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Press of Atlantic City - Some school budgets defeated in Wednesday's vote had no tax hikes
Njspotlight.com - Garden State Voters Approve 80 Percent of School Budgets...Light voter turnout revives various plans to move school elections to a more auspicious date
Star Ledger - Nearly 80 percent of N.J. school budgets pass, representing highest rate in a decade
Press of Atlantic City - Some school budgets defeated in Wednesday's vote had no tax hikes
By Diane D’Amico Posted: Thursday, April 28, 2011 10:54 pm | Updated: 10:59 pm, Thu Apr 28, 2011.
Some school budgets defeated in Wednesday's vote had no tax hikes By DIANE D'AMICO Education Writer pressofAtlanticCity.com | 0 comments
Officials in districts with school budgets that were defeated in Wednesday's elections are hoping to convince their local municipal officials to not make additional staff and program cuts, especially in districts where the budget contained no property-tax increase.
"I'm going to wait to see what they want," said Greater Egg Harbor Regional Superintendent Steven Ciccariello, whose budget was voted down by voters in all four sending districts - Galloway Township, Hamilton Township, Egg Harbor City and Mullica Township. Only Mullica voters approved their own local K-8 school budget, leaving officials in the other three municipalities with two defeated school budgets to review.
Results are still not official, and at least one school budget, in Egg Harbor Town-ship, appears to have been rescued from defeat by the results of absentee ballots still being counted Thursday. County clerks must certify the final results before they are released, and tallies in a few local school budget and school board races were so close that absentee ballots could change the results.
State law requires that defeated school budgets be reviewed by municipal governing bodies, whose members can ask for additional cuts. The municipal body can also approve the defeated budget as is. In two districts with defeated budgets, Wildwood and Hamilton Township, the school portion of the local property-tax levy is already at the minimum allowed by the state, so no additional cuts can be made.
As part of the school funding process, the state sets the minimum dollar amount a school district must contribute to its budget. That amount is dictated by formula, and the so-called "local fair share" is based on the district's economic and social characteristics and its ability to pay.
Statewide, 80 percent of school budgets were approved by voters, an improvement over last year, when only 42 percent were approved. Raymond R. Wiss, president of the New Jersey School Boards Association, said voters recognized district efforts to stay within the new 2 percent cap on local property-tax levies.
New Jersey Education Association President Barbara Keshishian said voters agreed that children have suffered enough after last year's cuts.
Atlantic County voters, however, appeared to disagree, rejecting seven of 11 budgets, including some with tax cuts. Based on the regional funding formula, the Greater Egg budget would have reduced tax rates in Mullica and Hamilton, and raised them less than a penny in Galloway. Ciccariello said the budget maintained all academic, extracurricular and athletic programs, but that's only after they were already cut back this year.
School officials said they think the rejections reflect a local economy that is still struggling. Budgets in Weymouth Township, Wildwood, Hamilton Township and Upper Township all had no property-tax increases, yet were still defeated. Voted-down budgets in Galloway Township, Wildwood Crest and Egg Harbor City had tax increases well under the 2 percent cap, adding a penny or less to the tax rate.
"I just think people are still unemployed and tired of paying taxes," Hamilton School Business Administrator Martha Jamison said.
Galloway Township Superintendent Annette Giaquinto said the tax increase there would cost a taxpayer with a house assessed at $200,000 about $16 a year. The budget was defeated by 27 votes, and she is hoping the Township Committee takes that into consideration. Reducing the tax rate back to this year's level would mean having to cut about $500,000.
"The tax rate is already less than it was two years ago," she said. "But the economy is still challenged."
Egg Harbor City Superintendent John Gilly also hopes the closeness of the vote there - 95-80 - will convince city officials not to make drastic cuts.
A 5-cent tax-rate increase was proposed in Absecon, but solely to cover increased tuition for a record number of the district's high school students opting to attend public high schools rather than private schools, as they had in the past. Superintendent James Giaquinto said that since the tuition must be paid, cuts can be made only from the district's K-8 programs.
Absecon's budget was defeated 262-207.
"I think the council understands the situation," he said. "We did our best to get the message out."
School officials said so many cuts were made last year that any additional cuts for next year will likely have to come from programs and staff.
"If they want more cuts, it will likely lead to layoffs," Upper Township school Business Administrator Laurie Ryan said. "But we're hoping (township officials) recognize there was no tax increase, and ask for no more cuts."
Wildwood Crest school Business Administrator Greg Rohrman said his district may have to consolidate more classrooms if more cuts are made.
"Right now we're down to just programs and staff," he said. If the proposed half-penny tax increase is cut, it would mean reducing the budget $120,000, or two positions.
Weymouth Township Superintendent Donna Van Horn said the small district cannot budget any tighter, and since the Township Committee was supportive of the budget, she is hoping they will not ask for more cuts. She wished the sample ballots would tell people if the tax rate is going up or down.
"The wording includes nothing that says there is no tax increase," she said. "We don't have the money to spend on advertising, so it's hard to get the word out to the community."
Contact Diane D'Amico: 609-272-7241 DDamico@pressofac.com
Garden State Voters Approve 80 Percent of School Budgets
Light voter turnout revives various plans to move school elections to a more auspicious date
By John Mooney, April 29 in Education |1 Comment
The 80 percent of school budgets approved by voters on Wednesday was notable. So was how few voters cast ballots, even by school election standards.
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The state has not yet released statewide voter turnout figures, but county-by-county numbers showed that the annual budget votes were lightly attended in many places.
In Hudson, fewer than 10 percent of registered voters cast ballots. In Cumberland, it was below 6 percent, according to the county clerks’ preliminary results. In Union, it was just about 12 percent.
There were exceptions, of course, with Ocean topping 20 percent and Morris close at 18 percent. But it still looked to be a sharp drop statewide from the better than 26 percent who went to the polls last year, and maybe even below the paltry 14 percent to 15 percent that is the norm. (The low of 7 percent in 1985 still seems a safe record.)
The reasons for the light turnout were varied. The lack of budget rhetoric may have contributed, as well as the unusual Wednesday vote. The latter also renewed talk of moving the school elections to a more recognizable day.
"It‘s like having a party and nobody showing up," said state Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer), the sponsor of a long-running bill to move the school elections to November. "Just think of the waste of money for the elections alone."
Still, she and others conceded that the prospects for the bill appear no closer than ever, despite Gov. Chris Christie making a new election date part of his "toolkit" for reigning in municipal and school spending.
"It seems like it has stalled every since [former Assembly Speaker] Joe Roberts left," Turner said, referring to the Assembly speaker who pressed the bill while in office. "It gets through a few committees but never gets posted for a final vote."
The move to November has been raised every few years. The chief arguments against it are that it would devolve into a partisan election and also that it would disrupt a school budget calendar than now runs July to June.
Turner said many school elections are already partisan, but she conceded a springtime vote could be preferable for school budgeting. She also has a bill to move the vote to the June primary election date, while a bill from state Assemblyman Joseph Cryan (D-Union) would combine all nonpartisan local elections in May.
Turner blames her bill's lack of progress on Trenton’s intractability when it comes to the status quo.
"I think some people are worried that sometimes when you increase turnout, you lose control," Turner said. "But when it’s this kind of money, we should have more people weighing in."
This year’s low turnout may in part have been a response to last year, when 59 percent of budgets were rejected – the highest rejection rate on record.
"After all the tempest last year and people up in arms for districts to tighten their belts, they felt this year that schools had gotten the message," said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
"So much so, they didn’t even feel they needed to vote," he said. "And those who did, it was the people who normally come out, the families and the parents."
Murray said the new 2 percent tax cap also was a big factor, keeping the outraged away from the polls. A vast majority of districts came in well below the 2 percent cap.
"Districts worked extra hard to make sure nobody was upset," Murray said. "The fact the turnout was low is one of the hallmarks of that."
Still, it’s a perennial debate as to what can be done to engage more citizens in the school vote, the only one in which citizens vote directly on government spending -- local, state or national.
Star Ledger - Nearly 80 percent of N.J. school budgets pass, representing highest rate in a decade
Published: Friday, April 29, 2011, 7:30 AM Updated: Friday, April 29, 2011, 8:12 AM
Bound Brook Superintendent Edward Hoffman was not expecting his district’s budget to pass — voters in the Somerset County town have only approved the school budget twice in the past 15 years.
"In the best of years, you don’t expect our budget to pass," Hoffman said.
But for Bound Brook and hundreds of other school districts across the state, the consequences of leaner budgets last year — including program cuts, teacher layoffs, and higher extracurricular activity fees — spelled a new result:
New Jersey voters approved nearly 80 percent of the school budgets considered Wednesday, the highest rate of passage in a decade and a stunning reversal of last year’s record budget defeats, according to the New Jersey School Boards Association.
"Voters understood the difficult choices many school boards had to make this year when developing their budget proposals," said Raymond Wiss, president of the school boards association.
In total, New Jerseyans approved 429 of the 538 budgets considered, with 100 percent passage rates in Somerset, Essex and Morris counties. Most districts proposed budgets at or below the 2 percent tax cap Gov. Chris Christie and the state Legislature imposed last year.
Last year, Christie became a lightning rod for taxpayer fury over the economy by urging voters to "send a message" and defeat budgets in districts where teachers refused a pay freeze. His rhetoric helped lead six in 10 budgets to fail.
This year, Christie kept quiet on school budgets, and results swung dramatically in the opposite direction. Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the governor, said the effective tax cap is the reason behind this year’s high budget approval rate, not Christie’s silence.
"What we take away from the results is that the new cap law worked as intended, keeping local spending under control and predictable and giving voters who pay the taxes final say on whether to exceed the cap," Drewniak said.
Plainfield, Woodbridge and Bound Brook are a few of many districts where budgets were approved Wednesday after having been rejected last year. Other districts, however, had their spending plans rejected two years in a row, including Dunellen, Spotswood and Delaware Valley Regional.
New Jersey Education Association president Barbara Keshishian said voters sent a clear message in yesterday’s school budget elections: "Our students have suffered enough.
"Even though voters are still concerned about rising property taxes, yesterday’s results show that they are not willing to sacrifice out children’s future by cutting off funding for public education," Keshishian said.
Sandy Giercyk, president of the Parsippany-Troy Hills Parent Teacher Association, said voters are starting to understand what it means to vote down a school budget. After voters defeated Parsippany’s budget last year and the district endured Christie’s repeated attacks on Superintendent Leroy Seitz’s salary, Giercyk said she was "ecstatic" about Wednesday’s approval.
"You as a taxpayer vote no, but you don’t get to pick what goes," Giercyk said. "A ‘no’ vote loses programs and services. People think it’s going to decrease teacher benefit packages. It’s not."
Staff writers Dan Goldberg and Eugene Paik contributed to this report.
