). Flag as unreconciled, not a finding. Delta $21,000.69 vs $21,291.29 balance-forward figures (single invoice does not resolve which is correct). J-19 figures (extraction garbled). D-16 vendor grand totals (no printed total; text parse does not foot). D-17 PO counts (PO and check numbers share the 6-digit format and are not reliably separable). Horizon exposure (ambiguous in extraction except pp. 2 and 8). C-15 percent columns (header mapping ambiguous). C-13 charter enrollment (use B-08 final enrollment instead). Principal contract terms beyond salary and longevity (file unextracted). Public-comment claims, minutes allegations, donation identities, HIB substantiation counts (not findings). Corrections applied in the body: B-09 is contras/refunds, not deposit records; C-13 FY27 proposed O&M per pupil is $1,767 (the earlier $1,734 figure is superseded); the $5,733 capital item is the SDA assessment, not unitemized; the D-17 FY26 Hannon line is not cited for payment status (use D-16 and C-12).