To the editor:
Bend over, here it comes again. Front page headline: "State offers district $8.6M" (Hillsborough Beacon, Sept. 7).
Wow! We the taxpayers are finally going to get a break from the powers to be in Trenton. Wrong. The state will donate these moneys against a $21.5 million project proposed by the Gulickians.
If we approve the referendum at the Oct. 3 voting, we get $8.6 million from Trenton and owe $12.9 million to satisfy the proposed budget for the construction project. We the taxpayers of Hillsborough will again be augured.
Why will it cost over $21 million to expand an elementary school and refurbish a middle school? It appears that Italian marble floors and solid gold urinals will be part of the refurbishing.
For that price you can buy forty $500,000 homes, set on 100 acres, and still have change.
Dr. G. said that "the calculations for the tax impact will be available by Monday."
Did his abacus break? He knows what they are, and were, when he made his proposal. I suspect that it will be about $300 per year minimum for the "average" homeowner with a house assessed at $250,000.
Unfortunately, our "bored" of education appears to be a group of financially motivated people with total disrespect for the hardships that they are instituting on the average homeowner in Hillsborough.
We have 200 additional students attending Hillsborough schools this year. The board hires 91 teachers, et. al., to compensate for this.
Cut us a break. We don’t have 3 or 4 students per classroom.
Thankfully we didn’t have a thousand new students. The board would have probably hired 500 new teachers.
When Dr. G. announces his "impact" statement, I wish that he would include a similar statement describing the impact that his tax increases have had on the longtime, fixed-income residents who subsidize the school system and receive no benefits. I don’t think so.
Ron Kavchok
Fern Way
Belle Mead
