BY SHERRY CONOHAN
Staff Writer
WEST LONG BRANCH — The tax rate for the borough schools would go up 8.45 cents per $100 assessed valuation under the $9,397,835 budget for next year introduced by the Board of Education. The budget includes the first debt service payment on the bonds just sold for new construction.
The proposed budget for the 2004-05 school year went up $534,988 from the current year’s budget of $8,862,847, an increase of 6 percent.
The tax rate to support the budget will go up from $1.10 per $100 of assessed valuation this year to $1.1845, or 7.6 percent, for 2004-05.
Dayton Faunce, board business administrator, said that on a house assessed at $230,000, the increase in the tax will be $194.35.
Faunce said the half-million dollar increase in the budget includes $362,295 for the first year of debt service on the $5,538,000 in bonds sold in November to pay for the borough’s share of the $7.6 million project to build a new addition with a media center and several instructional rooms to serve the district’s two schools and to make renovations to the schools and grounds.
The state is picking up the tab for the balance of the construction cost.
Faunce said the bonds for the new construction have a 15-year life and were sold at an interest rate of 3.394 percent. He noted that the outstanding debt for construction of the Betty McElmon School a decade ago, done under a lease-purchase arrangement, was refinanced at the same time with bonds sold at an interest rate of 2.473 percent, which will be paid off in 2010. That is the same year in which the original lease-purchase debt was to be retired.
Refinancing the Betty McElmon debt is saving the district almost $640,000 in debt service between now and 2010, Faunce added.
Both the construction project and refinancing the Betty McElmon debt were approved by the voters in a referendum last September.
"They say mortgage rates are the lowest in 40 years," Faunce noted. "So we hit it just right. It was the ideal time with the rates the lowest they have been in years and the state money being available," to help pay for the new addition and renovations. "It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity."
The general fund — or current expense — tax levy to support the 2004-05 budget, which will be submitted to the voters in the April 20 school election is $7,421,780. That’s an increase of $308,385 over the current expense of $7,113,395 needed for the current 2003-04 school year.
In addition to that, there is a debt service tax levy of $938,188, which will not appear on the ballot, for projects previously approved in referendums.
Faunce said that in addition to new debt service, the increase in next year’s budget covers the addition of a technology position at a cost of $50,000 including benefits, increasing the basic skills teacher from part time four days a week to full time, increasing the speech teacher from four days to full time, increasing the LTTC/special education teacher from one day to three days a week and the addition of a teacher of English as a second language.
The English as a second language teacher is needed because of children who have enrolled in school whose first languages are Portuguese and Russian, Faunce explained. He said the number of children needing English as a second language has now reached the level — 18 or 20, he wasn’t sure of the number — at which the state requires the school provide such instruction.
The budget increase also covers the purchase of 25 wireless laptop computers for the Frank Antonides School at a cost of $25,000, he said. He said the district also is buying new software for the child study team and furniture and lockers for the Frank Antonides School and is correcting a drainage problem in the parking lot.
Faunce also pointed out that the district was losing $101,580 to the New Jersey Shore Charter School to pay for the estimated 12 students who plan to attend the charter school. He said the cost for each of those students is $8,465.
"I think the Board of Education and the superintendent (Joan Kelly) have done a real nice job in being sensitive to the tax rate," Faunce said, "and the addition and renovations will give a lot to the kids and the community."
Faunce said the board hopes to award the contracts for construction of the addition and renovations in the beginning of June and have groundbreaking following in mid-June. Construction should get under way by the end of June or early July, he continued. Completion is expected by September 2005.
"Right now we’re on schedule for construction of the project," he reported. "It’s going to be very nice for the students and the staff."