Fate of budget is primary focus.
By: Jeff Milgram
The winners are already known. The only unknowns in Tuesday’s school election in Princeton are the size of the voter turnout, and the fate of the district’s $58.8 million budget for 2003-2004.
Four seats on the Princeton Regional Board of Education are up for grabs and only four candidates are running, so pending some unforeseen turn of events, incumbents Anne Burns, Joshua Leinsdorf and JoAnn Cunningham and newcomer Glen Schiltz will be elected.
Polls will be open from 4 to 9 p.m. Tuesday.
The election is being held during the district’s annual spring break and board President Charlotte Bialek is hoping that residents who will be on vacation will vote by absentee ballots.
"School board elections rarely have a high turnout, but they’re important," Ms. Bialek said. "I’d like to see people take an interest."
She believes voters may stay away because the elections are not contentious. Another factor that may keep voter turnout low is the war in Iraq.
"People are preoccupied," she said.
She believes only a small number of voters have requested absentee ballots. "I’ve had people ask me how to do it," Ms. Bialek said.
Ms. Burns, the board’s vice president, is running for a second three-year term from Princeton Township. She is chairwoman of the board’s important Facilities Committee, which is overseeing the district’s $81.3 million school renovation and expansion project.
She has been a member of the board’s finance and personnel committees and served on the negotiating committee for both the teachers’ and support staff’s contracts.
Ms. Burns lives on Baldwin Lane with her husband, John. They have four children: Matthew, a third-grader at Community Park School; Jeffrey, a fifth-grader at Community Park; Emily, a senior at Princeton High School; and Sarah, who graduated from PHS in 2001.
Ms. Cunningham is running to fill the one-year unexpired township seat vacated by Howard Wainer.
An assistant professor of African, African-American and Caribbean Studies at William Paterson University, she was appointed to the board in November.
Ms. Cunningham, of Mulberry Row in Princeton Township, is a member of the Program Committee and serves as board liaison to Princeton Young Achievers.
She has lived in Princeton for 20 years and is the mother of one son, Charles, a PHS graduate.
Mr. Leinsdorf, of Forester Drive, is running for re-election to his second three-year Princeton Borough seat.
A consultant and election analyst, he has served on the board’s finance, personnel, program and minority education committees. He also served as a member of the committee that negotiated a contract with the support staff union and is the board’s legislative liaison.
A five-year resident of Princeton Borough, he and his wife, Kathy Blohm, have one daughter, Molly, a fifth-grader at Riverside School.
Mr. Schiltz is running for election to a three-year seat held by Myra Williams. Formerly employed in film development, Mr. Schiltz is making a career shift to teaching.
Borough residents for three years, Mr. Schiltz and his wife, Carolyn Rouse, a Princeton University anthropologist, have two children: Zora, a fifth-grader, and Elijah, a first-grader, both at Community Park.
Voters also will get a chance to have their say on the budget.
"I think it’s a really good, responsible budget," Ms. Bialek said. "I don’t think it will be voted down by people who have looked at the budget and done their homework."
The $58.8 million budget is 7.5 percent higher than this year’s $54.7 million spending plan and will raise property taxes by 14 cents per $100 of assessed value in the borough and 11 cents in the township. More than $47 million will have to be raised from property taxes.
Homeowners in Princeton Borough would pay $1.45 per $100 of assessed property value for the 2003-2004 school year, up from $1.31. The owner of the average home in the borough, assessed at $345,000, would pay $5,002.50 in school taxes. That would be an increase of $483 from this year, or 10.7 percent.
Homeowners in Princeton Township would pay $1.36 per $100 of assessed valuation, up from $1.25. The owner of the average home in Princeton Township, assessed at $411,800, would pay $5,600.48 in taxes, an increase of $452.98 or 8.8 percent over this year’s bill of $5,147.50.
"The 2003-2004 budget is, by and large, a Level 1, or maintenance budget, although a number of reductions had to be made to Level 1 requests," Superintendent Claire Sheff Kohn said in a budget newsletter that was sent to borough and township residents. "The budget includes the absolute necessities to maintain our current level of programs and services. The needs of the taxpayers were a significant consideration as the budget was developed."
Fueling the increase in the budget, in addition to charter school tuition and special education, were hikes in contractual salary obligations, transportation costs and maintenance.
Half of the tax increase will go to payments on the $60 million in construction bonds. Debt service is down 2.2 percent because the district will apply $1 million in interest earned by the bond money to the debt. In addition to the increased costs, the board had to deal with state aid that was frozen for the second year in a row at $3.4 million.
The district is urging voters to go to the polling place listed on the sample ballot. School polling places may be different from the general election polling places.
The district is urging anyone with questions about where to vote to call the board’s office at (609) 806-4204.

