tax hike by 6.2 cents
Objects to council cuts, which would reduce
tax hike by 6.2 cents
FARRAH MAFFAI staff School officials proposed cuts to late bus runs and driver salaries as a means of saving $100,000.
BY KARL VILACOBA
Staff Writer
Faced with the choice of ratifying or rejecting the Brick Township Council’s cuts to the defeated school budget, the Board of Education went a third route.
Board members voted 4-1 on May 20 to table a decision on the school budget, giving them until May 27 to decide whether or not to appeal the council’s action to the state. The board also directed its attorney to research if typographical errors and vague explanations for each cut on the resolution will affect its validity.
On May 18, the council unanimously adopted a resolution calling for $2.85 million in cuts to the budget, which failed at the polls by more than 600 votes. The council’s plan would cut 6.2 cents off the proposed 15.4-cent hike to the tax rate.
The council’s plan calls for the allocation of an extra $600,000 in fund balance (surplus), $669,000 in board-recommended decreases to line items and $785,193 by deferring debt-service payments until next year. But it was a group of 11 council-recommended cuts to line items, totaling over $800,000, that drew the ire of Brick Superintendent of Schools Thomas Seidenberger.
Seidenberger estimated that $317,000 of those cuts were made in error — demands to reduce contracts that must be paid, cuts to accounts that would place the district out of compliance for special education funding and cuts to accounts that don’t exist. He said the district would have to make up for the shortfalls by using funds from other district accounts, which would invariably affect the district’s core mission of educating the students.
"How did that happen?" the usually serene Seidenberger shouted, pounding his fist on a table. "How did someone make mistakes so profound? Because they didn’t pick up the phone and call."
Township officials say the district, unlike a municipality, has the ability to shift funds from accounts of their choice to replenish any line items they feel are indispensable. Council members said no line item was lowered beyond last year’s total, and that cuts were directed toward accounts that consistently went unspent over the last few years.
In favor of tabling the decision were John Paredes, Dr. William Boyan, Catherine Lindenbaum and board President Daniel Woska, while Frank Pannucci voted against the move. New board members Sharon Kight and John Talty said they did not have enough information to decide, and abstained.
Talty and Kight said members of the board’s Finance and Business Committee or administration should have attended the council meeting to discuss the errors. Only Kight, Lindenbaum and Talty, none of whom were on that committee, attended the meeting.
The board and administration’s criticisms led to a verbal joust between themselves and council members, which lasted until almost midnight. Adding to the tension, members of the audience repeatedly cheered statements in favor of the original budget, and at one point booed a senior citizen who said she could not afford the failed package on her fixed income.
Council members accused district officials throughout the process of not acting forthcoming with information. Councilwoman Ruthanne Scaturro, head of the Council Business and Finance Committee, said she hoped for harmonious negotiations between the sides, but Paredes told her "that wasn’t the way the game was going to be played." Conflicts regarding the council’s cuts could have been avoided if the board worked with them openly, she said. For example, Scaturro said that on the day before the council’s vote, district officials provided only the odd pages of a list of district accounts.
"Most of the times when we asked, ‘What’s in that line item,’ there were no answers," Scaturro said.
The council hired auditor Frank Holman Jr. and retired Leonia Superintendent Frank Marlow as consultants on the budget review. Seidenberger said he believed Marlow, not the council, was responsible for the most damaging cuts. Among the "Marlow cuts," which Seidenberger objected to were a $36,500 reduction to an account for bedside instruction for hospitalized students and a $64,283 cut that would eliminate three aide positions for learning disabled students. Seidenberger vowed to replenish that account at all costs.
Council President Stephen Acropolis defended the hire of Marlow and Holman as necessary, given the district’s lack of cooperation. District officials only provided what they were legally obligated to, he said.
"If that’s all that the board gives the council, then the council has no choice but to go elsewhere for that information," Acropolis said.