BY ELAINE VAN DEVELDE
Staff Writer
TINTON FALLS — There has been no shortage of pink slips in this school district.
In fact, in the past couple of years, Schools Superintendent Leonard Kelpsh said he regretfully approved cutting 40 staff members in the name of maintaining a healthy surplus.
So, when the state came out with a new mandate that schools must spend some of that cushion and leave only 2 percent of the entire budget amount in the account to quell tax hikes, Kelpsh wondered what the powers that be were thinking.
In prebudget times, Kelpsh has protected the district’s right to maintain a healthy surplus with an iron fist. This year, the district has a 6-percent surplus, or $1.1 million in the account.
To keep the surplus, the district vowed to hold to the state’s recommended 3-percent cap in spending from year to year. Keeping that promise meant firing many staff members. The decision prompted many a parent to protest. And teachers were not happy either.
Kelpsh said it was a move he hated to make but had to, in order to keep spending down and the surplus up.
Now, he’s being told to spend the money he was saving for the district’s rainy day and keep spending down further (2.5-percent cap or the equivalent of the state’s cost of living increase).
He doesn’t like the idea and said it requires “a foolish fiscal balancing act.”
Board of Education President Michael Laffey agrees.
“I think the whole new budget law is just a nightmare for schools,” Laffey said. “It’s bound to be a disaster long term.”
The mandatory surplus cap, which will eat away at the district’s 6 percent, reducing it to 2 percent, he complained, will hurt schools’ “ability to deal with emergencies, upkeep school buildings and provide a quality education for children.”
The 2004-05 budget of $23.1 million, with a $15.4 million tax levy, proposed an increase of 1.6 cents per $100 of assessed property valuation over last year’s rate. Even with that small hike, in order to keep its surplus at $1.1 million, the district would have been forced to cut 35 positions. Last year, 25 staff members received pink slips.
The two extra spending questions that voters approved gave the district the money back to keep 14 of those teachers and keep some programs intact.
They cost voters roughly another 10 cents per $100 on their tax bills.
Even though the questions gave the district some money above and beyond what the base budget called for, spending was still $1.8 million over the state-mandated 3-percent increase cap. Most of those costs Kelpsh attributed to state mandates in special education.
But now that mandate is down to 2.5 percent, and the district, even being fiscally prudent, had to increase costs beyond the recommended limit because of other state mandates, he noted.
“They cancel themselves out,” Laffey said. “It just doesn’t make any sense. And in Tinton Falls, we haven’t really even had characteristically high hikes in the budget. Taxpayers here get a good product for their tax dollar. Maintaining that healthy surplus and holding the line on spending have contributed to that. But these contradictory mandates will eventually force us and taxpayers into a bad situation.”